Lima Rooftops: case study of an urban desert (original) (raw)
Related papers
Reframing Urban Boundaries: Lima's Urban Black Holes
sITA › Volume 5/2017 – Marginalia. Limits within the Urban Realm, 2017
The current urban condition of Lima, Peru is dominated by tension between the preservation of natural and cultural heritage and the housing and economic needs of the people. The need for marginal land by informal settlements threatens the hundreds of urban archaeological sites that are deemed “intangible heritage” and perceived as black holes in the urban fabric. The lack of an effective planning framework and heritage preservation policy, and the loss of meaning of cultural heritage sites and their relationship to the territory, have resulted in the rapid encroachment of the urban fabric over Lima’s inherited natural and cultural landscape. How can these heritage sites be redefined in the collective imagination of the city and more meaningfully integrated into the urban fabric as significant collective spaces? The urban boundary is a powerful protective tool for natural and cultural heritage preservation and an effective structuring device for urban development. By redesigning and strengthening the boundaries of natural and cultural heritage landscapes as connective, productive, and educational collective spaces of exchange rather than separation, the open spaces within can recover their meaning and value, and be collectively protected as cherished cultural assets.
LANDSCAPES OF THE SOUTH IN THE SLUMS OF LIMA, PERU
V!RUS JOURNAL, 2021
This paper analyses the socio-environmental importance and the biocultural memory observed in open spaces of the self-organized context of the slums of Lima, Peru. Looking forward to the Good Living and Epistemologies of the South in order to rescue the knowledge turned invisible by the colonialist, capitalist and patriarchal domination, this paper proposes the antipodal concept of "landscapes of the South". Therefore, the theoretical framework triangulates theory from the Decolonial Turn, Designs of the South and Biocultural Memory. This theoretical approach was decided by its capacity to situate the critique from a different angle, opposed to the Eurocentric hegemonic notion of Landscape, which commodifies nature based on the propaganda of power, inferiorizing the people, their knowledges and their landscaping designs. Likewise, a theoretical approach is developed based on the landscape designs self-organized in the slum areas of Lima, popularly known as “barriadas”. The slum called "La Ensenada" was our main case study, located in the district of “Puente Piedra”, where direct observation and semi-structured interviews were developed with some residents during the fieldwork. Considering these elements, a booklet with landscape design alternatives was developed aimed to serve as a basis for improving self-organization and landscape interventions in this slum, in order to improve their socio-environmental quality, and, above all, to overcome the violences of modernity-coloniality.
Urban Science, 2019
Lima has become the first Peruvian megacity with more than 10 million people, resulting from the migration waves from the countryside throughout the 20th century, which have also contributed to the diverse ethnic background of today's city. The paper analyzes two neighborhoods located in the inter-district area of Northern Lima: Pampa de Cueva and El Ermitaño as paradigmatic cases of the city's expansion through non-formal settlements during the 1960s. They represent a relevant case study because of their complex urbanization process, the presence of pre-Hispanic heritage, their location in vulnerable hillside areas in the fringe with a protected natural landscape, and their potential for sustainable local economic development. The article traces back the consolidation process of these self-built neighborhoods or barriadas within the context of Northern Lima as a new centrality for the metropolitan area. The analysis of urban form and mobility, heritage and environmental challenges, governance, and social integration leads to a proposal for neighborhood upgrading, capacity building with participatory processes, and a vision for future local development to decentralize the traditional metropolitan centers, which can be scaled to other peripheral neighborhoods.
Journal of Traditional Building, Architecture and Urbanism, 2020
Its aim, firstly, is to promote the creation of sites and buildings which harmonize with the culture and the tradition of each place, which pursue a greater respect for the environment and its natural resources, and which respond, in general, to the main challenges we face in our time, such as the progressive disappearance of quality job opportunities, the growing generation of waste and toxic environments, the dissolution of the kind of public spaces which are designed to favor interchange and coexistence, neglected in the majority of the new urban developments, the unbalance the rural areas are suffering, which leads to their depopulation, or the persistence of planning practices which lead to a serious dependence on private transport. Su objetivo principal es promover la creación de lugares y edificios que armonicen con la cultura y la tradición de cada lugar, que persigan un mayor respeto por el medio ambiente y por sus recursos naturales, y que respondan, en general, a los principales retos que enfrentamos en nuestro tiempo, tales como la desaparición progresiva de las oportunidades de empleo de calidad, la creciente generación de residuos y de ambientes tóxicos, la disolución de las estructuras urbanas socialmente cohesivas y de los espacios públicos diseñados para el intercambio y la convivencia, olvidados en la mayoría de los nuevos desarrollos urbanos, el desequilibrio que sufre el medio rural y la consiguiente despoblación del mismo, o persistencia de las prácticas de planeamiento que conducen a una mayor dependencia de los medios de transporte privados. García Hermida, Alejandro. 2020. “Timeless Building, Architecture and Urbanism for the 21st Century”. Journal of Traditional Building, Architecture and Urbanism, 1. Toledo, España: 10 - 21
Dynamic Lima: four levels, two views, one city... experienced and shared
2019
Esta editorial es miembro de la UNE, lo que garantiza la difusi6n y comercializaci6n nacional e internacional de sus publi cac iones. Reservados todos los derechos. Cualquierforma de reproducci6n, distribuci6n, comunicaci6n publica o transformaci6n de esta obra solo puede ser realizada con la autorizaci6n de sus titulares, salvo excepci6n prevista por la ley. Dirijase a CEDRO (Centro Espanol de Derechos Reprograficos, www.cedro.org) si necesita fotocopiar o escanear algun fragmento de esta obra.
ZARCH: Journal in Interdisciplinary Studies in Architecture and Urbanism, 2021
If we affirmatively answer Maria Kaika and Erik Swyngedouw's invitation to think beyond the 'fetishization of the modern city' as the pinnacle of human-centered progress and achievement in order to consider the urban as both a process of transformed nature and the metabolic and social transformation of nature through human labor, the city becomes a 'hybrid of the natural and the cultural, the environmental and the social' (Kaika and Syngedouw; 122). This essay argues that markedly different ways of imagining monumental public spaces and the relationship between nature and the city have arisen since the economic crisis of 2008 in Spain. Urban cultures create opportunities to imagine these new social, material and symbolic transformations and are exemplified in the documentary films of Víctor Moreno Edificio España (2012) and La ciudad oculta (2018). Considered together, the two films capture the scale, depth and three-dimensionality of spaces that are made up of both organic and non-organic material flows in ways that encourage us to question some of our basic assumptions about the urban. _______________________________ Si respondemos afirmativamente a la invitación de Maria Kaika y Erik Swyngedouw de pensar más allá de la “fetichización de la ciudad moderna” como cúspide del progreso y del logro centrados en lo humano para considerar lo urbano a un mismo tiempo como proceso de naturaleza transformada y como transformación social y metabólica de la naturaleza a través del trabajo humano, la ciudad se convierte en un “híbrido de lo natural y lo cultural, lo medioambiental y lo social” (Kaika y Swyngedouw, 122). Este ensayo sostiene que desde la crisis económica de 2008 en España han surgido modos notablemente diferentes de imaginar los espacios públicos monumentales y la relación entre naturaleza y ciudad. Las culturas urbanas crean oportunidades de imaginar estas nuevas transformaciones sociales, materiales y simbólicas y las películas documentales de Víctor Moreno Edificio España (2012) y La ciudad oculta (2018) son un ejemplo de ello. Consideradas en su conjunto, las dos películas captan la escala, profundidad y tridimensionalidad de espacios que están hechos de flujos materiales orgánicos y no orgánicos de un modo que nos insta a cuestionar algunos de nuestras premisas básicas sobre lo urbano.
New abandoned places: side effects of the “Miracle Architecture” in Spain
ArcHistor EXTRA, 2020
This research starts by acknowledging the central role of the idea of "ruins" and "abandoned place" in the contemporary architectural debate related to the future of neglected, degraded or simply not used spaces, which tend to rapidly become underlying ruins of the contemporaneity. This process is in fact often facilitated by a society where building is increasingly harder and the social, cultural and economic development is always unpredictable. The unusual fact, which is basically the central idea of this research, is the juxtaposition, which sounds like an oxymoron, of the two ideas of "ruins" and "contemporaneity" to explain a situation which is common in most of our cities where neglected places or even places which have never been used are abandoned. This situation shows that buildings and structures belonging to a "recent past" need an urgent upgrade and a new definition. A combination of elements sharing the same questions about the preservation and modification of the present heritage, the importance of the past for the future, the cultural and symbolic reference which should be preserved in our global society. Analysing these new circumstances, focusing on methods and strategies to recover or transform the reality is fundamental. It is possible to define two main - and somehow opposite - opinions: on one hand we have the conservation of the past, while on the other hand the past is transformed in order to be progressively "removed" to then regenerate and be reborn. Marc Augé's theory in his "Time in ruins" combines the two positions, identifying a dialectic between the ideas of "remains" and "ruins" which are both important in the process of modification. While normally the ruin is seen in a negative way as a group of objects which cannot be used anymore as they were meant to, the French anthropologist theorises an opinion which is more positive, where these objects can be transformed to take on a new meaning -social as well - for the present as "contemporary ruins". This leads us to reword the question which our research is based on: is a theorisation of "contemporary ruins" possible? Starting from the abandoned structures of the present, is the process of transformation in order to create new places with spatial and social meaning possible? If it is, which methods and strategies can be used?