Megaprojects.
course:
Megaprojects.
university:
Universidad Iberoamericana.
tutors:
Margarita Flores, Carlos Bedoya, Laura Janka, Tiberio Wallentin, David Ortega.
date/semester:
fall 2014 - spring 2014.
undergraduate semester 4.
key points:
teaching, master planning, urban design, mapping, housing, zoning, morphology, utopias/dystopias.
Under the direction of Margarita Flores, this fourth semester studio took on mega-scale urban developments, macro concepts of land-use, urban morphologies, regional transportation, infrastructure, zoning and housing. Using references from 1970's era utopian visionaries such as Superstudio, Archigram and early projects of Rem Koolhaas, the students investigated areas on the order of 1 square kilometer, mapping various characteristics in order to discover unseen patterns in use, form and development. These mappings then formed the basis for large scale interventions that cause the students to confront unconscious biases regarding how cities are used and inhabited - including the effects of these biases in zoning and development policy - and to think in terms of neighborhood rather than infrastructure in favor of architectural detail. The resulting utopian and dystopian projects challenge current theories about good practice in urban planning by returning to discarded strategies, not in order to promote them but instead to use them as provocations for the questioning of preconceived ideas.