Guadalajara Characters by Eric Camarena

GUADALAJARA CHARACTERS

El Eco An expansion, an echo, for Mathias Goeritz’s museum in Mexico City.

The Orient Express Public transportation brings urban development to the forgotten municipality.

P. I.G. Parque Industrial Guadalajara / Guadalajara Industrial Park.

Paradise Lust

Pan Am Park Revitalizing a metropolitan park for the olympics of the Americas.

Hotelito Desconocido The Unknown hotel – ‘Somewhere in the Mexican Pacific coastline...’

The Occidental Garden Porfirio Díaz in his salon d’ été.

East Coast

Amexican Dream For in Mexico the sun also rises.

OLIVA Ethnobotanic Garden and Research Center.

Happy Bull City [The strip] is our campus.

Credits and acknowledgements

ON GUADALAJARA

Cities are complex and fascinating phenomenons. Inhabiting one, half-enabled with our limited spatial perception, we can only apprehend just a few aspects of its nature simultaneously, leaving its full personality elusive, hard to grasp – like a well-made fiction character. In the play put by our world’s cities, Guadalajara features as a supporting actor, rather lost in the scene. There’s a party where everycity is dancing and having fun, one’s hitting on a southern italian beauty, one’s preaching about its good deeds, Mexico City is telling a dirty joke and everycity’s laughing. Guadalajara sits alone on the couch looking out through the window. The Pacific ocean is dimly lit by the moon. She’s tired because she worked so hard during the day. She reproaches herself being such a wannabe, always betrayed by her own mediocrity; failing at being Paris, failing at being America. Failing at being Good. GUADALAJARA CHARACTERS portrays her plural personality, the people who produce it, and the pictographs which pronounce it.

EL ECO

Invitation-based competition Guadalajara/Mexico City, MX; 2006 Project Leaders: Team: Duration: My contribution:

Juan Ignacio Castiello, Ricardo Agraz, Antonio Riggen 8 people 6 weeks Model-making

The German-born Mexican-naturalized Mathias Goeritz, author of El Eco museum, came to Mexico in 1948 invited by Ignacio Diaz Morales when he founded Guadalajara’s school of Architecture, along with a flock of european architects, artists and engineers that would decidedly influence the cultural climate which produced the only recognizable architecturerelated movement of the city; Luis Barragán, with whom Goeritz co-authored several projects, being the most acclaimed participant of this scene. Not long after, disdainful of the still small provincial town, both Goeritz and Barragán moved to Mexico City. Built in 1952, El Eco was Goeritz’s manifesto for an ‘emotional architecture’. Oppositional to positivist modernism –and its author being more of a sculptor than an architect– the building’s language reached towards subjective expressiveness rather than towards objective order. The perspective of its entrance hallway is tightly stretched through the slight non-parallelity of its accompanying walls, the illusively parallel striae of its wooden deck and the proportional relation between its planes. El Eco was progressively abandoned throughout the rest of the century, and in 2004 it underwent renovations by architect/editor Victor Jiménez. In 2005 ten groups of architects were called to a competition to design an annex to the museum. We were the only team from Guadalajara – Juan Ignacio Castiello being Diaz Morales’ main disciple.

EL ECO

Our project’s main concern was how to connect the museum to its annex. Consisting of a small auditorium, gift-shop (surprise), administration and storage areas, the annex had to be a continuation of the museum’s circuit. The problem was solved making a subtle incision in the courtyard’s wall: a revolving door that when closed is barely noticeable and when open guarantees the circular continuity between both parts. The annex asserts itself by contrast to the museum: an ethereal container of activities that floats next to the tectonics of El Eco. Mexico City-based architect Fernando Romero –former OMA collaborator and telecom tycoon Carlos Slim’s son-in-law– won the competition. He would later build Soumaya museum, which exhibits his father-in-law’s art collection free of charge.

EL ECO

THE ORIENT EXPRESS

Design studio project 4th year, 2nd Semester Guadalajara,MX; 2006 Instructors: Class: Team: Duration: Mark Obtained: My Contribution:

Juan Palomar and Luis Márquez 17 people 3 people Semester-long 9/10 Individually: editorial design guidelines for the project documents for the whole class; within my team, designed a metro station and the ‘flexible-growth territorial system’. Collectively: with Juan Palomar, the instructor, produced the introductory and masterplan documents of the project; with my team, designed the general development strategies for the yellow division of the general intervention area.

THE ORIENT EXPRESS

This exercise in urban design implies a territorial strategy derived from the extension of one of the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s metro lines to its eastern limit. With the implementation of this infrastructure several objectives are proposed: the establishment of its properly equipped right-of-way as the Axis of the Orient; the careful redevelopment of the affected areas next to it; the consideration of historically relevant neighbouring settlements; the integration of large adjacent parks and hydrologic networks; the creation of a bounding linear park to the northeast, keeping the sprawl off the HuentitĂĄn ravine and providing a continuous viewpoint to its depths.

Solidarity Park: the dynamic gate to the forsaken east.

The area of study was divided in six parts; the class was formed in teams accordingly. Within my team’s area of study, a metro station connects both sides of the Axis molding lengthily the plain terrain. To its south, a flexible system of land appropriation enacts within the intersection of two coordinate grids: a moiré. A semi-public orchard extends throughout the site in longitudinal bars, enhancing the relationship between the dwellers and the land. Furthermore, as the next page’s sketch sections show, the manipulation of soil may give direct access to the ground level to more than one level of the building.

THE ORIENT EXPRESS

PIG

Unsolicited research. Guadalajara, MX; 2009 This is an individually produced reedition and reinterpretation on my Bachelorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s thesis project, once developed in collaboration with Rigo Reyes. Guadalajara Industrial Park (or PIG, for its acronym in spanish â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Parque Industrial Guadalajara) is an urban design exercise dealing, in general, with the exploitation of the latent value of industrial areas fallen into decadence. It finds its conceptual framing in the contemporary post-industrial condition in mexican society, in the rise of digital culture and the productive activities related to it, and in the approach to a wiser employment of spatial, material and energetic resources. Specifically, in each chapter or case, PIG relies in different interpretations of the value of industrial architecture, industrial culture, or the social conditions enhanced by the industrial.

During the last years of the nineteenth century, the french-loving regime of Porfirio Díaz brought to Mexico two cultural phenomenons whose ambiguous relationship remains relevant: positivism and romanticism – although they seem perfectly opposed, certain perspectives confound their obsessions and purposes. With its thirst for ‘Order and Progress’, Diaz’s regime brought rail transportation in 1888 – meanwhile in Paris, Eiffel tower was being erected. Electricity, the telephone and the automobile closely followed the way of the rail. Among with these, it also brought the religious ecstasy of the neo-gothic Expiatorio temple (designed by Adamo Boari, italian architect imported by Diaz) and its sharpened spires, certain fancy for neoclassic sculpture, and the aesthetic mood that pervades the Americana borough (formerly know as the Porfirio Diaz borough). This painting by Jose Ma. Velasco portrays the spirit of the time: progress marches on through the wild, and the furthermost of the mountains merge with the clouds.

Since rail transportation was privatized during the last decade of the twentieth century, with a few touristic exceptions –one of which is a line that goes from Guadalajara to Tequila– mexican trains carry only goods. Following the privatization, the Mexican Train Museum was built in a park a couple of blocks away from Zona Industrial –Guadalajara’s biggest industrial area– to dignify its past. The museum was composed of a locomotive and a couple of passenger coaches with their interiors preserved as in the good-old-days. Not long after its opening ceremony, in 1999, the museum perished in a fire. What’s left of it remains, profaned, in the park. If the essence of romanticism is the celebration of man’s individuality and its autonomy from any system outside of himself, what is the relationship between the rise of the private over the public and romanticism? William Blake vs. Carlos Slim.

Even though FERROMEX (the privatized rail corporation) is considered a reasonably successful enterprise, Guadalajara’s large industrial areas served by it display a state of utter decadence. Simultaneously to the consolidation of the nostalgic character of the inner city’s landscape (the landscape of what was and isn’t anymore), more and more ‘industrial parks’ –which seldom use the rail infrastructure– populate the outer city. More recently, based on the economic activities developed in these industrial parks, Guadalajara gained the moniker of ‘the Mexican Silicon Valley’. Unlike California’s, no creative work is ever developed here – it is but a merely manufactural enterprise. Ever since the privatization, a regional/urban plan, intended to deviate the railroad around the city, has been periodically revisited by the local urbanists. Its implementation would rid the city of the unnecessary and annoying vicinity of the freight train and its industries. Could the urban renovation following the Deviation Plan rid the city of its leaning towards transnational servility?

PIG

As the inner cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s industries are relocated, and the railâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s right-of-way is freed, passenger transportation is regained both in urban and regional scales; the red line extends the actual metro system (blue and orange lines), and multimodal urbanregional nodes (red dots) are strategically located.

Zooming in, urban design resources are acknowledged: the railroads, their right-of-way and service areas, industries and warehouses, and the nearby large urban parks.

Based on these resources, spatial limits are established for the intervention and the area is divided in six PIECES for particual treatment.

PIG

The depth of each study depended basically on the dimensions of each piece. Some of the studied elements were: the land use; connectivity and mobility means; the adequate creation, conservation and destruction of urban matter; the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s legibility; and the constant attention to public space. Due to the briefness this sort of document demands, the full comprehensiveness of the project was reduced to the exposition of the results of only three pieces: C, D and F.

C is the clearest example of the marginalizing effect of the railroad’s urban incision; the poor live on one side, the well-off live on the other. In its interior, two wide strips run parallel to the rails: one consists of an enclosed flat surface where idle boxcars dwell among brand new automobiles waiting to be driven; the other strip consists of an irregular series of factories and warehouses. One of the two most notable factories is aligned with the axis of Chapultepec Av. –almost perpendicular to the strip axis–; the factory’s furnace is its visual punchline.

PIG

0.25

0.5

2.75km

The flat surface of the first strip is kept as a sequence of parks interrupted by an atrium for the main industrial buildings, which are kept as well and reprogrammed as a cultural and research complex concerned with the history of the industrial. New buildings are scattered through the second strip along with the preserved warehouses and foundries and silos and mills. Enclosing walls are removed and both parts of the city are connected through street-wide walkways. The railroad is buried underground and a metro line rolls through it.

PIG

The road that crosses this piece, Calzada Independencia –formerly know as, again, Calzada Porfirio Diaz– was built around 1910 OVER the river next to which the city was first established. This is the origin. Seen from north to south, as in the images displayed below, one can notice the following: an obelisk that celebrates Benito Juarez – the many times blessed heretic who divided State from Church in Mexico; surrounding the obelisk and under the shade of flowery trees, a square where, each Sunday, punks, darks, drunken bums and other misfits gather in urban ritual; beyond it, the former city’s train station – now central offices of Ferromex; further beyond, a barely noticeable silo from Zona Industrial; and, at last, the slums of Del Cuatro hill.

PIG

0.25

0.5

2.5km

Again, enclosing wall are removed and walkways are laid in the additive intersection of visual axes from both sides; the negative space of these is built; mixed uses inhabit. Avenues are heavily reconfigured in plan and section. Juarez square is extended southwards; at a certain point, the floor level of the square begins to rise, diagonally, turning into a viewpoint for the southern cityscape; Del Cuatro hillâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s T.V. signal towers crown the view. Agua Azul, the large park, is also extended southwards; underneath the naĂŻve pastoral hills, its urban strata houses mixed use.

Southern Guadalajaraâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s landscape as seen from the viewpoint.

PIG

In 1957, just before Guadalajara’s population reached its first million, and even before Mario Pani built the NONALCO-TLATELOLCO housing development in Mexico City, the first corbusian megablocks in Mexico were built in Guadalajara’s deep south.The ZONA INDUSTRIAL is a neatly ordered catalog of Industrial Architecture, or, as the Becher’s wanted, an ordered catalog of Calvinist Cathedrals. How do these industrial megablocks relate to the ones built by Pani in Tlatelolco, the former that sprang from ‘pure economic thinking’ and the latter that supposedly sprang from idealistic humanism? What was it that made Pani’s megablocks possible? And, ultimately, 1968.

Zona Industrial, Guadalajara

Nonalco-Tlatelolco, Mexico City

In its interior, like in Michel Gondry’s video for The Chemical Brothers’ Star Guitar, landscape elements are rhythmically related: the curtain gates are like a noisy bass-line, setting the beat; the ups and downs of the rooftops set a repetitive melodic contour, bewitching like a mantra; the sharp verticality of the electricity posts signal the crashing of cymbals. Here and there a few buildings rise in calvinistic ecstasy over the monotonous cadence of the warehouse landscape.

PIG

0.15

0.5

3km

Operative anachronism: The structural grid of a typical warehouse is sparse enough to share load-transmission area with a second structural system, enabling the superimposition of two cities. A second urban ground hovers above the ground level. Penetrating through the ceilings of the existing warehouses, the main structural system is laid on a 150m by 150m grid; each member houses vertical circulation and infrastructural networks. A secondary structural system enacts when needed; diagonal circulations are scattered through the site, linking both cities in a continuous flow. Transportation: on the ground level high-traffic roads (yellow in the axonometric) cross the site; local mobility is divided in two independent 300m by 300m grids: one for motor transportation (orange) and one for non-motor transportation (yes, green). A bar-building is laid over the main structural system; a continuous mixed use bar-building; when the situation demands so â&#x20AC;&#x201C;the crossing of high-traffic roads, the presence of a tall and remarkable industrial building, a parkâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;, whole elements of the bar-building are subtracted, thus the shape of its plan. Like an artificial horizon, or like a two-sided perforated looking-glass, the second urban ground element is a slim building in itself.

ing

ild

bu ar-

din

uil

-b on

riz

r ctu

str

in ma

ing

ild

u db

rve

e pr

bil

e yn

PIG

After earning my degree I went on a study trip for six months: flew to London, then ferried to the Netherlands and trained through France and Spain; then I flew back to the US.

Starting from New York I alternately hitchhiked and bused southwards across the Appalachia and the Mississippi, through the Great Plains, the Bravo river and back to Mexico.

PAN AM PARK

Competition; 2nd place Guadalajara/Mexico City, MX; 2009 Project Leaders: Team: Duration: My contribution:

Tatiana Bilbao (architecture), Carlos RodrĂguez Bernal (landscape), Luis MĂĄrquez (urbanism) 12 people 8 weeks Production of most landscape-related diagrams, plans, and imagery presented

PAN AM PARK

In 2011 Guadalajara hosted the Pan-American Games, the local Olympics for the Americas. Since the city won the commission, a dozen stadiums, public transportation networks, revitalizing housing developments and leisure areas were designed; only some of these were actually built. The project that would have had the politicians rename the Metropolitan Park as the Pan-American Park wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t.

Metropolitan Park: the forsaken garden of the wealthy west.

The Metropolitan Park, not long ago mere badlands, was cumbersomely established as such during the 90’s, and has undergone a sequence of unfortunate interventions ever since – mostly due to budgetary deficit. The park always ends up being larger than the available resources. The first attempt to humanize the wild & dry comprised entrance motifs and snacks, benches and restrooms scattered through the whole area. Designed by the elseways fine Fernando González Gortázar, the project got short of enhancing the whole park.

The second attempt was to turn it into a public golf course, but only the trees that would have shaped the fairways made it. As of today, the park’s hydraulic system is only able to irrigate one of the nine projected fairways.

PAN AM PARK

Even though a large part of the terrain was shaped to function as a basin, it is currently underutilized as a tag paintball arena â&#x20AC;&#x201C; eloquently themed as a middle-eastern desert war zone.

We didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t win the competition, but neither did the winning project nor the city. In the end, this water sports arena was built on the park. It says duck.

Our project’s main concern was to make the park gather, contain and irrigate its naturally acquired water. After all the local hydraulic systems were acknowledged, we realized there was only enough water to irrigate 25% of the land throughout the whole year. Then, the park was divided in areas which would receive different amounts of water each – producing simultaneous Spring and Fall-like environments. The entry motifs are altered, reproduced and scattered as viewpoints. The basin –which holds most of the park’s water resources– is established as the central element of the park; there’s a wharf and a promenade. Minor basins intersect the natural water run-offs in a playful manner. Activity-generators spread throughout the park.

PAN AM PARK

HOTELITO DESCONOCIDO

Commission Costalegre, Jalisco, MX; 2009-2010 Project Leader: Carlos Rodríguez Bernal, Laura Sánchez Penichet Team: 12 people My contribution: Production of concept design imagery (six weeks stage), on-site coordination of landscape project execution (six months stage)

Puerto Vallarta

PACIFIC

OCEAN

BANDERAS

SOMEWHERE

BAY

HOTELITO DESCONOCIDO

Through the 70’s and 80’s, Italian designer Marcelo Muzzili built a multimillion-dollar fashion brand known as ‘El Charro’, inspired in the westernMexican popular character known for his manners and courage – a mix between a Spanish ‘caballero’ and a Western film cowboy. In the early 90’s he sold it and sailed in a two-year world-expedition, looking for a place where to build an Eco-Luxury resort designed ‘in harmony with its surroundings’. He found that place in Jalisco, where he once had found his fashion brand’s name, and the resort opened in ‘97. Hotelito Desconocido had a great run for ten years and, all of a sudden, he, again, sold it. The buyer was a Mexican entrepreneur, once a regular at Muzzili’s hotel. His commission demanded both architectural and landscape interventions; he also demanded to keep the foreign ‘Mexican Curious’ themed building language.

‘Somewhere in the Mexican Pacific coastline...’

Down in Mexicali There’s a crazy little place that I know Where the drinks are hotter than the chili sauce And the boss is a cat named Joe He wears a red bandana, plays a cool piana In a honky tonk, down in Mexico He wears a purple sash, and a black moustache In honky tonk, down in Mexico Well, the first time that I saw him He was sittin on a piano stool I said “Tell me man, when does the fun begin?” He just winked his eye and said “Man, be cool.” He wears a red bandana, plays a cool piana In a honky tonk, down in Mexico He wears a purple sash and a black moustache In a honky tonk, down in Mexico In Mexico... All of a sudden in walks a chick In Mexico... Joe starts playin’ on a latin kick In Mexico... Around her waist she wore three fishnets In Mexico... She started dancin’ with the castanets In Mexico... I didn’t know just what to expect In Mexico... She threw her arms around my neck In Mexico... We started dancin’ all around the floor In Mexico... Until she did a dance I never saw before So if you’re south of the border I mean down in Mexico And you wanna get straight Man, don’t hesitate Just look up a cat named Joe

Down in Mexico The Coasters, 1956

HOTELITO DESCONOCIDO

Being such a low-tech project, a lot of decisions had to

built, so two members of the studio were sent there; on escape

. We were lodged in a building which

nearest village; and we went to the site from sunrise tion involved mainly earthmoving

, the tracin

and planting and transplanting a wide range of species tors were periodically held on-site

HOTELITO DESCONOCIDO

o be made on-site just as things were being traced and

ne handled architecture

, one handled land-

h would be the new hotelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s laundry

to sunset

, in the

. The landscape interven-

ng of walking paths and vegetation areas

. Meetings involving all parts and contrac-

THE OCCIDENTAL GARDEN

Commission, produced individually. Chapala, MX; 2010 The Occidental Garden is a small open space for throwing parties for two hundred guests. It is located next to Mexicoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s biggest lake, Chapala. The commission demanded minor infrastructural implementations for the events and a landscape/gardening intervention. With curiosities that first arose during the Hotelito stage, this work was taken as a pretext to study the historical/aesthetic foundations of occidental Mexico, and how the founding of some of its cities stem from the random conjunction of power and leisure.

In the sixties, Hollywood founded the seaside city of Puerto Vallarta when John Huston shot THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA ‘somewhere in the mexican coast by the Pacific Ocean’. The plot –first written as a short story, then adapted for the stage, and finally for the screen, all by Tennessee Williams– depicts the adventures Rev. Lawrence Shannon experiences as a touristic guide in Puerto Vallarta working for a third-class travel agency after being expelled from the Order for characterizing the Occidental image of God as a ‘senile delinquent’ in one of his sermons. While shooting the film, Richard Burton (the actor playing Shannon) developed an affair with Elizabeth Taylor, and married her in the seaside town. The media followed, and Puerto Vallarta was born. In 1970, mexican and american presidents Gustavo Diaz Ordaz and Richard Nixon hosted the opening of Puerto Vallarta’s international airport. Since then, every spring break, international youngsters revisit Rev. Shannon’s sexual/spiritual investigations by the cliff-like hotels that rise facing the Pacific ocean.

Analogously, in the first decade of the twentieth century, before the Vallarta phenomenon, Porfirio Diaz founded the lakeside town of Chapala when he chose as his SALON D’ÉTÉ a modest fishermen’s village in the mexican occident. Like the spring-breakers, Don Porfirio visited the state of Jalisco yearly, on easter. In 1910 the Mexican Revolution broke out and Diaz exiled himself in Paris, where he would later die and be buried; like Oscar Wilde did. While the revolution shed blood throughout the rest of the country, rich Guadalajara families founded the CHAPALA YACHT CLUB and built a road from the city to the lakeside town. In words of Martín Casillas de Alba, one of Chapala’s promotors, “it was a place to rest and to have fun, to live and to explore the shady paths of the passions”. In 1923, during his ‘savage pilgrimage’, D.H. Lawrence spent some time in Chapala and wrote there one of his most divisive novels, THE PLUMED SERPENT, a tale about power and race, sex and blood.

THE OCCIDENTAL GARDEN

The Muse, disgusted at an age and clime Barren of every glorious theme, In distant lands now waits a better time Producing subjects worthy fame; In happy climes, where from the genial sun And virgin earth such scenes ensue, The force of art by nature seems outdone, And fancied beauties by the true: In happy climes, the feat of innocence, Where nature guides, and virtue rules; Where men shall not impose for truth and sense The pedantry of courts and schools. There shall be sung another golden age, The rise of empire and arts, The good and great inspiring epic rage, The wisest heads and noblest hearts. Not such as Europe breeds in her decay; Such as she bred when fresh and young, When heavenly flame did animate her clay, By future poets shall be sung. Westward the course of empire takes its way: The four first acts already past, A fifth shall close the drama with the day: Timeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s noblest offspring is the last.

On the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America George Berkeley, 1726

THE OCCIDENTAL GARDEN

THE OCCIDENTAL GARDEN The Occidental Garden is a small open space for throwing parties for 200 guests; it is located between a mountain range and Mexico’s biggest lake, Chapala; it’s right next to it. The commission demanded minor infrastructural implementations for the events –services for the guests, an area to install a temporary kitchen, a handrail by the site’s open-ended boundary overlooking the lake– and a landscape/gardening intervention, which had to meet only two conditions: the view from the terrace to the lake should remain unobstructed, and enough space to install a tent –right by the lake– had to be left clear. Then the vegetation was disposed according to two scales: the public, spread through the site’s bounding limits, and the private, a new, intimate space at the center of the garden delimited by flowery bushes.

THE OCCIDENTAL GARDEN

In 2011 my parents went to the the East Coast for their first time; they went to Washington, Philadelphia, NY, Boston, up to MontrĂŠal, to Toronto through the Trans-Cananda high

When we were discussing the Canadian locations they

way, and down to Chicago. They asked me to give them pointers about where to go and what to see, so –as they can’t handle smartphones– I made this pocket travel guide for them.

said “no, no, no, just tell us where the forests are”.

AMEXICAN DREAM

Research & Arts competition entry; produced individually. Guadalajara, MX; 2011

AMEXICAN DREAM

explores the unique westernmost quality of the Mexican

state of Jalisco with special emphasis in the city of Guadalajara, and performs certain comparison to California and Los Angeles. It is framed as a sort of cartesian dual study, for, working longitudinally, in the context of the whole ‘width’ of the world, it disregards actual geopolitical borders favoring a more relevant geographical condition whose effect’s pervasiveness spreads transnationally throughout the Pacific coastline of the Americas; and, in this latitudinal context, it deals with the relationship between Anglo and Latin culture in America, clearly focalized in the vicinity of the U.S.A. and Mexico. Its main aim is to produce research-fed landscape-related imagery exploring this westernmost condition.

Some topics from which it draws its subject matter are the follow-

ing: George Berkeley’s poem on America –‘Westward the course of empire takes its way’–; the hispanic-muslim myth about seven cities of gold (or Cíbola and Quivira) built way out west beyond the Atlantic ocean; California’s gold rush; the birth of Hollywood, ‘Western’ films and its appropriation by Italian and Mexican cinema; the aforementioned case of Puerto Vallarta and THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA; light and darkness in the work of David Lynch. Funds weren’t granted though.

AMEXICAN DREAM

close enough

OLIVA

Architecture competition entry; produced individually. Guadalajara, MX; 2011 The Ethnobotanic Garden and Research Center, OLIVA, was designed as an approach to health and life opposite to Guadalajara’s Civil Hospital’s, in front of which it lays. It is clear to OLIVA’s agenda that the occidental hegemonic approach to pharmacology –represented here by the Hospital– is in the core of the narcotics situation currently seizing Mexico in particular and the Americas in general.

Current situation

In the late eighteenth century, during the last days of the spanish inquisition and colonial Mexico, after a building process that lasted more than fifty years, the spanish bishop Fray Antonio Alcalde (key figure of Guadalajara’s urban development) founded the city’s Civil Hospital. Eloquently –and ignorant of Jeremy Bentham’s work– it was built as a panopticon; a panopticon for well-being.

OLIVA, named after the notable mexican

pharmacologist Leonardo Oliva, is a place for ethnobotanic experimentation; designed as a heavilyprogrammed atrium or as a stripped-down building, it houses a wide range of activities: recreational, commercial, educational, academic, cultural, healing.

An atrium, urban weaving and three patios

There’s an herbarium where plants used by both the region’s ethnic and urban groups are kept and studied; the herbarium’s catalog is to be displayed on the exhibition modules; the pharmacological effects of the plants are discussed in the workshops, open to the general public; chefs and botany and pharmacology scholars collaboratively prepare dishes, beverages and others in the SÉANCE/café, where the citizens may submit themselves for the study of the recipes’ reactions; the most successful ingredients, dishes and combinations produced in the café are available for purchase at the shop; there’s an auditorium for public lectures on the subjects being addressed by the residing scholars; all knowledge produced in the research center is subject to be applied in the hospital. Moiré

OLIVA

Public Area

0.00m

100

OLIVA

300m

Scientific Area +7.00m

11 12 13 14 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Exhibition Workshop Séance Café Shop Cloakroom Auditorium Bus stop Restrooms Down to Parking Up to Scientific Area

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Storage Employees room Employees restrooms Herbarium Media room Germplasm bank Classify, Dry & Freeze Multiple purpose room Library Administration Meeting room Curator’s office Researcher’s cubicle Down to Public Area

OLIVA

a fic nti

sci

c bli

OLIVA

HAPPY BULL CITY

Urban planning competition entry; produced individually. Admission requirement for the Erasmus Mundus transeuropean ‘reCity’ master program, in which I was accepted ranking 12th among more than 800 participants. Gioia Tauro, Italy; 2012 Happy Bull City responds to the contemporary post-industrial condition in which the production of knowledge is more valuable than the production of goods. In order to trigger urban life in the Gioia Tauro plain it aims to become an international capital of knowledge production heavily based in academic activity. With the endorsement of the pertinent organizations, voluntary-based work, and horizontal collaboration with worldwide institutions, it finds itself in the pursuit of a shift of nature of the world’s energetic resources employment. For its urbanization, HBC exploits the elements that define the plain’s current economic landscape as its architectural language: the container port and agriculture. 89

A new perspective: the world as city / AMO

The following is an ambitious city-scale proposal that inserts itself in a context of ideas of even wider magnitude – works of continental and global scale; it corresponds to and extends the reach of these projects, which were developed between governments, NGO’s and private practices, and are concerned mainly with the employment of energetic resources. This proposal also aims to, taking advantage of the relationships its undertaking would imply, deal in transnational collaboration with local issues other than the energetic. In the global scale, it reacts partly to ‘The Energy Report’ –produced by WWF, Ecofys and OMA/AMO–, dealing with switching 100% to renewable energy by 2050, and partly to Jeremy Rifkin’s ‘Third Industrial Revolution’ plan, which also deals with renewable energy and the possibility of sharing it in a manner analog to internet’s ‘peer to peer’ file-sharing through a worldwide energy grid. In the european scale, it reacts to the ‘Roadmap 2050’ –developed by the European Commission and, again, the OMA/AMO tandem–, an Europe-scale plan to reduce 80% of greenhouse gas emissions by said date; it also proposes a sharing power grid, subway-style. Within said context, this intervention sets its effective study margin on the Mediterranean scale, for it means integrational possibilities for the Mediterranean cultures in particular, and northern and southern cultures in general; therefore, innovative migration policies and cultural inclusiveness are key. Informed by the global nature of the harbour, Happy Bull City takes migration and transnational collaboration as a basic element of its development program. In the attempt to weave a worldwide power grid the intervention in Gioia Tauro is a valuable opportunity to settle a connection point with the Maghreb in the Mezzogiorno and to establish an Italian capital of solar energy harvesting – the most profitable power source under its geographic conditions.

The godfather / abandonware@abandonia

Calabria as world / Illustriation based on NASA imagery

Finally, with arithmetics on our side, we should note that the only way to successfully regenerate urban life in this exercise is to make Happy Bull City’s ambitions greater than Gioia Tauro plain’s vast challenges.

THEORY OF RECIPROCAL INFLUENCE In Borges’ INTRODUCTION TO NORTH AMERICAN LITERATURE, he recalls Valery Larbaud’s observation on how United States’ –essentially a nation of immigrants– literature has influenced back in the whole world; so that, for example, “Edgar Allan Poe begot Baudelaire, who begot 1 the symbolists, who begot Valéry” , and so on. Of course, this is also evident in every sphere outside literature, and urban culture is no exception. The Italian diaspora on the USA –which sent immigrants mainly from the Mezzogiorno and deppressed northern regions– has had a notable effect in American culture, which, at its greatest dimensions, influenced the creation of the city of Las Vegas. In certain ways, added to the main purpose of urban regeneration, this proposal is exercised as a study and conscious reflection of this kind of influence and its nature in this particular case. Within this context, it is worth noticing that through its influence in the USA, Italian mafia has had an effect both of repulsion and enchantment. Why can’t the world help but love Puzo-Coppola’s Vito Corleone? And yet: the bleakness in every detail and implication of the Getty kidnap; so close to Gioia Tauro port’s history2. A first step in this proposal’s approach to the ‘social security’ situation of Calabria should be the overcoming of the vain villain vs. victim dichotomy. According to John Dickie, English scholar in Italian studies, the ‘ndrangheta, the most powerful mafia of the region, is a direct product of the prison system and late product of the failure of the Bourbon state3. Indeed, crime is symptomatic to social exclusion; it is intertwined with the whole of society and can’t be eradicated from, but slowly assimilated into the system. Inclusive, non-reprehensive policies are inherent to true urban development.

Pankaj

Container ship traffic in the Mediterranenan / uxblog

HAPPY BULL CITY VECTORSCAPE VS. PIXELSCAPE There are two opposite approaches to the lecture of space that define Gioia Tauro’s landscape. One is concerned with lines and movement: the water streams that tread the land, fertilizing soil and procuring crops; the container ships that connect its harbour to other cities elsewhere; the wake these ships drag through the sea; digital data transmissions, bank transactions and cell-phone calls; the wind. The other is concerned with area and permanence: land property divisions; the shape of the container and its patterned array; ‘ndrangheta’s bunker-architecture. Within this new dichotomy, HBC proposes the cityscape that could be produced under a new energetic and politcal power regime.. A city produced in a decentralized power system. Its built elements respond to the scale of the power acquirable by its individual citizens; its built environment responds to their ability to collaborate. Tweening harbour and agriculture –the plain’s main economic activities– a gradient range of possibilities blossom: farm, public orchard, equipped park; container-built housing units, massive transportable pots, transportable pool, photovoltaic panel mainframe, etc. Regarding container architecture: it’s been said –it doesn’t really matter by whom– that the only constant to commonplaces is that they hold a tiny grain of truth, which is what brings them up over and over until it wears off. It is clear that the architectural employment of containers has become commonplace. Their truth lies in the container’s flexibility; nevertheless, it’s the bland abuse of its raw industrial aesthetics what washes out its grace. If container architecture is to shine it must overcome this first inevitable stage and focus on its flexibility. Container Architecture’s importance doesn’t lie in the mere employment of industrial debris, but in how containers are transformed.

PORT 1

DIGITAL? FOR REAL? Second to the late strategy of restoring abandoned bunkers to shelter the servers of delicate content websites such as The Pirate Bay or WikiLeaks, as the most notable cases, the generic container seaport is the place that best represents the junction between the digital and the ‘real’ space. Within the metallic sheet walls of the thousands of indifferently neighboring containers lie a silent city of products with untraceable origins and destinations managed online. The Internet has provided what might be the best solution yet to the world’s energy crisis –peer to peer power sharing: an internet of energy–, what can it do for the Mezzogiorno’s social division? Back to Rifkin: as an economic overcoming of the decadence of both the market and the public sector, he observes and proposes “the growth of a third sector –voluntary and community-based organizations– that will create new jobs with government support.”4 Now, webbased communities have indeed met unprecedented multicultural understanding. From 9gag to Couchsurfing to the reCity EMMC, the bright side of the Internet suggests the will to overcome atavistic xenophobic instincts and the exclusion-based kind of policies that have historically produced crime. If both of these phenomenons intersected, how long could they go?

NASA

collage over NASA imagery

How to organically integrate such small –almost rural– sparsely scattered settlements with a world-scale harbour – a device intrinsically indifferent to the cultural geography in which it is inscribed? How to create a port where the scalar distance between the city and its harbour is so overwhelming that its mere coexistence means interference?

“Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more 5 powerful than he could ever be.” To correspond with the multicultural ambitions of the proposal, the new city is baptized in a rather blunt english translation of Gioia Tauro; and, halfway between a bull with an utterly ridiculous smile and a circle approaching its completion (a proposal of integration), the city’s logo –a post-coatof-arms– speaks a language even more ubiquitous than english. The embracing of the bull’s figure and the suggestion of its gesture holds an opposition to the bull and bear dilemma of paradigmatic market economy – a proposal to overcome it?

11. Borges, Jorge Luis. Introducción a la literatura norteamericana. Alianza Editorial. 1967. 2. “The ransom [of John Paul Getty III] was used to buy the trucks needed to establish a transport monopoly in the construction of the Gioia Tauro port.” Arlacchi, Pino. Mafia Business. Schocken Books. 1986. 3. http://youtu.be/CR1Gu_7Po38 – 30:15 and 32:10 4. Rifkin, Jeremy. The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era. Putnam Publishing Group. 1995 5. McLuhan, Marshall. MacLean’s Magazine. 1971. 6. http://archinect.com/features/article/35533857/contours-newenergy-efficient-technologies-part-ii

NASA

BULLY

The core of Las Vegas’ strip,...

Venturi Scott Brown

Gioia Tauro’s harbour, being incompatible with the rest of the urban land in terms of activity, and having such prominent position in Calabria’s geography – like the stage of a massive amphitheater with an auditorium that stretches through a thirty kilometer radius, and its cranes being a band, it’s the point to which the surrounding mountains surrender their streams–, it blends in as a passive landscape feature – like a distant mountain over the skyline, or like the setting sun. Seen from atop the sedentarized containers of Happy Bull City, the harbour is there, but intangible. Its array of multi-colored boxes is everyday unique; the design of each day’s composition is unknowingly decided in cities ignorant of its existence. In this way, the container harbour contains the rest of the world.

When looking closely at recently created cities it becomes evident they sprang in the intersection of at least two of the following elements: a clear purpose or vocation –either deliberate or spontaneous–, a shift in the logics of power –political and/or energetic–, and urban architectural novelty.

PORT 2

Purpose Population Area Growth rate

Entertainment 1,950,000 (2010) 2

351.7 km

Regular

Birth

1931

Seed

Nevada legalized gambling

Parenthood Architecture Urbanism

National Crime Organization Casino-Hotel The Strip

HAPPY BULL CITY

and Dubai’s 2015 seafront plan compared to...

porteño

sillybugger

Matthew D. Leistikow

N/A

NASA

the project for Auroville,...

NASA

the designed part of Brasilia,...

Political/Administrative 2,500,000 (2010) 2

300 km (estimate)

1 km

Spiritual

Financial and Entertainment

2,300 (2007)

3,400,000 (metropolitan, 2010)

(currently at 10% development phase)

1,500 km

Regular

Low

Madman

1960

1968

Early 1970’s

+ Governmental + NGO collaboration

Oil discovery and Gold smuggling

Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer

Founded by Mirra Alfassa, a.k.a. “Mother”

Oil, War and Free Trade

Sensuous-lined International Style

Citizen-based design and construction

Unprecedented massiveness

Total-design urbanization

Unprecedented massiveness

Brazil’s industrial independence

UNESCO

CPVM The Continuous Photovoltaic Monument is a six kilometer long solar energy farm which also functions as the spinal infrastructural element for the seafront activities and as connector of the towns of Gioia Tauro and San Ferdinando. Assembled with recycled structural frames of containers, the photovoltaic panels are installed on its top – storing sun rays and, at the same time, providing shelter to whom walks underneath. CPVM’s versatility can be exploited by modifying or adding to the horizontally monumental structure. Aesthetically, it sets itself where the discourse of ‘68 and ‘73 meet – between the utopianminded revolts and the energetic crisis, probably the birth of our era. Italian avant-gardists Superstudio’s Total Urbanization ‘Continuous Monument’ model turns into a solar energy farm. A critique of pretentious utopianism? A critique of preachy ecomoralism? Neither? Both?

I 0 km

0.5

II 1

III

IV 5

HAPPY BULL CITY THE STRIP... “[The Strip] is our campus”. -Alteration of reCity’s motto. Like Vegas’, HBC’s Strip –built complementarily to the current railway’s axis– holds the essence to its urban life in the exchange between the local and the foreign. Visiting scholars, independent researchers and others of the kind come for the Mediterranean weather and to gamble on their curiosity. The residents profit from this exchange and from the work developed by themselves in the Strip, which, of course, includes every human activity besides the academic. Perpendicular to the Strip, a series of crane-accessible axes run southeastward; each corridor is concerned with the research of a particular discipline – like in an array of test-tubes, displaying its content to the Strip. Discoveries and inventions made in each corridor are prone to be applied in the whole development and elsewhere. Diagonal avenues embody the long-desired concept of the multidisciplinary.

THE CRANE...

Analogously to how in the theocentric city the height of any civic building must be inferior to the cathedral, or how in the anthropocentric city the skyline resembles a chaotic bar chart comparing the capital power of the private entrepreneurs, Happy Bull City buildings are subject to the capabilities of the crane, its flag – the city is her product, like a spider and its cobweb. Capitalism, the most powerful urban-shaping ideology of late, created two orders which correspond to the distance between the subject case and the financial center. If near: vertical, self-assertive – the skyscraper; if far: horizontal, territorial – the suburb. As a city without a center or, at any rate, with a moving center, HBC reshapes the current paradigmatic urban structure; in conjunction with the flexibility of the container, the crane

enables the possibility of an order beyond those of the capitalist city. Since the late 60’s we’ve been deliriously dreaming of another city, but we just haven’t found the power to build it. Maybe the essential power shift addressed by Happy Bull City can.

AND THE NEW BRICK. A cross section of the strip offers a landscape that simultaneously display different stages of the history of human labor, or the three sectors of economy: the agricultural (primary) –the most direct profit from earthly matter–, the industrial (secondary) –oil and carbon based manufacture and transportation of goods–, and ours, the post-industrial (tertiary) – an economy focused on knowledge and creativity. Goods and consumables are to be mostly produced and consumed locally; knowledge and information are to be produced and shared globally. In a sort of neo-sprawl, past elements are rearranged to configure our interior and exterior landscapes: the currently agricultural land is progressively integrated to an urbanized environment using recycled containers as bricks and other large metallic structures where bricks could be stacked more complexly; inside these, we design other landscapes in our laptops.

Pamphlet, back

Pamphlet, front

Although major urban transformations are dependent upon hardly predictable variables, a schematic development sequence can be suggested. 1. Pamphlet 2012

2. Research Center

2015

Print this document two-sided in an A2 sheet. Fold it as indicated. Distribute it wisely.

This proposal lies in the assumption of the efficiency of photovoltaic panels; situation which is not quite accomplished yet. The CPVM’s energy harvest is what will sustain seafront activity and help build HBC. Therefore, although there’s been recent valuable achievements in the field6, further research is prime. The employment of Le Cisterne as a solar energy research center is the seed to the implementation of the project – it represents the foundational academic inception into the Gioia Tauro area.

3. CPVM

2020

Once academic spirit is established in the community, its offspring can be built. The CPVM consists of two straight, non-parallel lines that run through the seafront, rigging it for the leisurely; one starts in Gioia Tauro, the other in San Ferdinando. In elevation, the distance between the photovoltaic canopy and the sea level is constant. The lines meet at the harbour’s cargo ship entrance; they bridge it rising towards a high point, signaling the entry and making a pedestrian connection between the towns.

HBC’s zoology corridor in an early stage

HAPPY BULL CITY

It responds both to reCity’s requirements and to the global and continental plans it inserts itself in. 4. Happy Bull City

2030

As an urban center to the three towns, Happy Bull City is built with containers using a custom-designed crane that runs through the Strip –that connects Gioia Tauro with Rosarno– and its corridors on electrified rails powered by the CPVM. As mentioned before, its main vocation is academic, it is to be Italy’s capital of solar energy harvesting, and a connection to the Maghreb for the world’s shared power grid. Its key policy is total inclusiveness. Its productive aim is delightful innovation.

5. Let it sprawl/Pedestrian town

2040

HBC grows without urgency, depending on the resources that become available. A multimodal transportation grid supports its growth. No strict regulations upon the land use are to be set but the ones derived from the logics of the plain, the port, and the power plan: offices and commerce - near the port; housing distances itself from it; each built unit provides the energy it consumes. On the three towns, motorized and non-motorized transportation is divided in independent grids.

6. Profit

2050

Once the development has reached certain stability, and the circuital, reciprocal influence between CPVM and HBC –the first provides energy to the new city, the second provides visitors to the seafront– ensures the integration of neighboring elements, it can begin to share with the power grid. With energy turning into the future’s currency, the Happy Bull City can start to live off its solar energy production, and its inhabitants, just as the ones from other cities around the world, may live in idle curiosity ever after.

CREDITS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS All texts written by Eric Omar Camarena Martínez All images produced by E.O.C.M., except: page 7 El Eco Expansion presentation sheets by Ricardo Agraz Arquitectos.

18 ‘El tren’ painting by José María Velasco. 47 Entrance motifs and and service units by Tatiana Bilbao S.C. Minor basins by Jonathan Estrada.

53 Charro! movie poster property of Warner Bros. 61 Painting of Porfirio Díaz found at http://profa-tere.blogspot. com/2011/06/actividad-5-epoca-de-la-revolucion.html; credits unavailable.

80 Drawing of Fray Antonio Alcalde found at: http://www.cirugiahcg.com/pagina/historia; credits unavailable.

86-87 Animal figures painted by Deedee Cheriel. Reproduced under the artist’s permission. Collaged by E.O.C.M.

All photographs taken and edited by E.O.C.M., except: 6-7 El Eco photographs obtained from Juan Ignacio Castiello’s archive; credits unavailable. Bird’s-eye views (on pages 11, 19, 32, 43-45) taken by Carlos Rodríguez Bernal, edited by E.O.C.M. 32 Nonalco-Tlatelolco photo, by Guillermo Zamora, edited by E.O.C.M. 58 Still from MGM’s The Night of The Iguana. Historic photo of Porfirio Diaz, on Enrique Krauze and Fausto Zerón Medina’s, Porfirio. El destierro., México, Clío, p. 39. 72-73 New York and Canada’s forest taken by Raúl Camarena, edited by E.O.C.M. 77 Portrait taken by Minerva Bolaños, edited by E.O.C.M. All sketches drawn by E.O.C.M., except: 6 El Eco plan/diagram drawing by Mathias Goeritz. 14-15 Whole strip collage drawn by the entire class.