Heritage and the Body: Cuenca, EC
Female experiences of space
Reconnecting the underserved city Liniers Highwalk
Urbana Comprehensive Plan
Land Use: Typology & Policies
Neighborhood Analysis
Opioid use determinants in Madison
Retrofitting a dead mall
Country Fair Shopping Center
Site Location
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Term
Spring 2022
Class Architecture and Urban Design
Design Team
Gabriela Abril
Khurtsbileg Erdenetsogt
Nomination
ISoA Graduate Excellence Design
Awards 2022
The building would unlock the urban potential of its site at the Liniers Train Station by reclaiming Rivadavia Avenue, where disconnection between north and south is keenly felt.
The project stitches together these two urban axes by its programmatic distribution. The localized intervention ties into the vision for Buenos Aires as a pedestrian friendly city with lively public spaces such as an auditorium, nursery, retail places, and programming such as a hospital and a courthouse. All of them distributed throughout.
The project seeks to combine a multitude of uses in a single element that symbolizes and stands out in the urban profile. The space surrounding the site would become an elevated urban park. Extending upwards from the train tracks and reaching a highway on the other side, it is a true gateway to the city from the province.
This park and urban corridor houses recreational areas that make the interior of the project accesible at different levels by perforations and open courtyards.
Female experiences of space in Cuenca, Ecuador
Master's Thesis
Advisers
Dr. Magdalena Novoa
Prof. David Isern
Term Spring 2024
Awards
ARCC/King Student Medal for Excellence in Architectural and Environmental Research
Spatial production, such as urban heritage management in most Latin American colonial cities, is defined by power relationships and has perpetuated systemic and historical violence towards women and other groups in the urban space. This research discusses the case of Cuenca, Ecuador, a city historically known as a World Cultural Heritage by UNESCO because of the linkage of its built environment to Spanish and French heritage.
The project examines the bridge Mariano Moreno–a site of dispute between authorities, dominant heritage discourses, and feminist activists claiming women’s right to live safely and thrive in the city and its urban space. By working at the intersection of architecture, urban planning, feminist movements, and historic preservation, it analyzes how planning and preservation have historically underpinned different forms of inequality and gender biases in Cuenca.
The research argues that the heritage conservation approach and site management impact female users’ experience due to a direct link between their bodies and the spatial realm. By drawing on women’s bodily experiences in urban environments such as the riverbanks of the city, this work unveils how these spaces expose them to the risk of physical and sexual violence and, therefore, reinforce gender violence. The stories add nuance to understanding how women live the city and how they have rescued a ceremonial character from urban space by challenging the historical restrictions imposed by its colonial framework.
This study engages feminist theories to excavate the connections between colonialism and urban heritage management. It problematizes colonialism in planning and architecture by its interaction with female knowledge, generating a significant shift in how the urban space is regularly understood and taught.
1. Understand the politics of built heritage in Cuenca, Ecuador
2. Show how women provide a new way of preserving spaces through practices that question inequalities
3. Demonstrate how urban practices are entangled with the body and recognize its agency in shaping urban environments
"We
“Many of us prefer not to come to the sit-ins we organize, due to fear and the most important thing as an activist, is to be present, but we end up being the same group as always, that authorities and the police already know us and relate us to the bridge”
Preservation and planning Feminist Theory
Pendlebury, 2013
Novoa, 2022
Understanding of historic places as social constructs related to class struggles, race, gender, etc
Separating the land from the body results in a heteropatriarchal reading of space as it excludes instances derived from experiences embodied in a place
Zaragocin and Caretta, 2021
What is experienced by the body is simultaneously experienced by the territory codependently.
Ahmed, 2017
Feminist theory is originated from ordinary daily experiences
Theory of Performance
Taylor, 2002
Performance emerges from everyday life
The body as a performer makes us re-think social constructions (political protest)
are much more than a bridge" Source: Pedro Jimenez-Pacheco
Cuenca, 2023
Interview Analysis
Gathering points
Walking patterns
Meeting points
River
Bridge Vivas
Sense of safety
Sense of insecurity
Feminist gatherings
Avoided areas
Bridges
"We are much co
“Many of us
Bridge Vivas nos Queremos
Bridge Vivas nos Queremos
Bridge Vivas nos Queremos
The opioid epidemic is one of the largest non-infectious public health crises facing the United States today. The estimated national level overdose deaths increased 35% from 2020 to 2021. Although the opioid epidemic has become a national crisis, the burden of the epidemic is not equally distributed across states or across the country, therefore it is substantial to do a more nuanced examination at the local level based on the unique community needs in order to address the opioid crisis.
In Wisconsin, there was an increase of 50% visits to the emergency department due to opioid overdose between 2016 and 2017. This is partly attributed to the high potency of synthetic opioids, but it is also attributed to do social determinants. On a county scale, Dane is considered a high-risk area.
Dane County’s black residents’ overdose is three times higher than white residents’ overdoses and there is a 575% higher increase in cocaine and opioid mortality in black people versus 184% increase in white people. It is crucial to trace a linkage between opioid use concentrations with indicators of structural racism in housing, such as employment and education.
Social determinants play a major role in the identification of vulnerable populations to opioid use, misuse, and overdose. Generally, these social determinants include race/ethnicity, gender, age, socioeconomic status, and education level.
There is a general consensus that higher concentrations of families in poverty, higher levels of unemployment, and lower levels of educational attainment (high school education or less) are associated with an increase in the rate of opioid overdoses on a national scale. I explored the entanglement between these social determinants with housing accessibility.
Southern neighborhoods near Allied Drive and South Park Street are the most affected and vulnerable in terms of economic, educational and access to housing. Apart from low income renters, the most concerning sector in these areas is the homeless population. Although there is no data source that indicates the exact concentration of the unhoused population in the city or in neighborhoods of the south, the present analysis demonstrates an overlap of variables that may indicate a greater risk of homelessness, as well as a greater propensity for substance use.
Homelessness reached its highest in Madison city during 2013 and seems to have receded, nevertheless, its crucial to bring a further analysis on housing stress and other socioeconomic factors that determine specific needs of vulnerable sectors of the population. These considerations are crucial to point additional requirements and distinct needs that could also mean a robustly supplied labor market that includes additional sources of capital needed to fund supportive services, such as the requirement for rehabilitation, drug counseling and employment services.
The Country Fair Shopping Center site in east Champaign, Illinois, offers 39 acres of potential revitalization as a nearly defunct and obsolete shopping center. The vision of the development centers around a positive environmental impact, affordability, public health, and well-being that fits with the slow economy of the context.
Retrofitting Suburbia will be the guiding paradigm for the site's development, which prioritizes a focus on providing walkable urban spaces, accessible housing options and advocates for an urban appearance within suburban contexts. It also encourages having small sub-parcel areas that are more attractive for local investment.
Champaign, IL
