PennDesign PPD Bogota Colombia

Studio Description Between believing and not believing, it is better to believe. Between acting and disintegrating, it is better to act.

- Le Corbusier

A bottom-up study for the future development of Downtown Bogota Bogotá is the largest city in Colombia, and one of the biggest in Latin America. It figures amongst the thirty largest cities of the world and it is the third-highest capital city in South America at 2,625 metres (8,612 ft) above sea level, after Quito and La Paz. With its many universities and libraries, Bogotá has become known as “The Athens of South America”. Bogotá owns the largest moorland of the world, which is located in the Sumapaz Locality. The city ranked 54th in the 2010 Global Cities Index and is listed as global city of the Beta+ kind by the GaWC. Bogotá is the most populous city in the country, with an estimated 9,500,000 inhabitants as of 2011.

This year’s studio will collaborate with Prodigy Network, and “My Ideal City”, in the effort to analyze and redesign the Colombian City. With its amazing growth, it is clear that the city can only grow as a “bottom-up” system, and hence will be studied that way. My Ideal City has proposed to integrate the citizens of Bogota in the design of their city, by using their input registered through tweets and blogs, as design input. The studio will add to that a more academic approach through the study of bottom up systems and bottom up design. Top-down and bottom-up systems are strategies of information processing and knowledge ordering, mostly involving software, but also other humanistic and scientific theories. In many cases top-down is used as a synonym of analysis or decomposition, and bottom-up of synthesis. A bottom-up approach is thus the piecing together of systems to give rise to grander systems, thus making the original systems sub-systems of the emergent system. Bottom-up processing is a type of information processing based on incoming data from the environment to form a perception. Information enters the eyes in one direction (input), and is then turned into an image by the brain that can be interpreted and recognized as a perception (output). In a bottom-up approach the individual base elements of the system are first specified in great detail.

These elements are then linked together to form larger subsystems, which then in turn are linked, sometimes in many levels, until a complete top-level system is formed. This strategy often resembles a “seed” model, whereby the beginnings are small but eventually grow in complexity and completeness. However, “organic strategies” may result in a tangle of elements and subsystems, developed in isolation and subject to local optimization as opposed to meeting a global purpose.

This local optimization is what the studio is aiming for. The thorough analysis of downtown Bogota and its immediate surroundings will lead to the discovery of emerging potentials for this area, which after thorough and rigorous investigation will lead to a precise incision in the Urban fabric. Like acupuncture, these incisions act more as generators than single solutions, more as instigators than a static top - down strategy. The traditional way of urban planning is not of interest here, but we will focus on a scenario based and systematic bottom up approach.

COMPLEX ORDER The studio will explore non-linear design methodologies that give rise to emergent order through complex, bottom-up, systems. These systems encode design intent at the micro scale [urban systems] and through a series of local interactions, coherent order emerges at the macro level [global environments]. These design strategies shift intent from operating directly on the object to operating through the abstraction of a complex system, where control operates through orchestration rather than invention. The non-linear operation of these systems enable competing design decisions to interact and negotiate in the process of formation, rather than considering design decisions to be sequential and hierarchical.

COMPOSITE MATERIALS AND BEHAVIORAL LOGIC The discrete properties of materials have long been used tectonically and structurally to respond to specific requirements.

Combinations of these, such as reinforced concrete were developed to respond to the interaction of loads - tension and compression. Typically these combinations have been conceptualized in response to a linear understanding of structure

or tectonic hierarchies. However the increasing complexity of contemporary architectural geometry has a tendency to exhibit non-linear structural behavior that requires a complex interaction of materials with varying properties - composites.

Consequently the studio will explore the role of composite materials where the interaction of specific material properties leads to an emergent material behavior. Behavior that interacts in the process of formation rather than form being applied to inert matter. A process where designing composite material becomes a critical aspect of generating geometry.

While plastic composites, such as fiberglass or carbon fiber are commonplace, these materials are typically considered to perform in a homogeneous manner. Instead the studio will explore designing bias, tendencies and complex behaviors into these composite materials. Such that form and material are not considered as separate concerns, but are integrally linked. Consequently material properties will operate in the manner of form, ornament and effect as much as structure or tectonic performance.

A NEW ECOLOGY OF PARTS The concept of architectural parts has recently been undergoing a paradigmatic shift from the older mechanistic, modernist notion towards a more contemporary organic, ecological one. While building parts in the past were viewed primarily as discreet and exchangeable elements that were composed into a single whole, the tendency today is to understand them as integral even organic to the whole rather than additive or supplemental. The reasons for this shift are manifold as they are driven equally by research and development as they are by an emerging cultural sensibility towards a new definition of both architecture as well as environment.

Triggered by the advancement of generative computational design techniques, architects have begun to experiment with formative processes, which are more accurately described through terms such as growth, behavior, or patterning rather than composition or planning. While the usage of ‘biological’ language in architecture has a long and important tradition, it usually used to refer to a superficial likeness in form and not to its performance or its formal-structural constitution. In other words, buildings mimicked nature rather than behave like it or be generated through analogous processes, which truly incorporate natures very own principles.

Chief among these principles is Ecology. More precisely, ecology in the definition of its name-giver Ernst Haeckel, as: “the comprehensive science of the relationship of the organism to the environment”. It is no coincidence that the weight here is placed on the “relationship” rather than the organism or the environment, as both can be understood to be interchangeable as long as the exchange of information is upheld and a tight relational system prevails. While in a mechanistic world-view, the boundaries of both realms would be emphasized and identities singularily defined, here we find a definition that stresses feedback, responsiveness, and adaptability over strict and rigid categorizations of function, form, structure, and materiality.

Viewing the question of “parts” in this context reveals a number of interesting points. First, parts are not inflexible pieces that only generate meaning once they have been put together into a finite condition. Rather, they come with a set of predetermined capacities or characteristics enabling them to set forth processes of a generative nature. In this sense they act more like “cells” with a deliberately programmed range of properties and actions. In addition, these parts or components require an environment within which they can enact their formative forces and even enhance their own abilities through constant feedback with other components or elements of the same environment. Furthermore, these new types of components are not defined a priori by a particular scale or materiality. The design process can progress independently and then, over time, take on material and scale identities that fit the constraints of the design problem at hand.

Among its other objectives, the studios will investigate how contemporary design problems can be addressed through systems, which deploy, or are made of smart componentry. Advanced digital modeling techniques will be used to develop innovative solutions for an ecologically sophisticated and adaptive architecture. Smart components are not necessarily understood to be individualized pieces. They can manifest themselves equally as forces, agents, or other organizational units. They share however the ability to materialize in nonlinear and non-hierarchical ways.

Manos en el urbanismo hands-on urbanism - Issues

- Main Dynamic Diagram

- Strategy =

Not Enough Infrastructure of city Because of Overflowing Population

=

=

People are the Energy of City Overflowing Population = Overflowing Energy

1. Liable Life Supporting Jenocides by Civil War over 60 years Overflowing Population are refugees

2. Sense of belonging

ELN : 1964

3. Reconciliation between local and newbie

FARC : 1966

3 necessity to have this new energy source

M-19 : 1973

Available for the city

South Poverty Area Downtown Area

Cleft to let lower income people(newbies) permeate into the rigid downtown area

Two different city structures will get integrated in the site

Hand-on Urbanism is to live on your own in a city.

We believe the problems the bogota city has are all caused the overflow population of city reach away beyond over the capacity that this city can handle. Illigal Immigrants who are responsible for this overflow population came to bogota to survive.

They are running for their life from death of Wars that has been over 60 years. People are Refugees. We need to help them to survive in this city

Not like other teams which pick up less developed area and try to make it better, We wanted to find nice place to live.

They are new comers into this city, but that doesnt mean they deserve abandoned area. So this site was perfect for us, lower evaluated with more potentials.

- Site Info

However, Not only the perfect site for design, we

found the people

Honestly, before the site visiting, we were doing this project because our professor told us to do so.

I have never been interested in Colombia, didn’t really pay attention about civil wars here, and most of all I was seeing just asian or white people living in our design. We could not really see

who we are designing for.

After visiting Bogota city, we become loving these people. We do have now somewhat sense of duty to design better. It is hard to describe, but this trip changed us into that, We

are designing,

not to prove ourself or to get a better grade, but for these people. Now we can picture the smile of bogota people in our head. I think that’s most important thing for design.

Thank you for suppoorting us to make realized who we are wokring hard for.

Now we are enjoying our time in studio day and night.

Our design is now in this stage. We are really looking forward to show you what we designed for these people at final review!!

As each hairs are evenly branches out, some cellular space from outside could work as an actual city farm And between, some space could work as a mar -ket, a square, or any other facilities.

As it gains much space from center because of density, outside could achieve rural images

Focusing on the stem mass with cellular programs, We could achieve models like topography one. It is too early to think about section yet, but still provides some idea where the programs will be located and what else needs to be considered

Residence and commerce with facility

Public Area

The density of lines gives the elevation.

This experiment gives basic elevation information of all models following.

Farms

High income residence Middle income residence

Facilities with commerce

Lower income residence

Farming area with commerce

Facilities, Parking lots

As letting each lines branched out and focusing on the cellular space these madeling could be achieved.

The interesting part of this modeling is that even though it contains elevation information in it, it still shows the pattern of each lines presenting And the layer, or each information accumulated is esily distinguishable with intuition

proved No matter how much transparecy adjusted, the density of this model will be p ved itself as thick, unclear, repeated layers

In this modeling there are two kinds of rules for dynamics lines which can be applied differently at the same times.

One could be applied as a masee while others may work as a cutter.

Combining two different rules into to one modeling will be the next step