Portfolio 1 / Cover Page
Oscar Oliver-Didier
3 / Biography
Oscar Oliver-Didier Urban Design | Teaching | Research
Senior Urban Designer for the borough of the Bronx at the NYC Department of City Planning. Member of the adjunct faculty at The New School Parsons and the Visual Arts Program at Fordham University, and a former Assistant Professor at ArqPoli School of Architecture at the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico (2007-2014). He was also Associate Review Editor for Latin America of Planning Perspectives (2013-2016) and Editor of ENTORNO, the official publication of the Puerto Rico Association of Architects and Landscape Architects (2011-2014). Editor and founder of the journal Polimorfo, a multidisciplinary publication on architecture and its multiple cultural roles (20082010), he has published articles in Housing Theory and Society, CounterPunch, Revista Cruce, and Planning Perspectives, and presented and lectured at the 2014 Latin America Studies Association International Congress, The Cooper Union, University of Puerto Rico, Catholic University in Ponce, and Keio University in Tokyo. Since 2005 he serves as Director of CIUDADLAB; a nonprofit research, design and action driven collective about the city and also directed the Laboratory for Housing, Planning and Urban Studies at the Polytechnic University of PR. He was a former urban policy maker and Auxiliary Adviser to the Governor of PR (2006-2007) and holds a Master of Architecture in Urban Design from Harvard University (2006) and a bachelor’s degree in architecture from ArqPoli School of Architecture, with distinction (2004). In 2012 he was awarded the HÊctor R. Arce Quintero Award: a recognition of the work of an individual that promotes the city through practice, academia and/or the public sector. He has served as a consultant to the Puerto Rico Planning Board, the Center for a New Economy, and the Center for Puerto Rico.
Urban Design
For articulation purposes, 20 percent of street wall is required to recess or project three feet
Jerome Avenue Special District
Additional stories may be provided at a limited percentage of the floor below
Dormers allowed at certain distance from corners Street wall and active ground floor requirement along important corridors
Jerome Avenue Special District Street wall relief on non-wide streets
The Jerome Avenue Neighborhood Planning Study aims to take a broad, comprehensive look at current and future community needs to identify a wide range of strategies and investments, including key land use and zoning changes, to support Jerome Avenue’s growth and vitality. This study looks at the two-mile stretch of Jerome Avenue, as well as the surrounding neighborhoods in Community District 4 and 5 in the Bronx.
Street wall relief on acute angled corners of lots
Require planting, wall treatments, and/or urban furniture on recessed spaces at the ground floor
From an urban design perspective, visioning sketches were prepared based on input received from community members, other divisions at City Planning, and sister agencies. Rules developed under the Jerome Ave Special District provided measures to counter the impact of the elevated 4 line, and strategies for challenging and irregular lots. These all provided an opportunity for the interagency team to share recommendations and strategies to support the goals and vision created by community stakeholders during the outreach process.
Permit street wall articulation and opportunities for minor recessing at the ground floor
Require a setback at a height not taller than 30 feet (2 stories)
Allow for additional height on portions fronting the elevated
Left Axonometric diagrams of the Jerome Ave Special District with design considerations and requirements for irregular lots and parcels fronting the elevated train structure Top Right Design recommendatios for step street at 176th St and illustrations of ‘Under the El’ toolkit Bottom Right Committed capital improvements, programs, and projects for the geography around 170th Street
Encourage visual variety by requiring that 20% of the façade recess 3 feet and by allowing dormers within 75 feet of corner
Require non-residential ground floor uses along the corridor
9 / Jerome Avenue Special District / Senior Urban Designer (2015 - Present) / Oscar Oliver-Didier
Create safe and inviting entrances
Incorporate wayfinding elements
To create a sense of ownership, place entrances or other semi-public areas along the step street
Provide retail frontages where possible to activate the public space at the base of the step street
Promote a stronger sense of place by providing seating, lighting, artwork and planting elements
Existing auto businesses will have access to multiple Small Business Services (SBS) programs
“Under the L� pilot program will be implemented on cerrtain locations along Jerome Ave
New affordable housing project financed by the Department of Housing, Preservation and Development (HPD)
Improvements to Corporal Fischer Park
New affordable senior housing building
Intersection and streetscape improvements
Special Harlem River Waterfront District Special Harlem River Waterfront District In 2017, the Department of City Planning (DCP) modified and expanded to the south the Special Harlem River Waterfront District (SHRWD) and waterfront accessplan (WAP) created in 2009. The project area is generally bounded by the 149th Street to the north, Exterior Street to the east, Lincoln Avenue to the south and the Harlem River to the west. It is located in Community Board 1. DCP’s work continued the momentum of local initiatives to build on existing partnerships with local organizations and advocates. The work resulted in amendments to the SHRWD regulations to support appropriate resiliency measures and changes to bulk regulations to meet the special district goals; an expansion of the special district and WAP to the south between Park Avenue and Lincoln Avenue to respond to unique conditions in the area affecting open space, circulation, and bulk; and resiliency guidelines and best practices for development on the Harlem River waterfront.
Top Left Diagram showing bulk, Stretscape, and waterfront changes to the Special District Bottom Left Southern expansion area and waterfront acces plan Top Left Illustration from proposed waterfront park demonstrating new bulk requirements Bottom Right Vision sketch that illustrates amendments to the existing Special District that would help achieve more efficient building footprints and a better relationship to open space areas
5 / Special Harlem River Waterfront District / Senior Urban Designer (2015 - Present) / Oscar Oliver-Didier)
Top Left Design strategies to ameliorate flood risk were developed for both the open space areas and at the building scale
Special Harlem River Waterfront District
Bottom Left Bulk and height amendments to portions of buildings fronting the shoreline and portions facing the elevated highway Top Right Changes to ground floor requirements in order to accomodate resiliency measures and streetscape best practices Bottom Right Illustration showing new active street walll under the elevated highway
400’
260’
Simplified tower rules and design flexibility (tower heights are not changed)
300’
155’
105’ 125’ 0-85’ 0-45’
Fronting the Shore: 0 - 85’ Base 0 - 45’ Required Opening 125’ Max Transition Height
50’ from the Shore 60 - 105’ Base 155’ Max Transition Height
7 / Special Harlem River Waterfront District / Senior Urban Designer (2015 - Present) / Oscar Oliver-Didier
Community Outreach & Visioning Community Outreach & Visioning The Jerome Avenue Neighborhood Study outreach sessions allowed community members to engage in meaningful dialogue with representatives from various city agencies about their goals for Housing, Jobs and Businesses, Community Resources and Access, Mobility & Circulation. During the visioning sessions, community members were divided into five different groups where each group focused on a distinct subarea of the study area. Using a variety of tools, colored poker chips representing different land uses, images and icons, each group developed visions for their specific subarea, taking into consideration the overall community goals and potential tradeoffs. DCP urban designers were part of each group and sketched out the various scenarios developed. In a separate venue, DCP hosted a workshop to engage local residents and other stakeholders, in shaping the waterfront access and Special Harlem River Waterfront District regulations for the expansion area between Park Avenue and Lincoln Avenue in the Bronx. Participants divided into smaller groups to work together to shape their preferred vision for access to the Harlem River waterfront in the proposed expansion area. DCP urban designers worked closely with each group to capture their vision for the waterfront.
Top Left and Right Jerome Avenue Study Visioning Exercise with community members included a land use and sketching exercise Middle and Bottom Left The proposed Waterfront Access Plan for the Lower Concourse area in the South Bronx developed an exercise to indicate where access was more crucially needed
9 / Community Outreach & Visioning / Senior Urban Designer (2015-Present) / Oscar Oliver-Didier
Ciudad Mayor Plan & Regional Scheme Ciudad Mayor Plan & Regional Scheme During the time as Auxiliary Adviser to the Governor of Puerto Rico in matters related to urbanism, I worked from the other side of the table, hoping somehow to bring into this highly bureaucratic environment more responsible and research oriented policies; critical of the contemporary cityscape and its complex human and social fabrics. Under the office, we worked with the Ciudad Mayor Plan: an urban strategy for revealing the city’s networks; which with carefully thought out insertions, took advantage of existing frameworks— be them in relation to transportation, public space or community initiatives—and proposed new ways of enhancing and relating them throughout the built environment. For a year and a half, I was responsible for around 28 architecture and urban design projects; preparing schedules, budget and progress reports to the Governor, while supervising and managing 10 public agency directors.
Top Ventana al Mar Plaza, a new beachfront public space with green, commercial and concert areas by Andrés Mignucci, FAIA Middle Bahía Urbana, a waterfront development which includes new public spaces, promenades, residential units and the renovation of existing public housing projects Bottom Puerto Rico Convention Center District, a redevelopment scheme for an abandoned military base in the heart of the city
11 / Work Samples / Ciudad Mayor Regional Plan & Scheme / Auxiliary Adviser to the Governor of PR (2006-07) / Oscar Oliver-Didier
Ciudad Mayor Plan & Regional Scheme
Top Laguna del Condado Park, a public space that is widely used for outdoor and water activities in the heart of Condado Middle University of Puerto Rico Botanical Garden, a revitalization project that will include new community amenities and a river overflow scheme designed by Field Operations Bottom San Juan Knowledge and Technology Corridor, a long term redevelopment plan converting a former prison into a research and development site. Designed by Field Operations and Toro & FerrĂŠr Architects
13 / Work Samples / Ciudad Mayor Regional Plan & Scheme / Auxiliary Adviser to the Governor of PR (2006-07) / Oscar Oliver-Didier
Urban Design & Policy Consultant Santa Rita Community Redevelopment Plan (20072008) Research and urban design recommendations for the Santa Rita community in Río Piedras. Prepared with support and funding from the Center for Puerto Rico: Governor Sila M. Calderón Foundation. Master Plan & Design Guidelines for the ENLACE Community Land Trust (2010-2012) Voluntary Adviser to the Community and Housing Land Trust ENLACE Caño Martín Peña: situated in a marginalized community in the San Juan city center. Tasks included further discussion and development of the master plan and housing guidelines prepared in 2004. Revitalization Plan for the Old San Juan Historic Center (2014) Research and urban design recommendations for the Old San Juan historic center. Prepared with support and funding from the Center for a New Economy, a nonprofit and nonpartisan think-tank.
Collaborators: Alejandra González, Miriam López, Jorge Rivas, Christian Quintero, Harry Gómez, Xavier Marti, Maryliz Rodríguez and Alberto Saez. Top Programming and Urban Fragment for the Old San Juan Historic Center Middle Urban Scenario and Urban Fragment for the ENLACE Community Land Trust Bottom Urban Scenario and Urban Fragment for the Santa Rita Community
15 / Work Samples / Urban Design and Policy Consultant / Oscar Oliver-Didier
Pool Complex and Community Center Capstone Design Project - B.Arch, Polytechnic University (2004) A pool complex, a community center, gymnasium, cinema and library are proposed as the main connectors between a public housing project and a single family middle class neighborhood. This multi-programmatic space provides a scenario of coexistence between these sectors and the neighboring park and shopping center.
Top Project Master Plan Middle Wall Section of the seating tiers Bottom Project Sections Top Right First Floor Plan and Project Model Views Bottom Right Project Elevations
3 / Work Samples / Pool Complex and Community Center / Capstone Design Project (2004) / Oscar Oliver-Didier
Urban Reuse in Istanbul Strategic Plan - MAUD, Harvard University (2005) The site around Sirkeci Station in Istanbul contains multiple layers of historic sites and zones that span through centuries. The intervention utilizes as a driving force for its design the existing buildings, infrastructural elements and the archaelogical and historical areas located on the site. By reorienting the train tracks and converting an old military building into a new train station, a new urban possibilty for the area arises.
5 / Work Samples / Urban Reuse in Istanbul / MAUD Design Studio (2005) / Oscar Oliver-Didier
Top Left Project Diagrams Middle Left Strategic Plan Bottom Left Project Section of the bridging platforms Top Section Perspectives and Views Bottom Project Section of the archaelogical site
Dubai University Strategic Plan - MAUD, Harvard University (2006) The project is situated on the leftover spaces produced by the extensive highway systems that intersect and divide the city. By providing access to new open spaces inside these undervalued areas, a new more inclusive scenario for diversity and education is formulated. As in other Dubai projects, architectural experimentation is celebrated, however, in this particular case it is employed in a mannner that provides public space and places for encounter for all of its citizens. Top and Bottom Urban Scenarios Right Project diagrams for the arrangement of the precast modules
7 / Work Samples / Dubai University / MAUD Design Studio (2006) / Oscar Oliver-Didier
Strategic Plan - MAUD, Harvard University (2004) The goal of this Media Campus is to provide a bridging entity between the industrial character of the Everett community in northern Boston and the “Big Box� development located on the river front. Right now, a commuter rail line separates the non-accesible and abandoned industrial chemical area from the commercial development and the Everett Metro Station. The project bridges over the rail line and provides a more pleasable and accesible riverfront environment for the community. Top Area Master Plan
Middle Urban Scenario of the new river front building Bottom Section Perspective of the bridging structure
8 / Work Samples / Industrial Media Campus / MAUD Design Studio (2004) / Oscar Oliver-Didier
Industrial Media Campus
9 / Work Samples / Habitable Platform Housing / Third Year Design Studio (2002) / Oscar Oliver-Didier
Habitable Platform Housing Housing Project - B.Arch, Polytechnic University (2002) The site is contained between two rotundas and a highway system which divides a natural reserve and an urban area on the outskirts of Madrid, Spain. As part of the strategy, the housing complex is to serve as an elevated visual connector with the surrounding reserve. The park-like environment created at the top of the structure interacts via ramps and escalators with the housing units below.
Top Axonometric Wall Section Middle Site Plan Bottom Unit and Floor Plans
Teaching
Academic Work and Teaching Experience Collage San Juan To move now from the consideration of a collision of physical constructs to the further consideration of collision, this time on a psychological and, to some degree, a temporal plane. The city of collisive intentions, however much it may be presentable in terms of pragmatics, is evidently also an icon signifying a range of attitudes relating to historical process and social change. - Colin Rowe
Colin Rowe’s Collage City text (1978) proposed an intellectual and productive urban framework that positioned history as an active, yet chronologically ambiguous, project. For Rowe, cities were composed of diverse models, ideologies and spatial conditions that could be reutilized and reconfigured (formally) in order to generate new urban schemes by means of the “collage”. During the course of the trimester we shall critically revaluate the texts, projects and strategies that Rowe employed in order to produce a series of urban projects that utilize the “collage” as a methodology for intervention. However, for this reconsideration of Rowe, we must take into account that urbanism cannot be worked as a formal scheme separated from its ideological, social and spatial realities. Instead, these too can be “collaged” in order to generate disparate, yet interrelated and accommodating, urban scenarios. Students: David and Jonathan Vázquez Gerena
Top Right Strategic Plan for South Santurce
Left Collage and diagrams prepared previous to the proposal
Middle Right Section Bottom Right Urban Scenario
11 / Academic Work and Teaching Experience / Collage San Juan / Fourth Year Urban Design Studio (2009) / Oscar Oliver-Didier
Academic Work and Teaching Experience Situationist Urbanism In architecture, there are many such assumptions which situationist activity can challenge, but chief among them are these two: the production of space as a set of discrete objects and space; and the ability of architects and urban managers of all kinds to determine the use of architecture. Situationist architecture counters the bounded, privatised building or urban square of mono-functional intentions with variable spaces of atmosphere, spaces with no particular boundaries (whether physical or mental), with spaces of change and indeterminacy. Above all, these are spaces of the unexpected: unexpected forms, unexpected events, unexpected collisions and sounds, unexpected anythings. - Iain Borden
Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle (1967) proposed, in its time, an insurgent urbanism that broke with the architectural status quo. This “accepted” urbanism was the one he denominated as the “spectacle”; in which the image of capital would substitute the accidental encounter of the “situation”. In order to redeploy the “situation”, urbanists would have to employ psychogeography, “détournement” and “derivé”. However, in order to reevaluate Situationism, we would have to consider that urbanism today responds to a different historical period; which even though it could be assumed that certain parallels to the social injustices of the 1960’s exist, the political complexities and spatial logics are quite distinct from the original context of the Situationist International Group in France (195768). These could include, but are not limited to, new community self governance models and reconsideration of territories as site for social and economic paradigms for production. Students: David Figueroa , Abnel Hernández and Christian Oquendo
Top Still image from the animated cartographic analysis for the site Bottom Strategic Plan under a strategy of “redressing” and interconnecting existing shopping center, baseball park, basketball arena, public housing, existing infrastructure and park Top Right Urban Fragment of one of the access points to the park with laboratories and research areas Middle Right Section Perspectives Bottom Right Street Sections
13 / Academic Work and Teaching Experience / Situationist Urbanism / Fourth Year Urban Design Studio (2010) / Oscar Oliver-Didier
Prototypes for Protest Commonwealth Space Neoliberal government policies throughout the world have sought in recent decades to privatize the common, making cultural products - for example, information, ideas, and even species of animals and plants - into private property. We argue, in chorus with many others, that such privatization should be resisted. The standard view, however, assumes that the only alternative to the private is the public, that is, what is managed and regulated by
states and other governemental authorities, as if the common were irrelevant or extinct.
Top and Right “Trojan Horse” module that serves as stage by day and invasive staircase by night
The third book of the trilogy by the duo Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri develops the concept of “Commonwealth” (2009) as the space to be occupied
Bottom Left “Speaker Wall” module that deconstructs and decontextualizes the existing University perimeter
- Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri
with the marginalized Caño Martín Peña Sector, in close collaboration with the Enlace Group, in order to develop new spaces of the “common”. During the beginning of the course, students developed a modular dispositive (shown here) to be deployed in the student strikes at the time in the University of Puerto Rico. Students: Ferdinand Fabregas and David González
15 / Academic Work and Teaching Experience / Commonwealth Space / Fourth Year Urban Design Studio (2010)
by the “Multitude” (2004). The “Multitude”, composed of heterogenous singularities, is played out in this new space now refocused on collective production and on the territory’s self-governance. It is by means of this new alternative to the private, separated simultaneously from the public control of the State, that the concept of “Commonwealth Space” was developed for purposes of the course. With this in mind, students worked
Research
CIUDADLAB is a research, design and action driven collective about the city. It was founded in 2004 in San Juan, Puerto Rico by Marcelo López Dinardi and Oscar Oliver Didier as an initiative to investigate the complexities inherent to the contemporary cityscape. CIUDADLAB addresses the modes and the representations that daily impact and inform our customs, identities and desires that are so greatly embedded into our built environments. Since 2005 it has collaborated with ArqPoli, the School of Architecture of the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico, where it offers an annual course of the same name. CIUDADLAB maintains as well a blog and develops workshops with local and foreign collaborators.
CIUDADLAB Berlin: Enduring Impermanence On this occasion, 16 researchers travelled to Berlin, Germany in order to evaluate a place whose crisis of permanence have been felt on all fronts: crisis with the built environment’s memory, with the way in which emptiness (physical, demographical and economical) is dealt with as a city strategy, and with a charged ideological and political realm that, although relatively common and widespread in other places, are aggravated here by the historical situations that constantly haunt this European Capital. The lessons were many –and the weight of the past is heavy– but it is our understanding that important urban paradigms of the future are being developed in Berlin. In face of the supposed impossibility of the master plan to attend to cities that have been left empty and with fragile economies, it looks as if the impermanent, the spontaneous and the urban intervention at a small scale have all become the new archetypes for urbanism inside the German Capital. In the handling of its diverse crisis, and the emptiness that has remained and has been conjured, concrete examples of this new emergent city scheme have been developed. The question is: considering such drastic measures in austerity and with the growing apparition of real estate speculation in Berlin, can these types of urban dynamics survive? http://www.ciudadlab.com/research/berlin/ Top Left: Research developed as part of the investigation Bottom Left Movie still from the “The Spread of Gentrification and the Fluctuating Aesthetics of Berlin” video Right: Photos of the exhibition: “Berlin: Enduring Impermanence”
3 / CIUDADLAB / Berlin: Enduring Impermanence (2012)
CIUDADLAB Chile: Geography and Power After its return to democracy in the last decade of the last century, Chile has seen an expansion on various matters, and architecture has been one of them. Chile had a strong presence in the media this past 2010 and now in 2011; its turmoils, negligences and uprisings turned it into center stage of the world media. Yet before that, Chile had established a firm place inside the global landscape, and architecture and the ongoing project of the city revealed the concerns, but also the problems, of a country that has a close relationship with its physical and, at the same time, its political geography. CIUDADLAB traveled to Chile to conduct a series of site visits and interviews in the cities of Santiago, San Pedro de Atacama and Valparaiso. The findings were many, too many. However, the most significant one was the fact that in Chile, power is never enacted through the territory in a visible, much less monumental, manner. Instead, we were faced with a city that orchestrates power in an invisible way within its multiple and varied environs –natural or constructed– and in the exchanges of all types that occur within them. CIUDADLAB culminated their study with this exhibition that took a look at the findings on how power gets infiltrated throughout Chile. A four decades old laboratory of the neoliberal canon, the fissures and contradictions of this model are becoming ever more evident in the scenery of struggles that make up the city. The result is a country that simultaneously registers its cultural and political attachments and dissociations by means of a delicate arrangement between geography and power.
http://www.ciudadlab.com/research/chile/
Top Left: Research developed as part of the investigation Middle and Bottom Left: Photos of the exhibition: “Chile: Geography and Power”
5 / CIUDADLAB / Chile: Geography and Power (2011)
Top Right: Comparative diagram of the disparaties between the GINI Index and the Gross Domestic Product of various countries Bottom Right: Movie still from the “Chile: Geography and Power” video
since before its construction, the mere act of conceiving it, whether we like it or not, was already a triumph for the Modern Project. Rio de Janeiro: The Fragmented Body
CIUDADLAB Brazil: The Form of Desire On this ocassion, CIUDADLAB took on the task of studying the cities of Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia and São Paulo in Brazil. With and ever expanding economy, Brazil has become the world’s eighth economy and the destination for countless local and international events. The research was organized through three analytical lenses -the Imagined City, the Ideological City and the Informal City- and worked with the hypothesis that in Brazil the imaginary of desire is employed to promulgate the worshipping of the body, the architectural object and the staging of both within the diverse urban and natural contexts of the country. This destination of great social and cultural contrasts and of ever present images in the territory -like emptiness and monumentality in Brasilia, the geographical fragmentation of Rio de Janeiro as well as the self governance model that occurs in its favelas and the congestion and cultural/typological hybridity in São Paulo- proved to be a great challenge in order to fully understand the Form of Desire in Brazil. Brasilia: Monumental Void Dreamed since its colonization, Brasilia begins construction in 1956 under the direction of President Juscelino Kubitschek. Planned under Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, the city acquires a monumental character in a different way from other cities because in the Plano Piloto emptiness has been designed to represent the Nation’s power. The great distances along the monumental axis alter social encounters and instead small activities and urban catalyzers along the Plano Piloto, nurtured by spontaneity and the ephemerality of the everyday life of the city, reign. In the end, Brasilia’s monumentality is not ascribed to an object, building or zone, it is instead part of the entire tissue of the city. Brasilia, the desired capital, the image of progress, was formulated and continues to be projected as the world’s most modern city. Even though it is now declared as world heritage, its importance was already proclaimed
In Rio, the beach has a crucial role in the life of its citizens, who utilize its nearly 4 km of coastline for exercise and recreation, turning the beach into a great urban park. In a society where outdoor leisure lies so imbedded within the city and in which the body’s exposition is an everyday matter, all sorts of measures are taken to maintain the figure within the highest standards of beauty which are promulgated in it. This turns Rio into a huge market and an international tourist destination for plastic surgeries. In contrast to all the capital which is invested on the body lies the other side of Rio, which is represented mainly by the favela, the mythical Brazilian slum. Even though it has a tainted image of violence, drug trafficking and lack of “order”, the favelas are vibrant communities which are highly organized, where an important commercial activity exists and a self-governance model is elaborated by its inhabitants. Sao Paulo: Congested Spatial-Cultural Typologies If the city of São Paulo’s magnitude in scale and huge densities are considered, it is almost impossible to review or generate a synthetic approach of the multiplicity of events and phenomenons that transpire in this vast territory. In that same fashion, and with this particularity in mind, the themes and video of this investigation share this same diversity and constant intensity. After the process of de-industrialization initiated, São Paulo began to transform these abandoned spaces with a series of complex and diverse strategies. At the same time, the Paulista Avenue, the economic and financial hub of São Paulo, is a place where typologies are configured and converge to generate dialogue between specific functions and the public space that surrounds it. The elimination of limits, the extension of the public sphere and big scale events are some of the qualities that make this avenue the new Paulistano center.
Top Right Photo of the exhibition: “Brazil: The Form of Desire” held at The Arsenal de la Puntilla in Old San Juan, PR from August to November 2010 Photos: José M. Oliver Middle Right Movie still from the “Rio de Janeiro: The Fragmented Body” video Bottom Right Research and graphics developed as part of the investigation
Bottom Left Poster for the Exhibition: “Brazil: The Form of Desire” http://www.ciudadlab.com/exhibitions/brazil-the-form-of-desire/ held at The Arsenal de la Puntilla in Old San Juan, PR from August to November 2010
7 / CIUDADLAB / Brazil: The Form of Desire (2010)
CIUDADLAB Utopia in Moscow As done every year, we pick a different destination in an attempt to broaden the frame of reference from which we imagine the city. During the year 2008, choosing Moscow seemed to sense Russia’s renewed presence in the geopolitical game, as we experienced the beginning of a second Cold War. Beyond Moscow’s exoticism with respect to Puerto Rico, three theoretical frameworks established possible lines of comparison: imagined city, ideological city, and unfinished city. During the trip we collected documents and photographic material, as well as interviews to a large sample of the population. The investigation counted with the intellectual support of Anna Bronovitskaya, professor at the Moscow Architecture Institute (MARKHI), who gave a seminar at ArqPoli during the months of preparation prior to the trip. The exhibition titled “CIUDADLAB: Utopia in Moscow” exposed viewers to the ambiguities of a place whose social and political path has left signs of magnificence and tragedy in the city’s architecture, which is renewing itself amid a galloping economy. The subsequent historical legacies of Moscow’s architecture accumulate chaotically, with more or less visibility, in the urban scenario. This condition doesn’t estrange itself from the body (now individualized) in which a sociopolitical transformation suddenly changed the way Russians conceive and expose their bodies in the city.
http://www.ciudadlab.com/research/moscow/
9 / CIUDADLAB / Utopia in Moscow (2008)
Left: Research and graphics developed as part of the investigation Right: Photos of the exhibition: “Utopia in Moscow” held in The Foundation for Architecture in San Juan, PR from August to September 2008
CIUDADLAB Puerto Rico in Orlando On this occasion the Puerto Rico in Orlando phenomenon was taken as a subject of study. Greatly inspired by the ordinary and the everyday, we embarked to study the massive diaspora of Puerto Ricans to Central Florida. The exodus has been a recurrent condition of our society. Historically, it has included cities like New York and Chicago, but contrary to those other migrations, Orlando’s has been framed by an apparent cultural continuity that minimizes the rupture effect that relocations usually provoke. Our main objective is to decipher the relationship between desire and the ways in which the contemporary city is imagined in Puerto Rico, assigning a specific role to Orlando as a factory of fantastic imaginations, in contraposition to the daily banality of an undifferentiated landscape by the car. Migration is, on one side, a cultural extension of the recurrent longing of the need to escape and begin again, but it also is a reencounter with a form of generic urbanity that is evermore common in Puerto Rico. If fantasy stimulates the original escapade, the result of the relocation is a return to the familiar. In opposition to the before mentioned cities, highly hierarchized and differentiated, in Orlando the distinction between sectors and neighborhoods cannot be easily recognized, in part for it being a contained territory in an expansive agenda of privatization that homogenizes everything that it touches. Left: Research and graphics developed as part of the investigation Right: Itinerary for the research trip realized in June 2007
http://www.ciudadlab.com/research/orlando/
11 / CIUDADLAB / Puerto Rico in Orlando (2007)
CIUDADLAB
up of car tires. When analyzing bus stops from a user experience point of view, we discovered that automobiles greatly obstruct their use. Having so few parking spaces in the city, automobiles obstruct bus stops and make it difficult to get in and out of buses. With these furniture modules we formed a barrier designed to prevent cars from parking in front of the bus stop. Another problem was the lack of furniture to be used during waiting times. To solve this issue, we made several tire modules to serve as seats.
Workshop and Public Installation - RUS San Juan: Basurama + CIUDADLAB Three groups were assembled during a two week workshop in collaboration with the Madrid collective: Basurama. Six pack The study area is located between Santurce’s bus stops 15 and 18. It is mainly occupied by commercial uses, such as coffee shops, bars, cafeterias, and strip clubs. Places like these generate a waste we’re usually unaware of because of how insignificant it seems to be in relation to the product contained: six-pack plastic rings. Although they’re a very small leftover, their accumulation can be very harmful for the environment. We decided to take advantage of this accumulative effect to create a woven textile with this material, which turned out to be resistant, weightless, manageable, and esthetically dynamic. Trash:Can This collective began its research by identifying the characteristics of Ponce de León Avenue from bus stop 19 to bus stop 22. In this area we start to notice a constant presence of art - institutional as well as educational – which begins at the MAC and culminates at the Performing Arts Center. Bus stops 19 to 22 displayed spatial inadequacies in terms of identification and lack of waiting seats. Using 400 cans per curtain, the numbers for each bus stop were created. Not only did these metal curtains provide a proper identification for each bus stop, but being placed laterally, they also provided shadow within its perimeter.
Right Workspace at the Puerto Rico Museum of Modern Art for the installation and subsequent exhibition as part of the collaborative workshop
Pneumatic Tires Because of the high levels of car tire waste in the Island, we decided to use this as a building material. The intervention consisted in assembling modules made
http://www.ciudadlab.com/workshops/basurama-rus-san-juan/
13 / CIUDADLAB / Workshop and Public Installation - RUS San Juan: Basurama + CIUDADLAB (2009)
Polimorfo Journal Polimorfo V.1 - Puerto Rico in Orlando (2009) This magazine aspires to be a window to ArqPoli, in which the intellectual processes of the diverse segments in and associated to the school can be disseminated. It is from an emphasis on the multidisciplinary that Polimorfo’s title comes about, where a publication sets out to assume multiple forms without fear to intermix and place them in dialogue with each other. For us, auto imposed limitations, categoric uniformity and thematic wholeness are avoided when seen as possible adversaries to the plurality of thought that currently defines our architectural views. At the same time, we position ourselves with great skepticism amidst the inclusion of post-theoretical rationale in some academic circles and in current architectural production. Theory and practice are instead fused in Polimorfo, which has as its main purpose to gaze at our contemporary condition by means of articles, essays, project reviews and interviews, and where there will always be a cover story that exposes a particular theme. The cover story of this first edition is Puerto Rico in Orlando, where the findings of the CIUDADLAB course, that studied the diaspora phenomenon, the interchanges of cultural customs and the imaginaries that help shape and produce them, are critically scrutinized. He who travels unavoidably employs desire as a motor for the idealization of the territory he is inhabiting, and on occasions, it is from the outside that one gets to know oneself better. Polimorfo V.2 - Other Alternatives, Other Places (2010) Most recently, the concept of “crisis” seems to have invaded many disciplinary circles and commonplace scenarios. Everyday we are bombarded with the term “crisis”,which is then quickly followed by finger pointing, name dropping and accusations of who is to blame, and ever more recently, of who’s not doing enough or even doing too much. Yet, we must not forget that the
excesses, most of them reflected in contemporary design practice, have reached a point of irrelevance, social staleness and political withdrawal which are all very dangerous for cities and society as a whole. Design as a means of confrontation and critical engagement was too quickly substituted for architecture as mere formal maneuvering; detached from program and inquiry, turned instead into commodity in service of capitalism’s symbolic hunger. The West, as it is already widely known, was greatly responsible for years of backing private interests and irresponsibly mishandling capital and credit markets. However, as mentioned before, we must not forget that architecture too had a significant role in this downward spiral, collaborating in design excesses for the social elites and blindly participating in corporate imaging for cities. But, what are our alternatives? Where to look after decades of formal autonomy, disengagement, “projective” attitudes, and a disregard for theoretical and ethical issues? If the West, as an agent of diffusion of new alternatives and postulates for this perceived crisis, is to responsibly address any issue at all, it must accept and realize that it must first include in its repertoire of transformation and evolution other alternatives from other places. It is quite obvious by now that this list must include China and India, and all the other current emerging economies, but even more answers may lie in other arenas where problems and crisis are exponentially far greater and largely more complex, mostly because of their limited access to capital. If the United States and Europe feel the urgency for new and engaged architectural models, they must first contemplate and scrutinize all the places where they have decided not to look for years, even decades. Where in their discussions and publications is any glimpse of what’s happening to capital and its representations on the “body” in Russia? What, if any consideration, is given to Mexico City and its transportation and density problems, and handling of its mixed architectural and literary heritage? How are micro-conceptual strategies more attached and engaged to architecture and urbanity than most urban design staffs at corporate architectural offices? How to even begin to consider an Olympic strategy for a city while still incorporating irresponsible community displacement and social disengagement as a means to gain a bid? What critical observations are being posed at the Caribbean and its high exposure to environmental crisis such as earthquakes, tsunamis, floods and hurricanes? What roles do other disciplines have in radicalizing architecture’s intelligence? All these questions are given room for consideration in this issue of Polimorfo - where ethical, critical and engaged paradigms are put forth as a discussion towards a possible and responsible direction for architecture. Editors: Oscar Oliver-Didier Marcelo López Dinardi
Bottom Cover Polimorfo V. 2 “Other Alternatives, Other Places“ 2010
http://www.revistapolimorfo.com/
15 / Polimorfo Journal / Puerto Rico in Orlando (2009) / Other Alternatives, Other Places (2010)
Top Cover Polimorfo V. 1 “Puerto Rico in Orlando “ 2009
Bottom Cover Entorno 21 “Affordable Housing” 2012 Top Right Cover Entorno 19 “Reoccupying the City” 2011
Entorno Journal Entorno Journal (2011-2014) As Editor of Entorno from 2011-2014 (the official publication of the Puerto Rico Architect’s Association), I was responsible for editing and identifying topics that expanded architecture’ in Puerto Rico’s limited discursive reach. emes such as affordable housing, alternative urban practices and the unearthing of the policy that informed and helped develop the particularities of the suburban realm, have were tackled during these few, yet very intense, years. Identifying resources and professionals from other fields such as anthropology, economics, sociology and government policy, among many others, was also important in delineating the editorial scope of the publication. Editor: Oscar Oliver-Didier
http://www.caappr.org/arquitectura-y-paisaje/entorno
Cover Entorno 21 “Raise the Curtain” 2012 Botom Right Cover Entorno 22 “Conversation / Conservation” 2013 Cover Entorno 23 “A Look at the Suburbs” 2014
17 / Entorno Journal (2011-2014)
old racial/colonial hierarchies.
The Biopolitics of Thirdspace The Biopolitics of Thirdspace: Urban Segregation and Resistance in Puerto Rico’s Luis Lloréns Torres Public Housing Project Housing, Theory and Society (2015)
During the 1990s—and still in the present—criminality and drug related activities were the main discursive agents employed to stigmatize, in the media and in dayto-day conversations, the communities that lived inside public housing in Puerto Rico. It is constantly inferred that most of its residents break with the behavioral norms that the rest of the population supposedly abides by. This argument is constantly utilized to perpetuate the cultural lens that views these sectors as lazy, unruly and dangerous. This highly prejudiced misconception justified the police raids, occupations and the fences that during this period were erected in and around public housing premises. However, most of these communities rarely view themselves as victims, and it is this paper’s argument that they are constantly and collectively enacting political and physical spaces of dissent, resistance and encounter that—however momentarily—are able to overturn some of these powerful ideological and spatial constructs.
This research was presented in various symposia such as: The Tenth Annual Meeting of the Puerto Rican Association of Historians and The First Annual Interdisciplinary Symposium on Urban Studies, both in San Juan, PR. A later more developed version of this research paper was presented in the 2014 Latin American Studies Association (LASA) symposium in Chicago, IL. This paper is the product of more than a decade long research process that initiated as an interest during my undergraduate years to understand—from a social and spatial perspective—public housing projects in Puerto Rico. What was first developed as a proposal for my architecture theses—mostly based on archival research and an analytical framework provided by Edward Soja’s concept of Thirdspace—later matured into an endeavor that incorporated further field study, interviews to residents and, lastly, a theoretical analysis that broadened the scope of understanding for this paper. The latter was mostly realized by incorporating authors of postcolonial and bordering studies and by delving into Michel Foucault’s concept of Biopolitics, and the more recent incursions with the term by such authors as Giorgio Agamben, Roberto Esposito, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, and Slavoj Žižek. The particular aim of this research paper is to further understand how the ambitious public housing program in Puerto Rico—mostly realized during the second half of the 20th Century—was influenced by a culturally engrained logic of colonialism that aimed to achieve a behavioral transformation of its residents based on white criollo norms and conducts. To this day, the process and lens of Othering with which these bodies/ subjects are understood and viewed has recurrently been reproduced and redeployed utilizing the island’s
Left Propaganda posters for the Puerto Rico Housing Authority Top Right Aerial photo of the Luis Lloréns Torres public housing project Bottom Right Photo of “El Fanguito” slum in Santurce, Puerto Rico
19 / Research / A Chronicle of a Pre-announced Divorce: Theory and Praxis of the Puerto Rico Housing Authority 1938-1957
Still Burning: The Politics of Language in the South Bronx Still Burning: The Politics of Language in the South Bronx The Routledge Handbook of Henri Lefebvre, The City and Urban Society (forthcoming) Language is a powerful tool. The verbal economies that nurture the perception of the South Bronx are highly volatile and can be used in different ways by its diverse actors. To this day, that famous phrase, ‘the Bronx is burning’ is still overheard to describe what is still considered one of the darkest periods in the history of New York City. In its intricacy, language plays a dual role; on the one hand it is employed as an instrument to justly or unjustly describe and relate to a place, and on the other, the prowess of language is also reflected and solidified in the idiom of the built environment. Both interpretations work together to possibly subject a place to disinvestment, abandonment and neglect, but can also be repurposed into a language of empowerment, reconstruction and community prosperity. By utilizing key Lefebvrian concepts, it is this chapter’s aim to illustrate how the constantly narrated space of the Bronx is burning days, when combined with the collective memories of the everyday social rhythms of the period just before the fires, nurtured the will of these communities to rebuild. Today, the physical/ visual disjunction of multiple and contrasting building types and spaces, not only contribute to a recurrent visual reproduction of the rebuilding process after the fires, but also provide the physical traces to the ideological, economic and political underpinnings that shaped the rebuilding process itself. In unraveling this intersection of language and space—studying what is/ was narrated, and dissecting what is/was seen—we can start to understand how charged memories of the near and more distant past became perennial tools for the political action of minorities and communities of color in the South Bronx.
Right Photo of the Charlotte Gardens houses in the Southern Boulevard neighborhood of the South Bronx
21 / Research / A Chronicle of a Pre-announced Divorce: Theory and Praxis of the Puerto Rico Housing Authority 1938-1957
Revisiting the Rhetorical Masters of the Architectural Neo-avantgarde 2008 Lecture Series Synopsis - ArqPoli School of Architecture It is a common assumption today that an autonomous project of architecture was launched after the disintegration of the postmodern historicist army of merchandisers and stars. The ideology of progress reappeared once again with the subsequent embracing of alternative structures of representation, synthetic form-production methodologies, and an almost neomiesian exploration with materiality and surface detailing. Such are the images that articulate a sense of the contemporary in architecture. A confrontational discourse that emphasizes break over continuity has schematized recent architectural history, turning it into a field of operatic exaggerations and selfconsciousness toward obsolescence and change. There are many losses to be reassembled from this brutalization of history. The type of exploration within architecture that was largely undertaken during the Neo-avant-garde movement of the late 60’s and 70’s may even seem fresh in such desperate times. The danger to recycle what is not clearly understood from this era is today more than a possibility; it is becoming the standard in recent architectural media. Do not blame the student. Blame the historian, in any case. So, as part of a critical revision of the Neo-avant-garde, it seems pertinent to look at its inhibited experimentations with diverse modes of architectural language and its somehow naive re-conceptualizations of architecture as an autonomous project. Both trials were addressed through the relaunching of the archetype and a system of allegedly fundamental units of communication to be recoded with devices such as desire and psychoanalysis, among others. In the end, the Neo-avant-garde project cannot be understood solely on one of its terms; its formal diversity and multidisciplinary scope is truly one of its main virtues and a challenge for any critic.
At the School of Architecture of the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico we understand that it is more than relevant to revisit this period with a fresh outlook and to possibly reframe it within contemporary architectural discourse. That is why we have entitled this year’s lecture series, Revisiting the Rhetorical Masters of the Architectural Neo-avant-garde. The notion of a new avant-garde incites a contradiction in itself. The concept insists on generating an interruption with the past, a radical new beginning as the word vanguard suggests, while still maintaining a clear, yet at times subtle or manipulated historical reference to the historical avant-garde. The Neo-avant-garde of the late 60’s and 70’s was formulated as an instigation that recognized the ruins of the first Vanguard movement of the early 20th century. By positioning itself within -and against- this modernist Avant-garde the postmodernist Neo-avant-garde was engendered. The latter understood that the first had been a failure. However, this new group still thrived on experimentation and on the withdrawal from the status quo; two elements that were essential to the first Avant-garde yet had become greatly devalued and criticized during the 1970’s when everyday dystopia was the word to describe the outcomes of the modern world. As a possible byproduct, the movement’s frontrunners did not want to be recognized as neoavant-gardes, transforming the project into an orphaned child, product of a confusing yet rich turning point from the hierarchical geographies of industrial development to the fragmented topologies of an elusive, imageoriented economy. The Neo-avant-garde movement is a true postmodernist product, adopting the aesthetic of its contrived pluralism and political ambiguities. This makes categorizing its architects under one single movement very difficult, even unnecessary. The revisionist attacks to modern historiography in recent decades left very little maneuverability when addressing the contemporary as a historical project with recognizable authors and fundamental goals. Some argued that is was necessary to experiment with language, while others insisted on attempting to conceptualize architecture as an autonomous project. These two endeavors were undertaken through the search for fundamental units of communication inherent in architecture, through the use of typology as a predetermined design tool and through the manipulation and cluttering of languages as a disruptive project. New systems for generating and coding architecture arose from these parallels, utilizing desire, linguistics, psychoanalysis, memory and narrative as pretext for an independent formal experiment. The Neo-avant-garde is really a reaction and a rescuing attempt to turn architecture into a communication science that utilizes linguistic and symbolic systems as the new materials and methods of the discipline. In the end, what did unite all of the members of the Neoavant-garde movement was the unequivocal desire to
Lecturers: Larry Busbea Kenneth Frampton Mario Gandelsonas Bjarke Ingels Reinhold Martin Mary McLeod Joan Ockman Felicity D. Scott David Grahame Shane Marc Tsurumaki Lecture Series Director: Oscar Oliver-Didier
Right Posters prepared for the lecture series realized from January to December 2008
23 / Revisiting the Rhetorical Masters of the Architectural Neo-avant-garde Lecture Series (2008)
counteract the lethargic models of late modernism. For these architects the belief that the built project had to respond to a homogeneous collective had become a tiresome and questionable crusade. They aspired to turn architecture instead into an autonomous undertaking that salvaged the role of the subject from the alienating terms of a contemporary architectural dystopia.
Right One of the posters prepared for the Roundtable Discussion Series realized from 2005-2008
Roundtable Discussion Series Series Topics:
Moderators:
Suburban City: Mutation and Variation of the Dispersed Model Javier Arbona Homar Luis Flores Dumont Jorge Lizardi Pollock Miguel Rodríguez Casellas
Marcelo López Dinardi Oscar Oliver-Didier
Method, Concept, Matter: the Re-education of Architecture Miguel Rodríguez Casellas Luz Mary Rodríguez Imel Sierra Jaime Suárez Leisure and Business: the New Geographies of Public Space Bennet Díaz Figueroa Javier De Jesús Martínez Thomas Marvel Nadya Nenadich The Neoliberal Landscape: the Territory’s Economy Pedro M. Cardona Roig Luis García Pelatti Deepak Lamba-Nieves Carlos López de Azúa Body and Domesticity: the New Makeover Culture Heather Crichfield Félix Jiménez Javier Santiago Lucerna José Fernando Vázquez Radical Inertia: Professionalism, Guild and Academy Manuel Bermúdez Miguel Calzada Luis Flores Dumont Nathaniel Fúster The State of Architecture Today Kenneth Frampton
http://www.ciudadlab.com/talks/roundtable-discussion-series/
25 / Roundtable Discussion Series (2005-2008)
In Search of Public Space in Puerto Rico Exhibition In Search of Public Space in Puerto Rico The diverse manifestations of public space in Puerto Rico are not as likely to occur anymore solely in parks and plazas. There are a series of manifestations of the “sense of the collective” that arise in places as diverse as the beach, shopping malls, Facebook, public buses and through transitory events such as illegal street racing, political caravans, beauty pageant winner’s welcoming parties and in municipal festivals, among many others. All of these phenomena frame in actuality our consciousness of the “public”. On occasions, these require a specific spatial formulation beforehand for them to occur, however, in the majority of cases, these emerge in unexpected places and through very unusual and unpredictable processes. The complexity in which these new means of social interaction come about is truly extraordinary. These require intricate networks, territories, relations, interests and necessities that go hand in hand with the logistics of capital, infrastructures, events and specific or generic destinations for them to survive. We must question however if these new collective models arise out of necessity or to merely make up for the lack of fertile environments that are truly and in essence “public” (if such a condition can still exist in such a pure state). This exhibition/diagramming aspires, by means of critical observation, documentation, investigation and analysis, to study different categories, typologies, and models of public space throughout history, and especially, in its contemporary manifestations in Puerto Rico. The exhibition includes diagrams, photographies, images, drawings, models and a chronology of the different typologies that have arisen. The montage is organized in eight modules that include the following categories of public space in Puerto Rico: Park, Plaza, Road, Commercial, Coast, Ephemeral, Itinerant and Residential.
This event and its findings were elaborated by eleven students of the fourth year level urban design course at ArqPoli School of Architecture at Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico.
Students: Edgardo Aponte Rubén Correa José Juan García Rubén González Andrés Gutiérrez Walter Montañéz Andrea Nevárez Pedro Santiago Víctor Torres Celso Vargas Wilberto Zayas Professor: Oscar Oliver-Didier
Bottom Right Exhibition poster
27 / In Search of Public Space in Puerto Rico Exhibition (2009)
Top Right Exhibition held at “La Respuesta” in Santurce , PR on January, 2009