Pop-Up Infrastructure
White Research Lab
Santiago Carlos PeĂąa Fiorda
What? Pop-Up Infrastructure In the new era of ever-changing environments and hyper-connected cultures the idea of permanence in architecture should be on the focus of discussion. “Architecture is going pop. It is finally sloughing off its ridiculous obsession with eternity, and learning to live in and for the moment. Pop-up architecture, temporary structures and other ephemeral frameworks for equally evanescent events have become all the rage.” 1 Is making extremely long term developments and investments as responses to problematics of today an outdated means for planning and development? Why so many long term permanent projects are nowadays being questioned and changed? A project such as Papirøen, in Copenhagen, was never planned to be a food court, nor the Highline, in New York, was conceived as a public park. So many reconversion projects are being developed nowadays, generating the query about why is this happening. Planning to address the problems of 30 years time is a very complex operation in which a lot of uncertainties can be obviated and can usually end up being changed through time. Furthermore, architecture and construction have a certain time span for actual deployment and materializing which makes the original project and idea, be constantly outdated because when finished, the project is already 2-4 years old. “The key issues that avant-garde architecture should be addressing can be summarized in the slogan: organizing and articulating the increased complexity of post-fordistic society.”2 Making the building and planning process conceived to be flexible for change is what architecture should be tackling. Being able to receive input from users, from builders, from any actors involved and opening up architecture from a one-objective based discipline (a project generated by an architect which will conclude in a final building) to a multiple-objective one, in which a project is originated with the basis of being able to change and many actors can be involved in the design process and have a voice in it. “The author disappears in favor of the director, being converted into a coordinator, a master of sacred strategies.”3 Temporary is the immediate answer to this problematic and it is the kick starter point for the more profound changes to be made. Starting off with small, short term and easy changeable initiatives to introduce the concept of flexibility and change to the social and architecture sphere.
“Lets hear it for temporary architecture” - Dezeen, Aaron Betsky, 2016 Parametricisim as Style - Parametricist Manifesto, Patrik Schumacher, London, 2008, pg. 1. 3. Archivos de Arquitectura, Modos de Practica, Practicas poco practicas, Lluis Ortega, Editorial EAEU, 2013, Buenos Aires, Argentina, pg. 48. 1. 2.
Santiago Carlos Peña Fiorda
What? Pop-Up Infrastructure As an immediate response to this, “Pop-Up Infrastructure” emerges and works with its temporary nature to make quick, flexible and fast architecture to build up the ground for change in urban contexts. The term pop up is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as “to appear or happen, especially suddenly or unexpectedly” and also as and adjective “used to describe a shop, restaurant, etc. that operates temporarily and only for a short period when it is likely to get a lot of customers”. This means that popup is deeply related to time. It is something that happens quickly and this makes it unexpected. The second definition has a more profound meaning. It refers to its speed as a tool for seizing opportunities. This combination of definitions is the interest of this investigation. To be able to use fast means to tackle opportunities at its core development. “Pop-up architecture offers something rare: design that is undiluted. Traditional, permanent architecture often needs to serve multiple purposes - its an office building and transit hub, its a hotel and a retail space - and changing surroundings. Architects must incorporate the demands of building owners, finnancial backers, and users. By contrast, pop-up architecture can advance a singular purpose and concentrate its impact. Pop-ups can also precipitate economic development and community engagement, sometimes in underserved or undeveloped areas. Temporary themselves, pop-up structures can be a catalyst for lasting change” 4 Infrastructure has an ever changing etymological definition. It has gone from being military parlance to describe facilities to being commonly used to refer to basic organizational structures required for the operation of a society. It is usually related to long term processes for its conception and even longer spans for its deployment. The interest of this investigation places its focus in the definition that considers infrastructure as something that constructs everyday practices. Unlike a mere intervention, infrastructure involves an impact in a community not only by its scale, but also by the symbolic meaning that it carries. The idea is that infrastructure is conceptualized through the acts and practices of people, foregrounding how societal structures and patterns shape infrastructure and how it can be informed by the input of citizenship. Infrastructure no longer as an engineered response to a subject but as cultural phenomena that shapes communities. The idea of merging “Pop-Up” and “Infrastructure” in their normally used definitions may seem like an oxymoron. In that contradiction lies the whole framework for this investigation. The aim is to generate the societal impact of infrastructure addressing it as a pop-up initiative handling a specific subject.
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“The Rise and Rise of Pop-Up Architecture” - CURBED, Marnl Epsteln-Mervls, 2016
Santiago Carlos Peña Fiorda
Why? Pop-Up Infrastructure The project aims to use temporary architecture as a generator for public interest in a cycling infrastructure project in Argentina that promotes sustainable development. How people approach public infrastructure is directly linked to how a plan is addressed to the inhabitants. The appropriate application of temporary interventions as local tools for community involvement and test possible outcomes is key factor for project to be successful. Investigating how temporary interventions work in the environment and how can they be used as tools for holistic understanding on how the built environment influences the user can link the urban scale project directly to the user scaled intervention. The end project has the objective to introduce cycling infrastructure in San Isidro, Buenos Aires, a carbased culture, as a means to promote sustainable development. Since this type of interventions usually find resistance, the idea is that “pop-up infrastructure” emerges as urban acupuncture initiatives in key locations of the city to start addressing change as well as testing the outcomes of it. Instead of just deploying the whole sustainable mobility plan all at once and make a huge investment, the project aims to do a phase-based intervention in which groundwork towards acceptance of bicycles is being built together with the community. The project is oriented as a placemaking5 initiative in which community assets, inspiration and potential is boosted towards creating new public spaces. Finding out how this initiatives are conceived, gathering data about why and what makes people find this places attractive and the effect it has on their future perception of the new development is an objective. Temporary interventions can become a step forward into “democratic architecture”, actually judging a project through its design and using the built environment and user feedback to test and develop concepts before making greater investments. Effective temporal interventions as a means for directinformation driven design. The success in the transformation of Copenhagen’s paper deposit storage facilities into one of the liveliest urban areas of the city can be attributed to the application of temporary interventions as tools for broadcasting different sectors of a city. The investigation revolves around how temporal interventions such as Papirøen’s in Copenhagen, have the power to be urban tools for transformation and activation of areas or concepts under development and generate an identity and culture around them. Papirøen is a space which received the unique opportunity to develop around provisional installations. The municipality decided to give a five year gap between the redevelopment of the site into something new to create a “hype” around the area before it would become something different. Through temporary installations such as the Copenhagen Street Food Market, the ex-called Paper Island gained an identity and became Papirøen: a space where everyone can meet. The investigation aims to understand how the essence of temporal can be used to address a cities immediate problems, mediating between the bureaucratic process and the long term investment. The interest on this subject relies on the potential for application that both public and private entities can get out of this tool. “As both an overarching idea and a hands-on approach for improving a neighborhood, city, or region, Placemaking inspires people to collectively reimagine and reinvent public spaces as the heart of every community. Strengthening the connection between people and the places they share, Placemaking refers to a collaborative process by which we can shape our public realm in order to maximize shared value. More than just promoting better urban design, Placemaking facilitates creative patterns of use, paying particular attention to the physical, cultural, and social identities that define a place and support its ongoing evolution.” “What is placemaking?” - Project For Public Spaces, 2016 5.
Santiago Carlos Peña Fiorda
Why? Pop-Up Infrastructure In the public sphere, temporary interventions serve for making inhabitants used to constant change, making the development of a city more dynamic and easy going. It also allows to generate a bottom-up initiative in which society generates the project and feels a part of it. Temporary interventions allows for flexibility, being able to receive the users direct feedback and have a chance to iterate and upgrade. In the private sphere, temporary nature can be used to develop and make a site a part of a city before something actually starts going on. Activating vacant lots, making them a part of the cities map and the inhabitants daily life is only beneficial for the private entities. In terms of financing, a vacant lot or building can increase its value if cherished by the community. Instead of the traditional speculation which is destroying many of the city centers around the world and killing the cities day-to-day life, temporary activation of places can work to boost the speculative process and returning a value to the society. This makes the location a part of the city, even before something happened and making the neighbors interested in the development, generating possible future buyers or allies during construction. Also, it can be used for the private sphere to test for alternatives and possibilities for their future investments and actually comparing with live feedback, the potential that different alternatives can have.
Santiago Carlos PeĂąa Fiorda
How? Pop-Up Infrastructure
Literature Review
Field Work
SI Project
Classifying Work
Santiago Carlos PeĂąa Fiorda
Interviews
Groundwork Pop-Up Infrastructure As a starting point for this research, several references will be studied to compile a critical mass of data, gathering urban, architecture, design and anthropological perspectives on related subject. This section is divided into two types of investigation. The first one uses a direct 1-1 interview with James Thoem from Copenhagenize relating to the importance of bike mobility while the second part utilizes books and lectures as consulting material from which take information. The main chosen topics are bicycle mobility, temporary interventions in cities and community informed design. The three topics are intertwined through the same context which is the city they act on and the society living in them. Approaches vary depending on the author, going from Jan Gehl and his set of tools to study public life and how to apply them in the daily practice to Evelina Ozola and her view on how temporary community initiated and based projects can change the way cities are lived and perceived. This range goes from governmental planned initiatives to spontaneous community actions.
Santiago Carlos PeĂąa Fiorda
Interviews Pop-Up Infrastructure The semi structured interview method was chosen as a tool in this research to get direct feedback from the actual entities involved in resolving related issues as the one studied. By being able to have a face to face meeting, points of interest could be drawn while the interview was developing and topics of interest could be addressed more deeply. Copenhagenize is a bicycle mobility consultant office which pursues the goal of making cities bike priority. Their multi-disciplinary team works from urban and traffic planning to culture and communication related for an appropriate application of bike infrastructure. They approach their job from the human scale perspective using design, anthropology, sociology and common sense as points of departure. The interview was structured in four subjects, going from general questions and topics to the more research related ones. By doing this, a broad spectrum of topics were taken into account and opened up further points of investigation. The first general topic was about how to address change in cities which then leads to how users engage with the city and how they cope with change in their environment. Afterwards, the bike mobility topic was studied, concluding with more specific questions about how popup infrastructure as a concept could work and if it is efficient from their perspective. James Thoem is an urban planner from Canada and Sweden who is now Project Coordinator at Copenhagenize. He has been at the office for five years now, being part of the transformation that it has gone through from a one-man job to one of the most known offices in the world related to bike and urban mobility.
Santiago Carlos PeĂąa Fiorda
Interviews Pop-Up Infrastructure Key Concepts Conclusion -People go where people are -If the infrastructure is built, people will use it -Metrics play a key role in effective planning -Accessibility for everyone should be always the main objective -Pilot projects are great tools for urban development and testing ideas -Pilot projects should be made quick, cheap and green -People react good to interventions that are giving back space to the public realm -Projects should always be “picture-friendly” to take advantage of social media
Santiago Carlos Peña Fiorda
Literature Review Pop-Up Infrastructure The literature review has the objective of going through the existing references that can be associated to the research and pointing out the most important concepts from each one that can be useful for the research and for the end project. All texts were chosen because they belong into one of these four categories which are related to the investigation. The categories are: The Meaning of Infrastructure, The Size of the City, How Public Life Works and Design and Implementation of Temporary Interventions. This reviews range from text books which tackle specific subjects and present a broad and well developed spectrum about a certain issue to lectures which condense the information into a short time span and mainly involve the surface subject of the problematic.
Santiago Carlos PeĂąa Fiorda
Literature Review Pop-Up Infrastructure Learned Concepts and Summary -The definition of infrastructure has changed through time, going from mere military parlance through multi-scalar natural technical life support elements to the relationship between people. -How step-by-step temporary strategies can turn a car ruled location to a pedestrian friendly area. -Basic tools for generating change in a city: Measure, Invite, Do, Evolve and Formalize. -Projects succeed by using bottom up and community oriented tools to make a temporary change in a city and broadcast its potential to become a place cherished by the community. -Pilot projects and co-creative processes are the essence of any successful intervention in any city. -Strategies to make a city walkable: Accessibility, Safe, Short Blocks, Narrow Streets, 1:1 ratio between prospect and refuge. -Studying public life is a very important tool for developing new projects. Different techniques for measuring space can be counting, mapping, tracing, tracking, looking for traces, photographing, keeping a diary, doing test walks and doing behavioral mapping. -Even though car drivers spend more per capita than a bike driver, space allocation is a key element to take into account into this equation. The same space that one car takes for parking, six bikes can fit perfectly, making it so that the car driver should spend 3 times more than what it is actually spending in order to reach the potential that the bikes have. -Temporary architecture has the power for cultural change. Also, due to is quick deployment it is an opportunity to generate an agenda around it, making a culture around temporary. -Projects result in having great acceptance when prototyping actually gaining the know-how on what they want for the built environment. -Available unused places in cities can be temporary transformed into active urban places. -Prototyping as the tool for thinking instead of thinking for then prototyping. -Temporary interventions used to test possible locations for further developments. -A project developed in three days with very cheap materials can gained a lot of attention, making it very important in its after life through the sharing in social media.
Santiago Carlos PeĂąa Fiorda
Field Work Pop-Up Infrastructure The field work takes a cue from Robert Venturi’s “Learning from Las Vegas” in terms of observing elements which are taken for granted by architects and trying to learn from their existing resources and how they engage or not the public. The idea is that the study uses Venturi’s idea and also their tools to represent and find the important aspects of the buildings. The field work also uses techniques learned from Jan Gehl’s book How to Measure Public Space and re appropriated for this specific investigation. The techniques employed were counting, mapping, tracing, tracking, photographing and video recording. The idea that drives this field work is to evaluate and rationalize the use of space in Copenhagen to draw conclusions which can generate data which could inform other contexts. What makes public spaces thrive in Copenhagen and why people use them is the main question involved. Since the research is about temporary infrastructure in the public realm, Papirøen and the Julemarked at Nyhavn were selected as the representatives to study. Both were conceived with a programmed end life but differ in their time span life. The re-purposing of Papirøen into the Copenhagen Street Food Market has been going on for five years now, this one being the last one while the Julemarked at Nyhavn has been only there for a few weeks and will be removed after the festivities are done. By having both spectrum in the palette of life span a broader conclusion could be obtained.
Santiago Carlos Peña Fiorda
Learning from Papirøen Pop-Up Infrastructure Learned Concepts and Summary -Integrated of a place to the city life and agenda made through the use of effective temporal interventions. -Men are more willing to visit the location by themselves than women. -75% of the people sampled were 20-39 years old. -This is a place attractive for young couples to hang in or visit. -Most of the people came in groups of two or three people, being 67% of the sample. -73% of the people stayed in place while the other 27% were moving through it. The huge difference and reason why people were saying in place was because of the time the sample was taken which was lunch hour. -All the people staying were either consuming or conversing between each other -There is an interesting cross relation between people conversing and people standing and people consuming and the posture of sitting in the available furniture. Both are intricately related, meaning that all the people only conversing were standing while all the people eating were sitting in place. -Since it is a family place, people came with their kids in strollers or brought a backpack because they were touring the city. -Informal clothing and protective weather clothing was the main vestment used due to the nature of the place, which is a ‘street food market’ and the clod weather. -60% of the people that were conversing were generally smiling, presenting a direct correlation between the possibility of socialization and being happy while people who were among themselves, were not smiling at all. -People generally walked at the center of the place and were standing at the edges of it. -Were places to seat were available, people eating could usually be found while people conversing usually were found standing. -Closer to Papirøen people tend to disrupt the pattern of standing near the edges and take a break spread over the place but still some of them can be found near the edges, allowing for pedestrian circulation. -Elements that compose Papirøen: the first element that stands out is the sign stating its name. -The building itself does not carry any specific semantic load in its geometrical expression. -Its name “Papirøen” refers to its old function, the one of being an island for the storage of paper. Can it be called a billboard? Did it work as a “branding” element to make this place recognizable? -Today, the meaning of Papirøen as the name for the location has changed for the citizens. -The structural elements are exposed, making it visible that this building served a utilitarian purpose. -Information strip, in which the name appears and disrupts the regular and modular rhythm. -The lower strip is were the access points can be found. -The facade is almost completely opaque with the exception from the entrances -The seating elements provide an excuse for people to stay outside and socialize, interrupting the suggested actions by the site which are walking into the building or sightseeing into the waterfront.
Santiago Carlos Peña Fiorda
Classifying Work Pop-Up Infrastructure The study work is separated into three parts: the methodology for classification, the whole list of projects and the generation of a platform for compiling and comparing all of the projects available. The projects selected are related by two subjects: being temporary or being infrastructural. The objective of this section is generate a tool for evaluation and comparison for temporary infrastructure in which different approaches are linked in various ways and possible conclusions can be taken from the techniques used. The compilation of this set of 70 projects is the first step towards unifying differences under a same premise, making them present for comparison. Then, when all projects are placed together, they can be evaluated using same parameters for each one of them, generating the possibility of giving hints or results which can be useful for a new or a more appropriate application of temporary infrastructure. The build up of a platform available for anyone to use and being able to expand if the research is continued is the final objective. This open source platform can be a way to which expand the knowledge around temporary interventions and generate a general interest around them.
Santiago Carlos PeĂąa Fiorda
Classification Methodology Pop-Up Infrastructure The classification method works by making the projects align into certain categories which could be of interest for the research and classified in them between different variables. The first part of the process consisted in selecting the 70 projects which will be used for comparison, by roughly seeing in them potential qualities and effectiveness in their life span. Concept cards were created, by reducing the project index pages into half pages with less images, making space available for the categories to be placed in. The second step was to decide which ones were the categories relevant to consider evaluating them through. This categories were: location, life span, use, materiality, who was involved in the initiative, what was the origin of the project, if it is a project which takes in account its context, if it happened more than once, the scale of influence that it has, if it was pre-meditated and its specific purpose. Each category contained a certain amount of variables in which each project could be placed in. The location category is called Continent and has all the possible continents in which each project can be located to speculate if there is a correlation between a certain type of project and its location. The life span category is called Permanence and has four variables in it. Performance, for interventions that last less than one day, Pop-up, for interventions that last between one day and one month, Pavilion, for interventions that last between one month and two years and Installation, for interventions that last for more than two years. The use category is called Use and has four variables in it: Mobility Service, Commercial, Cultural and Leisure. The material category is called Material and has five variables in it: Wood, Container, Paint, Recycled Circular Economy and Technological. The category which evaluates who was involved in the initiative is called Involvement and has four variables in it: Artist, Architect, Community and City. The category about what was the origin of the project is called Character and has four variables: Problem Solving, Critical Statement, Artistic/Architecture Exploration and Tradition/Ritual. The category involving if it is a project which takes in account its context is called Type and has three variables: Generic, Specific and Vernacular. The category which evaluates if it happened more than once is called Reiterative and has five variables: One Time, Once a Year, More Than Once a Year, Regular and Less than Once a Year.
Santiago Carlos PeĂąa Fiorda
Classification Methodology Pop-Up Infrastructure The scale of influence category is called Scale and has four variables in it: Acupuncture, Local, Neighborhood and City. The category about if it was pre meditated is called Deployment and has four variables: City, Society, Private and Spontaneous. The last category refers to its specific purpose and it is called Purpose and has four variables: Trial/Test, System/Methodology, Final Work and Tackles a Subject. Each of this categories had a correspondent color post-it in which the variable was written in. Every project was printed and stuck in the wall. Then, each one of them was evaluated and had a correspondent post it for each category was assigned, having a complete wall with different colors at the end, and being able to see all of the projects together.
Santiago Carlos PeĂąa Fiorda
Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina
Concept cards and project classification methodology.
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Project Index Pop-Up Infrastructure The project index includes all the 70 projects with their correspondent developer, location and brief comment about why it was selected and how it is relevant to this investigation. Projects were ordered alphabetically from A-Z and have all the curated images which better explain each one of them. Different from the concept cards, here the full range of images can be appreciated and each project can be understood as a standalone page.
Santiago Carlos PeĂąa Fiorda
Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina
Bike Home - White Arkitekter, Copenhagenize - London - England - An opportunity appeared to work parallel to the existing programs that are under development across London by focusing on establishing more inhabitable bike infrastructure. The pilot project for bikes among the existing bike facilities creates brighter and friendlier areas, where the bicycle is celebrated and where people feel comfortable in public spaces that were previously neglected. Through easy and fast construction, different public spaces are marked through eye-catching installations along a route which today yet does not include bike lanes. The project is a tool for introducing the bike culture in the locals everyday life, anthropomorphizing bikes and creating their homes.
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Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina
CMPNG - IT MET - Buenos Aires - Argentina -This temporary kiosk serves as a means for revitalizing unused public spaces through the addition of the ‘picnic’ program. It hosts a temporary beer garden that can be moved and opened up in different places. The structure works as the central element around which re appropriate public space reviving the ‘camping spirit’ by sharing food and listening to music in an exterior space.
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Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina
Makoko Floating School - Kunle Adeyemi - Lagos - Nigeria - This floating school is a result of an ongoing research into building for flood-prone regions in Nigeria. The project should work as infrastructure for the coastal regions of Africa that have little permanent infrastructure because of unpredictable flooding. The design is adapted for easy prefabrication and rapid assembly, being mobile, deployable and ready for assemblage in any waterfront.
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Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina
Mierigi - Fine Young Urbanists - Riga - Latvia - To prove that the street can be a space for both effective mobility and social life, the architects built a 14m long street section with wider sidewalks and bicycle lanes on each side and going their correspondent direction. The mock-up was built in 3 days and remained in place for a week. The space was used to discuss street design with passers by, local residents and businessmen, discovering an effective method of involving public in the design process. Its color caught the attention and none could pass through a vividly blue space without wondering about its purpose.
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Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina
Nido de la Cultura - Josep Ferrando -Vicente Lopez, Argentina - Developed for the International Biennial of Architecture held in Buenos Aires, the project is the first of a series of pavilions that will be built in the coastline, serving as public infrastructure as well as beacons for the development of local areas. This individual and exempt pavilion will host different activities in it.
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Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina
Paper Island and Copenhagen Street Food Market - Copenhagen - Denmark - Paper Island is a space which received the unique opportunity to develop around provisional installations. The municipality decided to give a five year gap between the redevelopment of the site into something new to create a “hype” around the area before it would become something different. Through temporary installations such as the Copenhagen Street Food Market, ex-Paper Island gained an identity and became Papirøen: a space where everyone can meet.
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Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina
Park(ing) Day - San Francisco - United States of America - The initiative is a annual open-source global event where citizens, artists and activists collaborate to temporarily transform metered parking spaces into temporary public spaces. Its mission is to call attention to the need for more urban open space, to generate a critical debate around how public space is created and allocated and to improve the quality of the urban human habitat. The original intervention consisted on generating a temporary urban park for the time a parking meter allowed it. After the time ran out, everything was packed and the place returned to its original program.
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Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina
Putnam Triangle Plaza - Transportation and Public Safety Committee - New York City - United States of America - This plaza project started as a community based initiative to create a pedestrian spot at that location. Temporary interventions took place and community-generated initiatives activated the location, attracting the people from the neighborhood. After the success of this initiative, the government decided to close the street permanently and convert it into a permanent plaza.
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Online Open Source Platform Pop-Up Infrastructure A sample of the open source platform for the catalogue and evaluation of pop-up infrastructure can be observed in the following link: http://cargocollective.com/popupinfrastructurewrl/ The website allows to select the categories that each project is tagged in, and groups them depending on the specific selection, being interactive and easy to see and understand. Also, each project has a correspondent description if clicked on, stating the reason for the inclusion as well as the actors involved in their development and their website. All projects are listed alphabetically to be arranged in a specific and reasonable order. The sample now has two limitations and a big potential. The first one is that it only allows to select each category at a time, not being able to combine them into multiple selections. The second one is that it only allows to have twelve projects for the trial version of the website, missing the rest fifty eight projects left. The great potential it has is that even though it does not allow multiple entries, the layout and interface is very friendly and easy to relate to, making the post rationalization process more fluid.
Santiago Carlos PeĂąa Fiorda
Project Matrix Pop-Up Infrastructure The matrix is originated as a response to the limitations of the website and the need for an interactive platform to test different possibilities of combinations in real time. This excel file attached has a control panel on top which lists all the categories and unrolls each variable independently when clicking. When the variable is changed and selected, a specific cell in the matrix will be highlighted, meaning that the selection belongs to that specific project listed on column A and B. This is the tool which will allow to draw conclusions and speculations regarding possible implementations for further projects using the already built ones.
Santiago Carlos PeĂąa Fiorda
Sustainable Mobility Consultation Pop-Up Infrastructure The Research concludes with a project that works by re-informing and using the knowledge gathered in “Pop-up Infrastructure” into a sustainable mobility master plan to insert bicycle infrastructure into a car-centric culture and city the most efficient way possible. This first step refers to the consultation stage for the master plan. It consist on reviewing it, making corrections, adaptations and presenting the best practices in order to make the plan be deployed in the most effective manner. For this project, White carried out a workshop together with Copenhagenize to combine the architectural and design strategies with the technical ones and generate a consistent document. Different strategies were suggested for making a connected bike network. One example was that the grid of infrastructure could be planned by overlaying the grid of public schools in it and choosing the streets that are suitable to meet a school every 500m. The concept behind this idea was to gather the public around the subject of making safe streets for kids to go to school in, generating adherence and little resistance about the topic. The agenda also consisted in working with the communication aspect of the master plan, making suggestions for ads and signs, generating a manual for street typologies that could be used and different strategies to make the first step forward into the development of this plan. Since from the beginning, the people at the Municipality mentioned the fact of having to be cautious about how they approach this plan since they would find a lot of resistance, the most important point was the suggestion of techniques for making urban acupuncture interventions in the city and begin to implement this project. The urban acupuncture is the part were the “Pop-Up Infrastructure” research takes place, and would be the stepping stone into making beacons for the new mobility plan.
Santiago Carlos Peña Fiorda
Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina Workshop 26.10.2017
Introduccion Workshop 26.10.207
Para el desarrollo de esta consultoría se desempeño un Workshop al rededor del Plan de Movilidad Sustentable de San Isidro, en donde se trabajó y revisó, sección por sección, cada elemento y concepto referido al Plan. Dicho Workshop fue posible gracias a White Arkitekter, quienes, en respuesta al pedido de financiación por parte del Arq. Santiago Carlos Peña Fiorda, pusieron a disposición los recursos necesarios para que esto pueda ser llevado a cabo. Dicho financiamiento proviene del programa ‘White Research Lab’, en donde la empresa genera extensivas investigaciones que colaboran a la construcción de conocimiento en el campo de la arquitectura. La idea que sustenta este programa es poder encontrar conceptos a desarrollar en donde la arquitectura pueda introducirse en distintos contextos. La inversión y desarrollo de la investigación es la forma en la cual White Arkitekter trabaja y permite contribuir a un desarrollo sustentable de la sociedad. Poder poner el foco en esto es crucial para la empresa. Asi es como se generan proyectos multidisciplinarios, integrales y a la vanguardia del ámbito profesional. La consultoría y el Workshop a su vez pertenecen al proyecto de investigación referido a las ‘Infraestructuras Pop-Up’ liderado por el Arq. Santiago Carlos Peña Fiorda. En el, se investiga como la infraestructura y las intervenciones temporales pueden funcionar como herramientas para el desarrollo sostenible de distintos sectores de una ciudad. La investigación apunta a poder estudiar lo temporal como herramienta generadora de interés publico, como herramienta de participación comunitaria y como herramienta de prueba que anteceda inversiones permanentes. Para este Workshop fueron seleccionados específicamente de White Arkitekter; Stig Lassen, Senior Arkitekt MAA, Scott Grbavac, Senior Arkitekt MAA y Santiago Carlos Peña Fiorda, Arkitekt. Para este Workshop, White Arkitekter contrató a Copenhagenize Design Co. una firma que trabaja en planeamiento sustentable, especializado en infraestructura para bicicletas. El Coordinador de Proyectos, James Thoem fue quien participo del Workshop, aportando la perspectiva técnica y especializada en cuanto a la consultoría.
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Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina Tipologías Página 18 CALLES PRIORIDAD BICICLETAS Las calles existentes se señalizaran como “prioridad bicicletas”, contando o no con una senda a lo largo de la calzada, pero siempre con señales que advertirán la condición de la misma. La velocidad máxima en estas calles sera de 20km/h.Ord.8772
Sugerencias y recomendaciones para modificar Página 18 CALLES PRIORIDAD BICICLETAS La recomendación es cambiar el comportamiento de los conductores incluyendo intervenciones materiales ademas de la señalización. Las técnicas pueden ser varias; la reducción del radio de giro de las esquinas, incluir ángulos mas rectos de giro, chicanas en la mitad de la calle, obstáculos en las intersecciones para que no sean vías de rápido cruce etc. El objetivo es que a través de estas medidas de control de trafico las calles se vuelvan mas incomodas para los automóviles y deban reducir la velocidad. Si no existen obstáculos materiales que generen esta reducción de velocidad y son vías de circulación rectas, los automóviles no reducirán su velocidad. Esta es la herramienta del diseño de los limites de velocidad como medida a la par de la señalización. Ademas estos elementos pueden ser apropiados por los vecinos, devolviendo el espacio de la calle al volverla segura para los ciclistas y los peatones. En estas calles el ciclista acompaña la dirección de transito de los automóviles.
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Chicanas
Rotondas en Intersección
Zigzag
Radio de Esquina
Reducción de Cruces
Calles Angostas
Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina Prefacio Red y Circuitos De Página 25 a Página 49
Radio de Influencia de Escuelas para Red
Alimentación de Transito de Habitantes desde Centros de Transporte hacia interior del Municipio
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Espectro de Alcance de Zonas Comerciales
Vias Arteriales como Ejes de “Super Grillas” - Vias interiores para Sendas Locales
Sustainable Mobility Consultation Pop-Up Infrastructure Learned Concepts and Summary -Grid of infrastructure could be planned by overlaying the grid of public schools in it and choosing the streets that are suitable to meet a school every 500m. -Gather the public around the subject of making safe streets for kids to go to school in, generating adherence and little resistance about the topic. -Urban acupuncture interventions in the city and begin to implement this project. -Traffic calming measures as the first step towards including bikes into the transit flows -The urban acupuncture is the part were the “Pop-Up Infrastructure” research takes place, and would be the stepping stone into making beacons for the new mobility plan. -The Infrastructure should be of quick deployment to avoid construction complaints -The Infrastructure should address the subject of reclaiming public space -The Infrastructure should be used as a pilot project, being movable into different locations -The Infrastructure should work with how to introduce the bicycle as an integral part of the Municipality
Santiago Carlos Peña Fiorda
Prototype Pop-Up Infrastructure The Prototype is originated as a response to the suggestion made in the consultation about making smaller interventions to start addressing change. Since the need is immediate and the timing is a key element for this project to move forward making “Pop-Up Infrastructural” projects in different locations of interest was the main aim of the project. By gathering references from the research project and using the generated knowledge as tools that inform the project is that “Ride Your Bike Home” emerges as an initiative. The project’s objective is to create a comprehensive infrastructural project through the use of specifically targeted areas to intervene. The concept refers to create an identity with which bike infrastructure can be identified when fully developed and that locals can also relate to it. The temporary nature of the project makes it tackle the specific subject of the lack of space for the pedestrians in cities as well as providing an easily identifiable location for bike friendly streets. The pop-up time span is a key element for the project to be implemented properly. The idea is that, with a minimum investment and an instant impact, change will just appear from one day to the other, sparing the construction complaints. This is why, the project is made as an autonomous element that can be assembled in a workshop and simply placed in the desired location in one day. This allows for flexibility in for deployment because it allows to make tests through different locations of the city and see which ones are the most keen on accepting bikes in their neighborhood. The infrastructure aspect is directly linked to the scalability of the project. It addresses the subject of having places for storing and parking bikes, it allows for shop extensions, it allows for street markets and it allows for municipality outreach programs. All this relate to utilitarian purposes, but also it tackles the subject of the human interaction between the project and its users. It is a recognizable icon, taken from the historic heritage of the location. It always is a place for gathering and socializing, strengthening the social infrastructure part of the city and it also is a beacon and means of way finding for the locals. To have places to which they can refer to and meet, to be places where they can re-populate the streets and take back what has been given to cars for the people. “Ride Your Bike Home” refers to the resurfacing the originally heritage of the city, in which people used horses as a means of transport and re adapting it to the bike culture. The idea is to appropriate the horse culture rooted in the origins of the city and translate it into bicycles and give them a local identity that people could relate to. Just by adding bike infrastructure, bicycles are aliens to its context. By making a clear reference to local symbols, the concept evokes the imagery to create a site specific infrastructure that is only specific to its location.
Santiago Carlos Peña Fiorda
Ride your Bike Home
SI SAN ISIDRO MUNICIPIO
Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina
Contemporary Renovation of an Argentinean Gaucho into a Contemporary Bike Rider - Language - Identity
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Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina
Gaucho Horse as Transport
Jockey Horse as Recreation
Bike Rider Bike as Recreation
Sanisidrense Bike as Transport
The evolution of the bike user into the contemporary user of the bicycle - Language - Identity
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Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina
SI SAN ISIDRO MUNICIPIO
The frame as the repetitive module that assembles to respond to different situation - Language - Symbol
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Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina
References for the project - Language - Symbol
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Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina
Vernacular horse parking place called “palenque” - Language - Symbol
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Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina
Modern Vernacular reinterpretation of the horse palenque to the bike palenque - Methodology - Insertion
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Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina
References from the WRL project - Methodology - Reference Tools
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Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina
Current situation and proposed situation - Outcome - Language generating Identity and Symbol - Methodology of Insertion through Reference Tools
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Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina
Vernacular horse housing called “establo” - Language - Symbol
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Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina
Modern Vernacular reinterpretation of the horse stable to the “establo comercial� - Methodology - Insertion
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Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina
References from the WRL project - Reference Tools
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Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina
Current situation and proposed situation - Outcome - Language generating Identity and Symbol - Methodology of Insertion through Reference Tools
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Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina
Vernacular horse racing structure called “starter� - Language - Symbol
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Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina
Modern Vernacular reinterpretation of the racing starter to the “starter ferial� - Methodology - Insertion
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Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina
References from the WRL project - Reference Tools
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Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina
Current situation and proposed situation - Methodology of Insertion through Reference Tools
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Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina
Vernacular horse limit structure called “corral” - Language - Symbol
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Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina
Modern Vernacular reinterpretation of the horse corral to the “corral municipal� - Methodology - Insertion
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Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina
References from the WRL project - Reference Tools
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Pop-Up Infrastructure Bicycle Infrastructure Consultation and Temporary White ResearchPavilion Lab in Argentina
Current situation and proposed situation - Methodology of Insertion through Reference Tools
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Conclusion Pop-Up Infrastructure The research project allowed to get a deeper insight into temporary architecture and how infrastructure can work as temporary too. The potential for temporary projects is very important and, if exploited properly, it can become a great tool for the development of concepts and ideas. It is the starting point for a deeper change to happen in the profession, in which time and life-span of a project is static and usually, the development of a building is thought for eternity. The research project collaborates with the idea of legitimizing temporary projects as relevant to a city, a society a culture and to architecture itself. The pivot project of this investigation, Papirøen, is the clear example of the power that temporary projects have in the built environment and how they shape a city, even though they have a short life span. “Pop-Up Infrastructure” tries to elevate the value of temporary projects by seeing them as infrastructure. If temporary elements can be considered infrastructural (utilitarian, social, etc.) the potential that this projects have is massive. In terms of the report itself, there are certain components that can be still worked on by the following person interested in the subject, like the project matrix and the online platform. The matrix could expand, by adding as much projects as one likes, to make it even more comprehensive and precise. Then, to make it more appealing and user friendly, it could be translated to the online platform, gaining the ultimate characteristic which would be that it can become an open source platform for pop-up infrastructural projects. Then, there is still much to be learned from the field work and from studying the different pop-up infrastructural projects and their influence. For the study to be a deep and complete one, much more man power should have been used to gather a great amount of data and results can be much more precise. The project which emerged from this research tried to tie the learned lessons and condense them into one pop-up element. The project was conceived through analizing different symbols and semantic that could easily be traced to the locals to make the infrastructure-people relation more direct. Also, it is thought as a stage by stage project, in which the elements can scale up and tackle different subjects but also be the first step towards a bigger change. In terms of materiality, it would have been interesting to try and build a 1:1 mockup of the element in Scandinavia and test it to receive local feedback which could then be translated into the project in Argentina, and develop this cultural exchange even further. The collaboration with Copenhagenize made the research and the project gain a technical focus that without them it wouldn’t have had and helped to generate a mindset around this type of projects. As a final comment, it was a very enriching experience which is open to anyone who finds an interest in it and wants to move on and broaden the spectrum of what “pop-up infrastructure” can and will be.
Santiago Carlos Peña Fiorda
Pop-Up Infrastructure
White Research Lab
Santiago Carlos PeĂąa Fiorda