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DE ARQUITECTURA

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Ant贸n Capitel Nuevas Lecciones de Arquitectura Moderna

Crembil, Gustavo El Proyecto Paraguas. 1a Edition. Buenos Aires: Nobuko 2014. 120 p, ; 23x17 cm. ISBN XXX-XXX-XXX-XXX-X 1. Arquitectura. I. Título CDD 720

Diseño de Tapa y General: M. Leo Villardi Hecho el depósito que marca la ley 11.723 Impreso en Argentina / Printed in Argentina La reproducción total o parcial de esta publicación, no autorizada por los editores, viola derechos reservados; cualquier utilización debe ser previamente solicitada. © de los textos, Gustavo Crembil © de las imágenes, sus autores © 2014 de la edición, nobuko ISBN XXX-XXX-XXX-XXX-X Octubre de 2014 Este libro fue impreso bajo demanda, mediante tecnología digital Xerox en bibliográfika de Voros S.A. Bucarelli 1160. Capital. info@bibliografika.com / www.bibliografika.com En venta: LIBRERIA TECNICA CP67 Florida 683 - Local 18 - C1005AAM Buenos Aires - Argentina Tel: (54 11) 4314-6303 - Fax: 4314-7135 - E-mail: cp67@cp67.com / www.cp67.com FADU - Ciudad Universitaria Pabellón 3 - Planta Baja - C1428EHA Buenos Aires - Argentina Tel: (54 11) 4786-7244

ร ndice Introduction XX

Argentina Meltdown

Carreros & Cesteros

Gral. Cesteros Cartoneros

XX XX XX

Projects XX Cranbrook Festival Project The Pleasure Garden (PS1/ MoMA) Paraguas Urbano (CCEC) ACADIA TresTetas S.O.S. Iquitos S.O.S. Macapa RPI Paper Studio RPI Amazonia

XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX

Inserts

Machina Tosca Arquitectura Tรกctica Don Julio Profile Chichina Profile Hyperbolic Plane Research and Development Tooling Research and Development

XX XX XX XX XX XX

Afterword XX Bibliography XX

Dedication if applicable.

Preface

Gustavo Crembil

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Foreword

Guest Writer

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2. Ma volorro beate isimolor aut ea inctatem aliassimus rentiandenti officipis ut pelibusciet fuga. At excepro cori te porporum volentius apid que nobit imporep rovidest qui optatem velest volores rem in consed quuntio quas pelest rereperiam autatempor sequatios inctur?

El Proyecto Paraguas

“¿Cómo escapar de esta trampa?”

ARGENTINE CRISIS

El Proyecto Paraguas

Argentine Meltdown

Gustavo Crembil

My work has been driven mostly by projects that involve hands-on research inserted into specific socio-political contexts. In the last twelve years I have developed a practice blurring the lines between the individual and the collective while navigating back and forth between “South” (low material and technologies, political activism, mostly in South America) and “North” (digital processes and fabrication, global urbanism, mostly in United States) themes and locations. Here, the notion of paraguas (umbrella) is used both literally to refer to a series of flower-like canopies developed in collaboration with architect Peter Lynch in the United States; and the architectural activist project developed in Argentina with architect Pablo Capitanelli and in association with economic and politically disfranchised collectives in the Province of Córdoba, Argentina, between 2002 and 2009. Projects claiming some degree of real social insertion are the convergence of many paths and authorships. This paper is part of an on-going attempt to retrace one of those paths (the author’s), acknowledging that many others may get lost or unaccounted for. In 2002, Argentina underwent a massive economic, and political upheaval that left many small businesses bankrupt. The Argentine meltdown of 2001 was the result of an economic crisis as well as a crisis of political representativeness without precedents since the democratic restoration in 1984. Since the 90’s, and for over 10 years, a set of neoliberal practices had promoted a wide array of privatization that undermined the role of the State as known up to that date (public health and education, control of natural resources such as oil, production of steel, national pension system, etc.). An economy of production gave place to an economy of imported goods and services reducing and shifting the population’s workforce. In the first days of 2002 the president had resigned and Argentina faced the absolute discredit of the political class along with the highest unemployment rate in El Proyecto Paraguas

history. Argentina abandoned the “convertibility law” for which 1 Peso = 1 Dollar, converted all bank deposits into pesos and devaluated the currency. With the crisis of 2001 Argentineans felt that they had “hit bottom”, and that a political and economic model was exhausted. On the bright side, they also have the opportunity to start anew, to think and put in motion different models of social, economic and cultural relations. There were many and varied ways to repair the social fabric. These were rough but extremely fertile times for innovative social initiatives (soup kitchens, fábricas tomadas [factories taken over by laid off workers], bartering markets, local currency experiments); as in these contexts, survival is the most basic form of entrepreneurship (Figure 1). Having moved back to Argentina a

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El Proyecto Paraguas

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El Proyecto Paraguas

few months earlier after graduated studies abroad, I started participating in initiatives with local activists and NGOs that were trying to mitigate the consequences of the crisis by proposing social and political alternatives for its resolution; while also engaging in intense discussions on the role of designers in this context with architect Pablo Capitanelli, a former classmate of mine at the Universidad Nacional de C贸rdoba who had been developing an intensive professional building practice focusing on ecological building techniques (most notably in the development of the Eco Barrio Villa Sol in Salsipuedes, Argentina).

El Proyecto Paraguas

“¿Cómo escapar de esta trampa?”

CARREROS & CESTEROS

Carreros & Cesteros

Gustavo Crembil

From these talks and meetings rose the opportunity to create a small business that would make and sell baskets by combining work already being done by two different groups: one, a scattered collective of urban garbage scavengers that collected and sorted street material to use and sell; the other, a group of isolated rural basket weavers. Each group relied on small-scale ingenuity and enterprise. We will later aim to combine their efforts into a collaborative force that would share resources for the mutual benefit of both groups and the surrounding community. With the assistance and support of very active NGOs such as the Instituto para la Cultura, la InnovaciĂłn, y el Desarollo (INCIDE) [Institute for Culture, Innovation and Development] and the regional delegation of Avina Foundation , we built upon the work of programs already in place. We were able to articulate an alliance with these two different types of disfranchised communities, where the precarious support network that existed (though corrupted by local politics) had evaporated, and pre-existing conditions (poverty, malnutrition, untreated endemic deceases) had started to escalate. Cesteros. One of these communities was located in Copacabana, a rural area in the North of the Province of CĂłrdoba. It consisted of a loose community of basket-weavers (cesteros) that used leaf strips of Caranday (Copernicia Alba), a local palm, as their core material. They sold their products, usually underpriced, to supplement their subsistence farming or barter them in exchange for essential goods (oil, soap, flour). Pablo Capitanelli and I were invited and introduced to the community by Marcelo Juncos, from INCIDE, who had been leading a small-scale farming promotion program through the local school system. Juncosâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; initial invitation was geared toward improving the quality and design of the woven artifacts for them to access more profitable markets

El Proyecto Paraguas

-- such as craft, design and touristic stores. For the first year, we focused on surveying and cataloging basket types (to identify common techniques and product types); identifying weavers and degrees of expertise (to map and recognize masters that could help us train and improve the techniques’ quality); and organizing exchange meetings and sales training workshops (to introduce and improve bartering and negotiating skills). We named this program Entramar (interworking), in reference to the structure of textiles and the building of networks and scripts.

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Cartoneros. The other communities were two groups of garbage collectors from Cordoba City, the provincial capital. These were known as “Los Carreros de Villa Urquiza” and “Los Cartoneros de Bajada San Vicente”, in reference to the precarious carros [horse drawn carts, carreros are those who driven them] used to move within the city; carton [cardboard, the main material collected]; and the slums in which they lived (Villa Urquiza, Bajada San Vicente) in the City of Córdoba. Both collectives have been 37

active for several years and had managed to initiate cooperative enterprises of informal garbage collection aiming to skip intermediaries --informal garbage business underworld is largely dominated by middle-men chain of small warehouses and consolidators where the cartonero [cardboard scavenger] is the weakest link-- and negotiate with the recycling plants themselves. Here the initial introductions were made through social and political activist groups, as the Asociación Raíces [Roots Association] and the Servicio a la Acción Popular (SEAP) [People’s Action Service]. The project that corresponded with these urban collectives was called Cirujia Urbana [urban surgery]. Ciruja, a deformation of the Spanish word cirujano [surgeon] was a derogatory name used to refer to the urban scavenger. While with the rural cesteros the tasks were oriented to rescue, organize and strengthen an existing practice, with the [urban] carreros the focus was on developing products that could add value to the main recollected materials. This occurred first on paper and cardboard through a system of pressed-paper panels, and later on plastic PET bottles that will allow us to link both economies. In our plan, discarded plastic bottles collected by the scavengers would be bartered with the weavers as raw material for their bas38

El Proyecto Paraguas

kets. The weavers would then slice the bottles using a rotational cutting tool that we designed. They would benefit from increased efficiency and a sustainable supply of material, while the scavengers would have a steady distribution chain for their goods. Simultaneously, the weavers would provide hands-on-training to the scavengers in the craft of basket weaving, allowing the urban workers to add value to their found materials. In time, Cirujia Urbana and Entramar became El Proyecto

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Paraguas, or The Umbrella Project: “a symbiotic partnership between the rural and the urban, design and manufacturing, communities and individuals” (as described in our proposal submitted to CCEC). The aim of the ‘umbrella’ was to bring together the two disenfranchised economies and cultures (urban and rural) to share technologies, skills, and resources, which would increase economic and political leverage. The small-scale design enterprise is an example of what we call a social technology project – one that lends greater efficiency and distribution potential to craft-based economies.

El Proyecto Paraguas

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El Proyecto Paraguas

Convivial Tool

Gustavo Crembil In The Machina Tosca Project, an unpublished text I wrote in early 2001, before the crisis exploded, I called for a change in the Argentinean culture state of affairs that was still trapped in a “civilization and barbarism” oppositional dichotomy that looked down on and patronized popular artifacts and knowledge. This text would set up the initial ideas and framework to be discussed with Pablo Capitanelli, and also would echo my dialogue with Peter Lynch, my former teacher and mentor, then Architect-inresidence at Cranbrook Academy of Art (Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, USA). Lynch had visited the City of Córdoba in 2000 to lead a design team in a design workshop organized by the Universidad Nacional, where we all work together. Back in the U.S., he kept in fluid dialog while drafting a proposal for alternative exchange economies between urban and rural marginalized communities based on Ivan Illich’s argument for the development of “tools for conviviality”. Illich called for inverting “the present deep structure of tools” that supported the “‘modernized poverty,’ dependency, and an out-of-control system in which the humans become worn-down mechanical parts”; and asked for the development of “tools that guarantee the right to work with independent efficiency” [Tools for Conviviality. 1973]. 48

By mid-2002 Argentinean economy had evaporated and all political leadership was under question, we found ourselves involved in the ‘autonomic’ initiatives that started to sprout in the emergency. Building upon Michael De Certau’s notion of ‘tactical’ [The Practice of Everyday Life. 1984] and its later appropriation by Gert Lovink and David Garcia [The ABC of Tactical Media. 1997], I made a call for a horizontal, furtive and inclusive architectural practice that breaks away from the traditional omniscient professional role (the planner) to engage reality in a dialogic approach at grass-root level [Arquitectura Táctica. 2002]. With the support of local organizations, we started testing ideas for a “social technology”, design approach focused as much in the development of the object (product) as in the socio-political armature (skills, alliances) necessary for its development and/or implementation. As a small-scale economic development approach, we proposed the local manufacture of products from recycled materials. We argued that a project like this would not only provide employment and job training; it could also supply material to rebuild the local housing stock and develop leadership skills and consensus building. This could in turn help the disenfranchised groups to increase their self-determination and political leverage. El Proyecto Paraguas

Arquitectura Táctica Breve manifiesto por una práctica arquitectónica furtiva

Gustavo Crembil & Pablo Capitanelli Preponemos explorar la noción de una arquitectura táctica dentro del marco de la descripción de Michael de Certau de los usos cotidianos que la gente común hace de las representaciones, textos y artefactos que nos rodean.1 De Certeau afirma que estos usos son ‘tácticos’ a través de ‘apropiaciones furtivas” y describe este proceso de consumo “...como un set de tácticas a través de las cuales el débil hace uso, se apropia, de lo fuerte. Caracteriza al usuario rebelde (prefiere el termino ‘usuario’ al de consumidor) como táctico, y a los productores arrogantes (en donde incluye autores, educadores, curadores y revolucionarios) como estratégicos. El establecer esta dicotomía le permite producir un vocabulario de tácticas rico y suficientemente complejo como para conseguir una estética distintiva y reconocible. Una estética existencial. Una estética del hurto, la trampa, la lectura, el hablar, el vagabundeo, el comprar, el desear. Ardides astutos, maniobras arteras de cazador, situaciones polimorfas, descubrimientos alegres, tanto poéticos como bélicos.”2 Los términos Táctica y Estrategia remiten al vocabulario militar y refieren al manejo de recursos para el desarrollo de una acción, se diferencian en su definición según los momentos y circunstancias. Si lo Estratégico responde a una lógica de orden vertical y refiere a los planteos previos - de acuerdo a hipótesis y suposiciones, que permitirían llegar posicionado a la acción -, lo Táctico responde a una lógica de orden horizontal y se refiere al manejo de todos los elementos durante el desarrollo de la acción misma, lo que implica ir variando los planteos de 49

acuerdo a las circunstancias que se van presentando en el momento. La Estrategia orienta hacia una visión como ciencia, la Táctica hacia un arte. En arquitectura este planteo dependería del posicionamiento del interlocutor. La práctica tradicional (profesional) trabaja desde la visión panóptica del profesional moderno, herencia del geómetra omnisciente renacentista, abstracta y de control. Una práctica táctica implicaría una lectura y acción a nivel de la calle, desde donde suceden las cosas. Dentro del campo de la arquitectura implica, necesariamente, una critica del rol del arquitecto (y por extensión de la arquitectura), ya que en su concepción misma está embebida como vehículo de Poder y de ejercicio de una Verdad. Más que buscar la solución de un problema a través de la generación de un objeto diseñado final, deseamos explorar esta noción táctica a través de la generación de dispositivos arquitectónicos, tecnológicos y conceptuales que puedan ser apropiados, deformados y que, finalmente, desaparezcan, dentro de la practica comunitaria. Tomando como punto de partida el actual estado deliberativo de la sociedad, pretendemos hacer converger dos nociones de ‘red’, la tecnológica (en un sentido amplio, no sólo digital) y las redes ciudadanas, con el objetivo de generar una situación de ‘diálogo público’: un intercambio de experiencias y puntos de vista donde las diferencias sean percibidas como vínculos potenciales y recursos sociales y tecnológicos alternativos, cuya finalidad es intervenir directamente en la vida social con la construcción de “escenarios” para que sucedan “cosas”, usando a la práctica arquitectónica como instrumento de interacción y cambio.

–––––– 1. De Certeau, Michael. La practica de la vida cotidiana. 2. García, David Y Lovink, G. The ABC of Tactical Media. 50

El Proyecto Paraguas

Machina_Tosca Declaración original

Gustavo Crembil El modelo argentino de producción artística y cultural es dependiente y colonial. En general, las instituciones culturales desechan los conocimientos, materiales, y tradiciones populares, por considerarlas “menores” o de baja condición, o por lo menos no tan legítimas como aquellas claramente definidas por una definición conservadora de “arte”. Reproduciéndose así, sin crítica, un modelo metropolitano y hegemónico de práctica artística e institucional. Esto es particularmente importante en el caso argentino, porque éste dilema esta forma parte de la perpetua búsqueda de identidad nacional, expresada en la antinomia: “civilización o barbarie”, que se extiende a otras relaciones, por ejemplo:

Metropolitano Periférico Ciudad Rural Elite Masa Ilustrado Analfabeto Europeo Criollo Urbana Rural Puerto Interior Arte Artesanía Mente Cuerpo

En este contexto, las tradiciones populares desaparecen por la falta de apoyo y la endémica crisis económica de los países de esta parte del mundo. Estos saberes y con51

ocimientos populares desaparecen y sus practicantes pasan a engrosar la masa de desempleados que se amontona en los centros urbanos. Mientras que la elite intelectual y artística reduce su participación en la escena cultural internacional a una reproducción a destiempo de las discusiones de los países centrales (EE.UU. y Europa), una discusión en la que ya no participan con un discurso original y genuino (excepto expresiones individuales y esporádicas). ¿Cómo escapar de esta trampa? Machina Tosca es una propuesta para escapar de este círculo. Machina Tosca es un proyecto institucional que propone la creación de una organización y centro del trabajo destinado a la investigación, desarrollo y promoción de la tecnología popular y de sus usos. Machina Tosca se establecería en la ciudad de Córdoba, el segundo centro urbano de Argentina, un importante punto de desarrollo académico e industrial de la región. Machina Tosca se propone convertirse en un centro de trabajo para el debate “hands-on” (practico) del papel que le corresponde a las tradiciones tecnológicas populares dentro de la construcción del discurso contemporáneo, y de la necesidad de su colección, preservación, actualización y desarrollo. Machina Tosca no busca un rescate “folk” de estas tradiciones sino documentar, investigar y desarrollarlas con el objetivo de actualizar su práctica e integrarlas al proceso cultural y productivo.

El Proyecto Paraguas

LOS PROYECTOS

El Proyecto Paraguas

Cranbrook Festival Project

Gustavo Crembil Title

In 2005 I was back in the United States and Peter Lynch invited me to work as material consultant in a proposal for a series of ancillary structures for an outdoors art festival at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Among other components of the project were a series of flower-like structures designed to provide shade for the festival patrons. With this project, we saw an opportunity to engage the Argentinean communities at a different scale of production. We also saw an opportunity to attempt an epistemological jump, in one side relating the local in-development grass-root network with the global (strict deadlines and dimensions, packaging, shipping), but also placed ourselves in crisis (were we flexible enough to incorporate unexpected changes? how strong was the coalition plan to survive pressure and dealings?). We commissioned the Copacabana weavers to help us to build one prototype of these shade/umbrella/canopy structures for Cranbrookâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s festival. We found that the unusual characteristics of the commission were crucial to the larger development of our partnership: under the guidance of Pablo Capitanelli, the weavers were required to organize and weave collectively, something that they used to practice individually in their houses. Leaders and masters rose, roles and schedules were established to collect palm leaves and organize shifts, the unusual scale and shape of the piece forced them to figure how two or three weavers could work in the same piece simultaneously (Figure 2). The entire process from initial conversations to final delivery in Michigan took about a semester. Even though the festival project will be later cancelled by Cranbrook, the recognition abroad of their craft and expertise, when locally was often dismissed, proved to be a galvanizing moment for the weavers themselves and the collaborative association we were trying to develop

El Proyecto Paraguas

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El Proyecto Paraguas

“..[la] finalidad es intervenir directamente en la vida social con la construcción de “escenarios” para que sucedan “cosas”...”

El Proyecto Paraguas

Hyperbolic Surfaces

These canopies were constructed by the edgeto-edge joining of annular bands of constant radius. The resulting undulating surface was the inevitable consequence of the wrapped annular bands. Paradoxically, the resulting complex geometry, a hyperbolic surface, had long been a mathematical dilemma. In Nature, where there is profusion of hyperbolic forms, they are the result of an increasing surface within a limited volume. Mathematicians once thought that it was impossible to construct physical models of them,

until in 1997 Daina Taimina, a mathematician at Cornell, discovered a way to develop them by means of crocheting. We did not know how this quotidian handicraft discovery exactly came about, as people have been knitting similar shapes for centuries. Regardless, this discovery encouraged DIY hands-on mathematician networks of practice that can be exemplified with the Crochet Coral Reef project developed by the sisters Margaret and Christine Wertheim through their Institute of Figuring. 65

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El Proyecto Paraguas

Don Julio (Reportaje)

Gustavo Crembil Title

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El Proyecto Paraguas

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El Proyecto Paraguas

“..[la] finalidad es intervenir directamente en la vida social con la construcción de “escenarios” para que sucedan “cosas”...”

El Proyecto Paraguas

“..[la] finalidad es intervenir directamente en la vida social con la construcción de “escenarios” para que sucedan “cosas”...”

Chinina

Gustavo Crembil Title

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El Proyecto Paraguas

“..[la] finalidad es intervenir directamente en la vida social con la construcción de “escenarios” para que sucedan “cosas”...”

El Proyecto Paraguas

“..[la] finalidad es intervenir directamente en la vida social con la construcción de “escenarios” para que sucedan “cosas”...”

The Pleasure Garden

Gustavo Crembil Title

In 2008, Peter Lynch and I (now as “THEM: Lynch + Crembil”, an architectural design partnership based in New York City) will revisit these canopy structures originally conceived for Cranbrook’s festival, in our runner-up finalist submission for the renown MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program (YAP) invited competition in New York City. We proposed a revision of the Arcadian myth. The “Pleasure Garden” was a placeholder for Nature organized under three ideas: a forest of hand-woven flower shaped canopies for New York urbanites to linger, a meadow for romantic sunbaths, and a misty and wet grotto for close encounters. The proposal explored what “craft in the age of globalization” might look like. We aimed to bring together high- and low-tech processes (digital scripting and handcrafts), high- and low-skill techniques (CNC fabrication, concrete casting, basket-weaving), local and foreign producers, natural and industrial materials within the umbrella of a fair-trade network. 1. A coalition of rural basket weavers and informal urban scav-

engers in Argentina would hand-weave palm fronds into annular bands of constant radius. Hung from an undulating tubular steel edge beam and joined edge-to-edge, these curving bands would generate flower-shaped canopies. The complex geometry, a hyperbolic surface, is an inevitable result of the wrapped annular bands. The resulting forest of overlapping canopies, each 32 feet in diameter, would create a shady, dappled grove in the main courtyard of PS1. 2. Small independent ceramics manufacturers in Jingdezhen,

China, (the millenary porcelain capital of the world) would fabricate glazed, slip-cast blocks for the grotto. These three-dimensional blocks were created by slip casting spherical voids. A number 88

El Proyecto Paraguas

of different building units options were generated by packing and sectioning this shape. Prototypes were developed while in residency at the European Ceramic Work Centre, in S’Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands.

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3. A local community group, Sustainable South Bronx, would work

with at-risk high school students to manufacture a new type of dry-laid soil-cement landscaping block for retaining walls, benches, and counters. The top and bottom surfaces of these blocks would have a sloping, undulating ruled surface that helped them stack and lock together. Three types of block (straight, curved, and half-curved) could be combined in different ways by enterprising “do-it-yourself” visitors to PS1, who would be free to build various structures on the “forest floor”.

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These three spaces of the garden, three zones of desire, might present three cases of how communities continuously reconvert themselves in order to survive. The exchange could be catalytic. Sustainable South Bronx, which is committed to revitalizing local manufacturing, might use the YAP opportunity to prototype a marketable product. The Argentinean weavers and cartoneros7 might gain strength by joining their networks and leap into larger-scale manufacturing and greater social recognition8. The Jingdezhen manufacturers might gain a foothold in a new export market, high-relief wall tiles. In this way the YAP would create spin-offs unrelated to MoMAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s patronage.

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Paraguas Urbano

Gustavo Crembil Title

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Even though our proposal was not selected winner, the project was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York City, from July to October of 2008. Meanwhile in Argentina, the initiative we had started in 2002 and the interest on the project had continued growing on its own. At this point the country was more stable, even though the socio-economic inequalities have become more persistent, and the project had started to gain more attention and support from local foundations, cultural and academic institutions, such as the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Universidad Blas Pascal, CONIN Foundation, among others. Most importantly, the news media, even if it only to fill their feeling good percentage of news, provided a free promotional venue to spread the word and increase the visibility of both the weavers and cartoneros. In one side the woven products made by the cesteros were starting to find venues in design and home decoration stores; in the other, the cartoneros represented another example of informal garbage collectors on-going campaign to be recognized as legitimate (and unionized) workers. In parallel to our Pleasure Garden runner-up submission, our Argentinian colleagues, Pablo Capitanelli and his partner Diego Dragotto, with which we had developed the Cirujia Urbana and Entramar projects, kept a fluid dialog with the collectives and had collaborated with them in design competitions and attracted the attention of local and national media. A particular opportunity was an invitation from Centro Cultural España-Córdoba (CCEC) [Spain-Cordoba Cultural Center], a local branch of the Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional (AECI) [Spanish International Cooperation Agency] network and the most active and innovative cultural center of the city, to participate in the exhibition “Basura: Diseño y Reciclaje” [Garbage: Design & Recycling] in October 2007. It would be with this invitation that the alliance between cartoneros and cesteros will effectively operate. El Proyecto Paraguas

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Though amused, the Copacabana weavers were reluctant to adopt the new tool and the plastic strips. They may sometimes use artificial materials to fabricate their wares but keep them for their own domestic use. Initially they will claim that the plastic strips were too harsh for their hands, to later admit they felt more bounded to tradition and preferred to be identified with the Caranday palm traditional of the area, so much they used the plants’ as brand name for their products. The cartoneros, on the other hand, were eager to adopt the technique. They quickly recognized it as way to “add value” to the collected garbage material; and use its novelty in media-savvy tactics to bring public awareness to their practice. The project for the CCEC exhibition (September 4 to October 27, 2007) was collaborative work developed in partnership between cartoneros cooperatives of Villa Urquiza and Bajada San Vicente, the basket-weaving communities of Copacabana and Deán Funes, Quinua Arquitectura (Pablo Capitanelli plus Diego Dragotto), and our “THEM: Lynch + Crembil” office based in New York City. It included the fabrication and exhibition of one canopy (a faceted and more simplified modular version capable of being fabricated and woven in smaller groups), and the production of a documentary and series of events intended to give the coalition a public platform. The following year, 2008, the resulting ‘umbrella’ will be exhibited in other institutions such as the local Alliance Française and the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, which will help maintain momentum. (Figure 5)

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The coalition was articulated through a basic piece of social technology, a rotational cutting tool (bottle cutter) that allowed to strip continuous thin stripes from commonly used PET plastic bottles. We were aware that several designers have been developing similar tools, such as Contenido Neto (Alejandro Sarmiento, Mikki Friedenbach) whose work we came in contact with at New Yorkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 2004 International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF). All these design attempts were based on an old traditional stripping leather tool that Argentinean gauchos used to make using an osobuco (marrow) bone and knife. An early model was developed by Javier Cohen and me, and presented to the Copacabana weavers for their evaluation. Months later, Capitanelli and Dragotto came into contact with a more advanced device developed at the Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires. This final version was the one adopted and improved for the project (Figure 4).

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“..[la] finalidad es intervenir directamente en la vida social con la construcción de “escenarios” para que sucedan “cosas”...”

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ACADIA Competition

Gustavo Crembil Title

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Tres Tetas

Gustavo Crembil Title

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