SYNTHETIC TERRITORY an exploration into a new architectural wonderland camila e. sotomayor massey + yoder fall. 2007
thesis.prep
“A hypothesis is always a product of the imagination in the interest of the originator’s intentions. To project an imaginary world as a hypothesis would be totally gratuitous unless in doing so, one was addressing shortcomings in one’s reality.” Elia Zenghelis
TEXT & ARCHITECTURE: ARCHITECTURE AS TEXT
TABLE OF CONTENTS thesis rear-view Exodus or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture
Beijing and Dubai as the Horizon Rem Koolhaas The Potteries Thinkbelt Cedric Price Drawing in Three Dimensions CJ Lim
entry + destination
Bolivia
Current state Territory Natural Resources Geopolitical history
method
The Imaginary Scenario Architecture
constructing the scenario
Scenario No. 1 Autonomy Means Division Scenario No. 2 A Bolivia Absorbed and Abandoned Scenario No. 3 Bolivia’s Ghost Urbanism Scenario No. 4 Empowerment by Way of a Power Play
sneak peek
thesis
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As an initial disclaimer directed to the reader, upon reading this thesis book, please leave behind any normative definitions you might have about architecture. Instead, allow the ideas and musings found within these pages to incite new value to what we consider architecture. A re-definition whose boundaries are uncompromising yet not at all restricted to the realm of the built environment. This new Architecture is the reanimation of dormant global responsibilities that occur at the scale of a country. A third or even second world country, desperate for improvement, has few options for growth without compromising its own economic or political independence. Could architecture be retooled to liberate a nation from its own impasse? Imagine architecture applied to the prediction of a country’s near future. Dissolution, loss, loyalty, autonomy and exploitation, all which serve to identify current global trends, now are the ingredients for this new Architecture phenomenon. This thesis is an attempt to widen the scope of the discipline. Here is architecture committed to the bigger picture, released from the tunnel vision of faint-hearted improvements. Architecture by definition has become stunted with its ties to providing solutions at a human scale. Contrary to the surrounding architecture, this new application is not about focusing on isolated minutia; it is the architecture of designing a future environment for an existing country by means of an imaginary scenario. Within the scope of this project the imaginary scenario is defined as a hybrid of actual and fictional elements, when juxtaposed these factors serve to generate architecture. As the scenario unfolds, so does the development of the country (vis-à -vis- its urbanism) and of the new architecture. Bolivia will be exposed as a site containing a problematic. The problems Bolivia is experiencing are filtered in order to achieve insight into the actual situation. When combined with a possible future, the problematic then develops a solution; whereupon a seamless integration between the production of resources and the urbanism itself is then established. An almost organic synthesis produces a positive outcome instead of the parasitical relationship one finds in most common cities.
rear -view
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One of the very first thesis exercises. Keeping the objectives clear is always important, the sketch helped in relating the precedents with the actual intentions of the thesis.
Exodus or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture Rem Koolhaas + Elia Zenghelis
Plan of the Wall in London
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Exodus was Koolhaas’ thesis project for the Architectural Association in 1972. With an understanding of the Berlin Wall politically and psychologically, Koolhaas cuts like a knife through London with an inhabitable wall. Through the use of formal analogies and elements pregnant with symbolism, Koolhaas weaves an architecture capable of satisfying human desire for the good life. His story begins with a London divided into a Good Half and a Bad Half. The conflict arises when the Bad Half begins a migration towards the Good Half in search of a better lifestyle. The Good Half becomes threatened by a saturation of its populace. This mass exodus alarms authorities and a wall is erected around the Good Half. This wall becomes architecture of desire as it transforms from an obstruction to a safe haven for those individuals weary of London. Within the utopian semblance lurks an uneasy notion of dystopia. Here is a project that has made use of an Imaginary Scenario for the purpose of evaluating Architecture differently. Koolhaas has often complained that Architecture is too “slow” to be relevant in today’s world.1 Architecture desperately needs to parallel process with the world around it. We as architects are prized for our capacity to think not only on various levels but to tie those thoughts together to form a cohesive design. Exodus achieves a fluid design process because of a strong commentary on both society and the state of architecture. The initial premise, Scenario, informs the developing architecture which in turn relates to a program driven by desire. Koolhaas reinterprets the Berlin Wall as a monument in order to contest common notions of good and bad, hypocrisy and politics, captivity and freedom. The strip of a city has no reference to religious or political institutions. The Wall is divided into eleven zones, each area is easily comparable to familiar urban elements; the hospital (The Institute of Biological Transactions, a gated community (The Allotments), a public library (The Square of the Captive Globe or the Square of the Arts). Exodus uses its own Architecture to criticize Architecture.2 1 Kool Enough for Beijing?. China Daily. 03.02.04. <http://www.chinadaily.com/cn/english/doc/2004-03/02/content_310800.htm> 2 Zenghelis, Elia. Text and Architecture: Architecture as Text. Exit Utopia: Architectural Provocations.1956-76. by Martin Van Schaik. IHAAU- Delft. University of Technology. Prestel 2005.
Although the scale of site is vastly different between Exodus and the thesis in Bolivia, the objectives are the same. To follow a premise that goes beyond criticizing how we design in order to formulate possibilities as to how we can control our environments through architecture. Dubai’s massive growth in just fourteen years.
Koolhaas’proposal for the Convention and Exhibition Center in Ras Al-Khaimah, known as the Deathstar (below in the lower right hand corner) The project is integrated in a proposal for a whole new city in the area, which takes the form of a rectangular ‘walled’, almost Assyrian city.
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Beijing and Dubai as the Horizon Rem Koolhaas
Koolhaas’ interest in global metropolis’ has led to a fascination with cities like Dubai and Beijing. In a recent interview he expressed a desire to be involved in the future of the city, not just one building. Within the growth of the city there is an opportunity for change, “we are being called to build a new city in China, there is a chance there for a new architecture, and we should be involved in that.”3 In order to reach their own empowerment both Dubai and Beijing have reinvented the city not only physically but also is definition. China has been steadily building a crescendo of power and is poised to take the US’ place as a global heavyweight. While Dubai, in a site previously overlooked by modernism, almost overnight has made a model for a new type of urban city. Is Dubai an investment, a mirage, the city of the future or even a utopia? Dubai has no context and as a result has become a free-for-all architectural playground. Architects have no real connective tissue to cement the image of the building with the history of the site, its people, or even the city itself. Public space is even nonexistent. 3 Zenghelis, Elia. Text and Architecture: Architecture as Text. Exit Utopia: Architectural Provocations.1956-76. by Martin Van Schaik. IHAAU- Delft. University of Technology. Prestel 2005.
Beijing, Dubai and Exodus can be understood as starting from a Scenario. The former two have evolved into outrageous urbanisms that seem to have been taken from a science fiction novel, while Exodus is a startling insight into what a metropolis can become. A similar approach must be applied to Bolivia. The country desires liberating factors that will enable it to move forward beyond US repression or neighbor encroachment. The thesis will have to progress beyond simply a proposal for a new urbanism. It is not enough to simply overhaul our cities, and then expect that a nation will follow. If the situation were reversed, by beginning with the premise that a country is a collective (of cities), the key is how to affect the collective to then trigger a change for the country. Beijing depicted as the Dynamic City
The Potteries Thinkbelt Cedric Price
Cedric Price’s architecture marks a shift from a determined and mechanical architectural paradigm to the fluid and indeterminate model of the information age. Towards the end of World War II, Britain had already fallen as a major industrial power to the emergent United States. The country was at an impasse, refusing to recognize post-industrial technology and losing its best scientists and engineers to the Brain Drain of the 1960’s. Once thriving hives of industrialism, the cities of Sheffield, Newcastle and Staffordshire were left languishing in a state of decay, with factories closed and their workmen laid off. Price grew up in the Staffordshire Potteries and took it upon himself to revitalize the area with a project of higher education. The project had no client and was a result of the Junior Government Minister challenging the architect to devise his own university after Price had criticized the state of universities in Britain. Price proposed utilizing the derelict railway network of the vast Potteries district as the basic infrastructure for a new technical “school.” As opposed to the centrality found on a campus university, Price chose to reverse the focus and establish a network. The network as a basis for design would be incredibly flexible, extendable into the landscape and indeterminate. Price often enjoyed this element of uncertainty, and the Potteries Thinkbelt as a project had great programmatic variability.4 Mobile classroom, laboratory and residential modules would be placed on the disused railway lines and shunted around the region, to be grouped and assembled as required by current needs, and then moved and regrouped as those needs changed. Modular housing and administrative units would be assembled at various fixed points along the rail lines.5 4
Architectural Association Works II. Cedric Price. 1984. EG Bond, London.
5 Mathews, Stanley. Potteries Thinkbelt: an Architecture of Calculated Uncertainty. September 2000. Hobart & William Smith Colleges. <http://people.hws.edu/mathews/potteries_thinkbelt.htm#_ftn5>
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(above) The Plan of the primary road network with desired lines between housing and faculty transfer zones (the area between shown in dotted lines). Covering a 108 square mile “campus,” Price’s Thinkbelt would provide scientific education for 22,000 students, reestablish the North Staffordshire Potteries as a center of science and technology in the English Midlands and establish a viable source of labor for the surrounding population.
Priceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s philosophy of enabling a situation through architecture is fascinating. With the Potteries Thinkbelt Price cleverly made use of an existing network of railways and trams in order to lay a foundation for architecture. This is precisely the goal of the thesis with Bolivia, to empower a country with a viable future through the use of architecture. The Thinkbeltâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s approach to design uncertainties, scale and its use of a network, are all models useful for the Imaginary Scenario and the eventual architecture. The Scenario unconsciously has moments of indeterminacy. It would become unreasonable for the designer to desire complete control over all aspects and outcomes of the design. As a flexible structure, the use of a network serves to organize a great deal of territory based on a certain prerogative. The chosen Scenario will affect Bolivia with a momentary tabula rasa, whereupon new territory will be controlled through a governing set of rules. Joining existing cities within a network can serve to establish a foundation for an architecture proposal. This idea encompasses the similarities in scale between the Thinkbelt and Bolivia. Both deal with territories larger than the scope of a city and inform architecture with the capability to unify. (below right) The tram approaching one of the Transfer Stations with a crane in the background ready to pick up and deposit trams. (below) View from the inside of the educational trams.
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Drawing in Three Dimensions CJ Lim
Founder to the London based Studio 8, CJ Lim now is the Director at the Bartlett Architecture Research Lab at the University College London. Similar to Price and Koolhaas, Lim uses his work to challenge architecture traditions. With various projects Lim has employed a narrative, be it a bedtime story or a fable, to create architecture. Aside from the similar use of a Scenario to emancipate design, Lim illustrates his worlds with what he calls three dimensional drawing. He comes from a generation that demanded a reappraisal of drawing within the architecture practice. Through the use of painting and his 3D drawings, Lim tests and explores his architectural narratives. This is tremendously useful when attempting to illustrate an idea frozen between fiction and reality. Throughout this thesis year a personal goal has been set; to explore different graphic mediums. Representing the Scenario within a variety of mediums can serve as a didactic method for design procurement. Due to its nature the thesis project will rely heavily on images and within the design process, physical models of the architecture, in order to best communicate the Scenario.
(right) Lim uses the legendary story of Marco Poloâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s meeting with the Mongol Emperor, Kublai Khan as a generator for design. In these portrayals of how Khan might have imagined Venice after their conversations, the city took on aspects of the East and reconfigured itself in new architectural forms.
A proposal for the Olympic Landmark 2012 in Paris. Inspired by the work of french author Jules Verne, the work presents a flotilla of red, white and blue hot air balloons that have gathered Olympic guests from all participating countries. With elements either floating above or embedded in the tarmac it leaves the ground surface free for circulation and other events.
entry + destination
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Bolivia
Current State
Bolivia, named after the liberator Simon Bolivar, achieved independence from Spain in 1825. Since then, it has experienced over 200 coup dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ĂŠtats. The country has been plagued with deep-seated poverty, social conflict and problems concerning the production of coca. In 1982 civilian rule established a Democracy. However in December of 2005, Bolivians elected a former coca farmer, Evo Morales, the leader of the Movement Toward Socialism. Morales won the election by the widest margin since the restoration of civilian rule in 1982. Since then, his presidency has proven to be controversial. The United States fears that his close alliance with Venezuela and its president, Hugo Chavez, is a threat to democracy in South America. Chavez himself has allied with Cuba and its president, Fidel Castro. Morales and Chavez both espouse a government based on democratic socialism (socialism is the basis for the economy while democracy is the governing principle). During his presidency Morales has adopted strategies that are intended to change the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s traditional political class and empower the poor majority. However, since taking office, his controversial strategies have exacerbated racial and economic tensions between the Amerindian populations of the Andean west and the non-indigenous communities of the eastern lowlands. Composed of fledgling nations, South America is currently in the midst of asserting its identity. This makes analyzing Bolivia in a modern context fascinating. Due to the constant state of flux with alliances, economic exchanges, and new developments within each country, South America is already a site of experimentation. Chile, Bolivia and Venezuela are unafraid to take on socialist dogmas. Countries like Bolivia, Brazil and Venezuela have virtually no middle class as we in the US recognize. Cities are divided between areas of extreme poverty and postcard destinations of the wealthy.
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+ Map of Geographic Altitudes
Population: 9,119,152 people
Population below poverty line: 64% (2004 est.)
Ethnic groups:
Quechua 30%, mestizo (mixed white and Amerindian ancestry) 30%,
Aymara 25%, white 15%
Quechua 30%,
Religions:
Roman Catholic 95%, Protestant (Evangelical Methodist) 5%
Languages:
Spanish (official), Quechua (official), Aymara (official)
Literacy:
definition: age 15 and over can read and write total population: 86.7% male: 93.1% female: 80.7% (2001 census)
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Territory
Currently the country is divided into regions with the Andes Mountains splitting the land into two halves. This division has literally affected the population isolating the capital of La Paz, and created social rifts between the indigenous who live in the northern mountains, the Altiplanos, and the Cruce単os who live in Media Luna (half moon so named because of its shape. This area has a great deal of European expatriates, from Spain, Germany and Italy. The second largest natural gas reserve in South America is located in the Media Luna. Recently water was nationalized and placed in the hands of the population, to a limited success. Negotiations have begun to nationalize the gas reserves, a notion that that the Cruce単os are vehemently against. Argentina and Brazil both have agreements with the Media Luna, since it supplies them with natural gas. Contrary to the Media Luna, the north is pro-Marx and anti-America, often receiving the brute end of American wrath towards the coca plant. The president, Evo Morales, a coca farmer himself, wrote a new constitution that enabled the indigenous people with more power. In January 2007 a violent clash arose in Cochabamba between the city dwellers of the Media Luna and the campesinos. Underlying tensions have yet to be resolved.
West Bolivia with a large population of Indigenous people.
East Bolivia with the area of Santa Cruz, called the Media Luna.
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/americas/bolivia_veg_1971.jpg
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/americas/bolivia_pop_1971.jpg
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Natural Resources
Aside from growing coca, Boliviaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s agricultural market also provides soybeans, coffee, cotton, corn, sugarcane, rice, potatoes and timber. Its imports include petroleum products, plastics, paper, aircraft and aircraft parts, prepared foods, automobiles, insecticides and soybeans. In 2003, violent protests against the pro-foreign investment economic policies of ex-President Sanchez de Lozada led to his resignation and the cancellation of plans to export Boliviaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s newly discovered natural gas reserves to large northern hemisphere markets. In 2005, the government passed a controversial natural gas law that imposed significantly higher taxes on the oil and gas firms and required production firms to sign new operating contracts, which were completed in October 2006. Bolivian officials are in the process of revamping the defunct stateowned oil company and acquiring majority ownership of five gas production, transportation, refining, and storage companies. Evo Moralesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; administration plans to increase state control over other sectors as well, including mining, electricity, telecommunications, transportation, and forestry.
Denotation of coca plant farms. The west cultivates 80% of the nations coca production.
Denotation of land with natural gas reserves. The largest client is Brazil, who has large pipes that connect to Bolivia.
Geopolitical History
Even before Boliviaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s inception it has suffered from territorial insecurity. Over the years land boundaries have contracted and expanded to once include access to the sea, an aspect which Bolivia lacks today.
yr 1814
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yr 1822
yr 1826
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yr 1878
yr 1890
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yr 1878
method
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The Imaginary Scenario
Bolivia, one of two landlocked countries in South America, currently holds the title of the poorest of all South American countries. Although rich in natural resources, like iron, magnesium and natural gas, Boliviaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s greatest pride is the growth of the coca plant. The Indigenous people are largely the ones that grow the plant in the Altiplanos of the Andes mountain range. Coca is not a drug for them; instead it is an essential part of yearly rituals, their heritage and their livelihood. Only after the coca plant is shipped to foreign countries (USA, Brazil and Colombia) is the leaf processed into cocaine. Heavy intervention on behalf of the US has destroyed many of the crops of the campesinos in the name of drug wars, sparking opposition to anything American and Capitalist both in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela. These coca wars are dividing the country into two territories, one pro-coca and the other pro-America. Since 2005 Bolivia has been led by Evo Morales, a Socialist thinker from an indigenous background. His political agenda has included nationalizing the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s oil and natural gas industries. This was done in the style of old Latin American Populist governments; characterized by melodrama and an unwillingness to negotiate.
To the designer it would appear that the problematic lies in its attachment to reality. Therefore, the intention is to create a setting where access and the further development of Bolivia are possible. If the project cannot exist in reality then its rational creation would be within an Imagined Scenario. The Imagined Scenario as an enabler for design will in effect produce new ramifications for Architecture. Change will occur within how architecture is conceived, produced and to what it is applied. This is Architecture that is born out of initial need and cultivated through design decisions that are technically creative and rationally consequential. The Imagined Scenario is instrumental as a generator for design.
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Through imagination, fantastic circumstances provoke the designer into novelty and innovation of design. As a result otherwise inaccessible territory is reached. As with certain literature, the line that borders reality and fantasy is blurred. At times fiction can mingle with real events and become non-fiction; believability in a fantastical world. For this strategy to work, in creating a project out of fantasy, the architect must follow through an apparently fantastic initial hypothesis with careful intelligence and sagacity. It is imperative that the Imagined Scenario be controlled in every step of its generative process and in its designed consequences as well. The final Architecture will be a rational product; meaning that through a set of parameters the unfolding of events, or process, makes complete sense.
The intention of the Imagined Scenario is not to produce a static Architecture. A highly valued aspect of the Scenario is its flexibility within the design process. This process leads to an Architecture that elapses over the course of time, changes and possibly disintegrates. Time is a most important factor, which cannot be ignored, when designing Architecture. Regardless if it is the designer’s intention or not, any design has a life after the architect is gone. It can become the architect’s role to also impress upon that period as part of the complete design. Rather than turn out a fixed object within a site, this thesis will produce Architecture that unfolds through a gradual progression at the behest of the scenario. This approach towards design is analogous to the views of Reyner Banham and Cedric Price. “Both believed that the radical model of the architect was that of enabler, in opposition to the Modernist notion of form-giver. The architect pronounced Price, ‘takes his place in the ongoing process as a provider of opportunities for experience and change not as a master builder of immutable monumental structure.’”6 Within this surreal scenario the Architecture will not only live and develop but serves to prove a point. As Koolhaas declares in his thesis project, Exodus, “this new Architecture […] is the hedonistic science of designing collective facilities which fully accommodate individual desires, contrary to the architecture of the modern movement.”7
6 Whiteley, Nigel. Reyner Banham: Historian of the Immediate Future. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 2002. 7 Zenghelis, Elia. Text and Architecture: Architecture as Text. Exit Utopia: Architectural Provocations.1956-76. by Martin Van Schaik. IHAAU- Delft. University of Technology. Prestel 2005.
constructing the scenario
WEST.
.EAST After the Civil War, East Bolivia establishes own autonomy and looks to the USA as a model for the new nation’s organization.
With the self-determination of the East, the West becomes a nation of indiginous Bolivians that reside in the highlands and Andes mountains.
The terrain is divided in two: the Altiplano and the eastern zones or “Yungas”
In the Altiplano, the very mountains, the principal productive activity is mining, but potatoes, quinua, barley, wheat, etc. are grown. There are areas suitable for large-scale farming, particularly in the vicinity of Lake Titicaca, and also for stock-raising. In general, it is thought that large areas of the plateau could become important agriculturally if an adequate system of irrigation were established in certain regions. There is no farming of coca in these parts. However, the coca plant is used extensively in the native’s daily life.
New uses for the coca plant are developed-increasing productivity in the eastern zones. The "Yungas" are lowlands with the same climate and abundant vegetation as the valleys found in the Andes Mountains. Agriculture is the most important activity. Economically, the production of coca leaf is the principal source of income.Coca-leaf chewing is very widespread, particularly among the small farmers and labourers.
Chewing the coca leaf has the same effect as a strong cup of coffee, suppresses hunger pangs and has high levels of calcium.
Wave of settlers from the high-plains to the East causes rapid deforestation.
major city
Natural gas reserves in the Bolivian lowlands are the second largest in the entire continent.
Deforestation - most of which occurs in the tropics - is responsible for about one-fifth of annual emissions of greenhouse gases. In reducing deforestation, industrialized countries can effectively "offset" emissions limits set under international agreements like the Kyoto Protocol. In theory the tactic could help fight climate change at a low cost while, at the same time, improving living standards for some of the world's poorest people, safeguarding biodiversity, and preserving other ecosystem services.
Radial agricultural settlements create small towns surrounded by crops or forest.
department capital With an aggressive approach towards the use of the Altiplano terrain, and the lowlands, adequate irrigation is established in order to boost not only coca production but also sustainable foods such as grains, soy and beans. This tactical re-designing of the land’s agriculture then can affect the deployment of cities within the landscape, creating a seamless integration between the people and their sustenance and livelihood.
Adoption of Capitalistic values
East Bolivia employs agroforestry techniques based on shifting family fields in the forests surrounding the settlements; redefining the deployment of settling towns.
Brazil and Argentina are the two major investors in the extraction of gas. In 2006 under presidential decree the Bolivian government declared absolute control over the country’s energy resources. Gas shortage at a global scale will only cause more of an incentive to search for more gas deposits, generating even more of an interest in uncharted Bolivian territory.
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Scenario No. 1 Autonomy Means Division
After understanding the political rift occurring between East and West, a solution was begging for Bolivia to split in half. The East, composed of indigenous coca farmers supported Moralesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; efforts to nationalize the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s water and gas resources, while the West desired a capitalist based economy in order to support the courtship between natural gas refineries and foreign investors. This situation has great potential to produce two diametrically opposed proposals for the country of the future. It would be imperative to establish between the two sides a dialogue, perhaps through juxtaposition. Each half could become autonomous with a dependency on a certain natural resource. This would allow for growth of capital and could address how cities collectively would influence the West or East side. Within looking at the micro scale of the city an effect could be proposed on the country, either moving it forward or allowing it to stagnate. The East: a great majority of European expatriates live in the area. Since they desire to follow a model based on the US system of capitalism, the East could become a test bed for bombardment of the foreign. Issues of consumerism and disposable lifestyles can become catalysts for design. How would the production of Natural Gas affect each city and the cities together? The West: possessing the great majority of farmers, the landscape of the West (hills, mountains and valleys) lends itself to an idea of layering the urban with fields. The objective would be to collect seeds and coca leaves through crop rotations in order to supply seed banks around the world.
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Scenario No. 2 A Bolivia Absorbed and Abandoned
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As Bolivianâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s retreat to the landscape of their origins, they take with them their sources of profit. At first it was proposed that they would regularly come down from the hills at night and dismantle the structures of gas refineries in order to build their new cities.
These ramshackle structures would be able to be dismantled and pitched together in a variety of ways depending on the landscape, creating a movable network of cities.
However it was pointed out that this aesthetic would hardly be the one chosen by indigenous Bolivians.
Scenario No. 3 Boliviaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Ghost Urbanism
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Driven to despair by the loss of their country and their identity, Bolivians cannot bear to live among the new population. They begin to escape upwards and build their houses in the air floating with the aid of natural gas.
The inhabitants only venture down for the occasional item. The urbanism has been built in order to avoid the past as much as possible.
Almost mirroring the city below, the poor can only afford to stay within the city limits, tethered to skyscrapers. While the wealthy drift to the hills and further isolation.
POWER PLAYS.
Natural gas production by country2006
On May 2006 the Bolivian president, Evo Morales, in an unprescedented move signed a decree placing all of the nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s energy industry under state control. Police took control of the 53 energy installations - including gas fields, pipelines and refineries. Already existing companies are given a certain time span to negotiate the terms of their contracts and would receive 18% of all revenues during the transition period. This nationalization will prove exceedingly beneficial in a world clenched in the grasp of a natural gas shortage. Chile, Argentina, Brasil, the Us and most notably Russia are suffering from depleted gas reserves. Russia-Ukraine Gas Crisis "Wake Up Call' For EU Energy Sector Managing America's Natural Gas "Crisis" Natural Gas Crisis Shifts Focus of Chile's Energy Debate Amid energy crisis, Ghana eagerly awaits gas pipeline. Natural gas--the next fossil fuel shortage?
Bolivia currently holds second place to Venezuela with 1.36 billion cubic meters of natural gas. Empowerment begins by means of mutual complementing. 1. Since the 1840â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Bolivia has remained a landlocked nation. always desiring an exit to the sea its neighboring countries; Chile, Brazil and Argentina offer a tempting exchange.
Natural gas is a major source for electricity generation through the use of gas turbines and steam turbines. Natural gas burns cleaner than other fossil fuels, such as oil and coal, and produces less greenhouse gas per unit energy released. For an equivalent amount of heat, burning natural gas produces about 30% less carbon dioxide than burning petroleum and about 45% less than burning coal.
Petrobras Brasil: Largest foreign Extractor of Natural Gas (14%)
2. Implementation of a ratio between gas and land for an adequate exchange. 3. bolivia expands its boundaries, therby eliminating forever its past riddled with territorial uncertainty + Eventually reaching water Bolivia can diversify clients providing gas to the Orient, North America and even Russia possibly through modern technology like the Energy Bridge system of transporting gas over seas
The main foreign oil firms operating in Bolivia are Brazil's Petrobras, the Spanish-Argentine company Repsol YPF, British companies British Gas and British Petroleum, France's Total, and the US Exxon Mobil Corporation.
The two major gasducts through which Bolivia exports gas to the Brazilian market
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Scenario No. 4 Empowerment by Way of a Power Play
With the premise of global power plays, Bolivia could begin to win back territory with an exchange for its rich resources. Many of the South American nations that surround it are expected to run out of natural gas reserves within the next 9 years, making Bolivia an ideal neighbor. The proposal began with the division of countries into sections. Each section was then given a certain value depending on what it contained (an oil rig, access to water and a mountain range, etc.) A country within these parameters would begin to develop satellite â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;countriesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; across the world. New locations would need a new form of settlement. That is where the package idea came into effect. All the necessary ingredients for a functioning city would be in one package which would be deployed on site and over time would adopt the surrounding landscape.
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SNEAK PEEK
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The Chosen Scenario In order for architecture to achieve the goals stated in the thesis, the Scenario must jolt Bolivia out of its rut. For this reason Autonomy Means Division (No. 1) is the best generator for a tabula rasa situation. The story holds enough believability outside of its outrageous nature to in fact be a real-world situation. This is not only helpful but can assist the design process when the Scenario begins to unfold and develop. Based on the design process thus far between creating initial propositions, it is no straightforward task designing with the hybrid of reality and fiction. Its main problematic lies within the uncertainty of the final architecture; and almost impossible to imagine it without knowing where the Scenario might go. The only means of explaining the final result has been through an understanding of the Scenarioâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s factors. It is akin to walking backwards. One must take the path carefully, methodically and have complete faith in your own ability to not fall over; while at the same time having no idea of where you might end up.
works cited or read
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All Bolivia statistics taken from: Central Intelligence Agency: World Factbook. Bolivia. 15.Nov.07. <https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/bl.html> Busch, Akiko & Veronique Vienne. Fresh Dialogue 3: New Voices in Graphic Design. Princeton Architectural Press. American Institute of Graphic Arts, New York Chapter. 2004 Higgot, Andrew. Mediating Modernism: Architectural Cultures in Britain. Routledge Publishers. London & New York. 2007 Images taken from <www.images.google.com>, unless otherwise noted. Koolhaas, Rem. Oule Bouman & Mark Wigley. Volume 12: Al Manakh: Dubai Guide. Columbia University GSAPP. Archis. 09.01.07. Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince. Pocket Publishers. 06.29.04) Mathews, Stanley. Potteries Thinkbelt: an architecture of calculated uncertainty. Hobart & William Smith Colleges. 2000. <http://people.hws.edu/mathews/potteries_thinkbelt.htm> NAi Publishers. Considering Rem Koolhaas and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture. NAi Publishers, Rotterdam. 2003 Obrist, Hans Ulrich. Re:CP by Cedric Price. Birkhauser. London + Germany 2003. Royal College of Art, London. Babylon:don. Nigel Coates. ed. Italian Pavilion, 10th Venice Bienalle. Royal College of Art. London 2006. Whiteley, Nigel. Reyner Banham: Historian of the Immediate Future. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 2002. Zenghelis, Elia. Text and Architecture: Architecture as Text. Exit Utopia: Architectural Provocations. 1956-76. by Martin Van Schaik. IHAAU- Delft. University of Technology. Prestel 2005.
A Sane Revolution If you make a revolution, make it for fun, don’t make it in ghastly seriousness, don’t do it in deadly earnest, do it for fun. Don’t do it because you hate people, do it just to spit in their eye. Don’t do it for the money, do it and be damned to the money. Don’t do it for equality, do it becuase we ve got too much equality and it would be fun to upset the apple-cart and see which way the apples would go a-rolling. Don’t do it for the working classes. Do it so that we can all of us be a little aristocracies on our own and kick our heels like jolly escaped asses. Don’t do it, anyhow, for international Labour. Labour is one thing a man has had too much of. Let’s abolish labour, let’s have done with labouring! work can be fun, and men can enjoy it; then it’s not labour. Let’s have it so! Let’s make a revolution for fun! D.H. Lawrence