(IAP ’18 FELLOW) Andrea Baena, G

Andrea will be working in Cartagena, Colombia, on the Project:  Architecture from the margins, co-designing and co-shaping informal settlements. She will collaborate with the Fundación Social in the informal occupation of the Virgin Swamp in Cartagena to develop an urban revitalization strategy for Fredonia, one of the neighborhoods in the informal occupation. Her background in System Dynamics and participatory design, will assist her in understanding and mapping the needs of the community.  She will engage the community in the process through a collaborative mapping exercise, followed by a design workshop and the construction of an architectural element. Fundación Social will be empowered to implement and adapt the design framework developed during IAP workshop throughout the neighborhood and territory.

CONTEXT

 ENTRY 1: PREPARING FOR THE WORKSHOP

The collaborative design workshop has as an objective to define the strategy of intervention along the Calicanto Nuevo canal in the UCG6 neighbourhood, including public space and collective amenities. This workshop departs from the findings of a collaborative mapping workshop during the fall, which demonstrated the need to intervene in the protection band of the canal as a strategy to anticipate invasions. Thus, this intervention strategy will include the design of a basic urban scheme and a system of collective infrastructure using local construction methods and materials.

The workshop will consist of a Design Charrette focused on the urban design of the Calicanto Nuevo canal, in parallel with a more specific research line which merges with my thesis enquiries. I propose the weaving of the micro and macro scales and a physical intervention strategy that is tied to the community’s memory and values. The project seeks to reinforce social ties, entrepreneurship and relationship with natural resources.

Research line:

I will explore the neighbourhood from a social focus. How can design based on the memory of the neighbourhood, strengthen the community? I will investigate the processes of adaptation, permanence and evolution within the informal neighbourhood context. How does access to city and sense of belonging manifest in forms and space?

ENTRY 2: COLLABORATIVE DESIGN 

 

 

ENTRY 3: RESEARCH ENQUIRY – ON DISPLACEMENT

THIS IS MY HOUSE
Stories of displacement

To what end do we write when our prose takes on the responsibility of saving and giving but not the accountability of compensation?
… To what end will we educate ourselves in this literacy of life?
        — Ananya Roy

“This is my house”, Eufemia declared repeatedly with great pride. “I had pigs, I sold pigs” said Eufemia, “yes, because when you move from a small town into the city, you have your traditions, you sell pigs, I sold pigs”. Eufemia had moved to Cartagena 15 years ago from rural San Onofre, a small town that had been struck by violence. She had participated in the construction of her house, which started out being a wooden shed and had now become a spacious house made out of concrete that filled her with pride. I did not ask directly whether she had been displaced by violence, she did not explicitly say that she had moved away from her rural origin fleeing from violence, she limited herself to saying that she moved following her children who were already in the city. At the end of the interview, Eufemia took us to her back yard to show us that she still has pigs, the business continues.

The interview with Eufemia is part of a research enquiry on displacement in Colombia. I was born and raised in Colombia, a country where displacement is very common, however I have known very little about this phenomenon. I remember that when I was young, I always wanted to adventure, to move to a different place and experience a different culture. And I did, one of those experiences is being here today, studying architecture at MIT, a very challenging and exciting opportunity where I can immerse in the advance in design strategies tackling social issues. This exciting adventurous feeling of moving to MIT, is very different from what people who move to a different place out of need feel, what those who are displaced feel. I feel the responsibility of learning about the phenomenon of displacement, so present in my country, and advancing design research of alternatives to improve the living conditions of those displaced.

Displacement is the act of being forced to leave your original home. Reasons for leaving vary, however in Colombia, more than 7 million people have been displaced for the same reason: violence[1].  Families escape from violence in villages and farms to cities where they find refuge at the margins. Refuge usually in land that hasn’t been occupied by anyone else because it does not offer the best habitat conditions due to high environmental risk, lack of mobility connection and lack of infrastructure.

Eufemia was part of my first round of interviews within my research process, I was asking people who had suffered displacement difficult questions about traumatic events in the past and about the process of adaptation to different living conditions. Questions about their original home and the process of settling in a new city, about their sense of belonging, and about the different spatial adaptations that they have performed on their house. Answers ranged from detailed hurtful stories of transition, to more ambiguous bits and pieces, but they all had something in common, a sense of pride and perseverance.

What are the ethics of interviewing as a qualitative research tool? I felt a strange sensation because, even though I am from Colombia, I was exploring into pasts that I know so little about. This is a delicate subject and I felt that I needed to be very careful in my ethical approach to this research. I have done some interviewing before; the most significant past experience was working with migrants in Mexico. In this occasion I had the privilege to learn from experienced conversers working with me on the interviews, who referred to migrants as travelers and were able to connect with them as one on one. I learned that the worst mistake you can do as an interviewer is to stand at a higher ground and show any kind of pity. You must engage in respectful dialogue, as you would with a friend.

This time, I was to interview people who had been displaced in my own country. I was expecting to speak with victims, but soon realized that I was speaking with brave fighters. The most valuable lesson that I learned, was precisely that of learning and being inspired by the people I was interviewing. I was coming from a position of privilege (an important education institution), however I knew that I needed to place myself in a humble position knowing that I would learn more from the people I was interviewing. I was there as a traveler for the expansion of knowledge, but had no sense of what it means to travel for life.

I encountered many impacting stories. Darlis talked about her recent experience building her 1-year old bathroom-less house made out of wood from recycled palettes, “we were putting things together without knowing how”. Darlis and her family had been asked to leave from a close-by neighborhood, El Pozón, by their landlord because of her husband’s financial instability. They were now building a dream, a house of their own. Motivated by fear, the family had originally moved 5 years ago to the city from El Carmen de Bolivar, a place with a strong presence of guerilla. Darlis, standing with her two kids in her front porch with planters hanging off the wall and a small cluster of garden plants on a bench, was telling me about her dream of consolidating her house and reaching a stable situation for her kids.

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