Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

Throughout history, human beings have sought how to modify and transform the environment where they dwell, with the aim of creating comfortable and safe spaces that guarantee a full life. Executing these modifications are challenges that architecture students have to face; here they will find several scenarios of possible conflict, in which they must take a decision: to follow the rules established by the academy and by the city policies or propose a change to reach an urban improvement. The following article will present academic criteria used by teachers from UTE School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Quito - Ecuador, focused on a vision that guides and motivates students to stake out their perspective related to urban-architectural design, without losing the dialogue with the preexisting place identity and certain parameters established by the city regulatory entities. At the end, conclusions, objectives, recommendations and results that this teaching methodology has reached in a practical and timely manner on students, will be presented.

Since the second half of the 20th century, the self-built informal settlements, almost natural landscapes in Latin America, are recognized as the paradigm of popular habitat in our region, being El Faro neighborhood an example to discuss. As an important part of its territory, it is located outside the ‘urban perimeter’ of the city of Medellin, and is, therefore, a rural area of the city. In that sense, the question that calls for this essay is: what characterizes the popular neighborhood El Faro, in relation to habitat in the urban-rural interface and community organization, as opposed to urban projects on the edge? According to this question, and in regards to the habitat, topics related to localization and housing preferences in the urban periphery and insurgent planning applied in such territories can be encountered. Within the community organization, reflections on collective action, citizenship, identity and resistance are presented, some of them referring through art. The text is divided into three moments. The first offers a contextualization about El Faro; the second presents the development of the theme from the habitat in the urban-rural interface and community organization in front of urban projects on the edge axis, passing from the theoretical to the empirical. Finally, the third part offers some conclusions.

This work presents an outlook to the edge approach of the millenary house of the sun or Yata-Pactá of the Quitu-Cara culture, as a result of the existence of a conceptual and geopolitical model of territorial planning that operates with the canons of the rectum sun, or Minu-Pactá, and the Chakana Operating System or Andean sacred geometrical pattern, design guiding instrument for the location of networks of interconnected villages and communication routes. It is about demonstrating the agency of this planification model in the Yata-Pacta configuration. The discussion emphasizes the importance of the Ceques, or nodal axes of the territorial master plan, results of mega alignments projected in the Ecuadorian Integration Period (500 a.c-1500 d.c.). It highlights the multinuclear nodal territories in continuous social, topological and telluric-cosmogonic interaction that continues to subtly operate in the expansion of the neighborhoods and parishes of Metropolitan Quito. The results indicate the relevance of the model as a sustainable development strategy that would provide identity and legitimacy to the occupation of poles of the city, today considered as periphery.

En el recientemente culminado Workshop Internacional “WinAReQ International Summer School in Architecture and Landscape Design”, realizado por la Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo de la Universidad UTE, contamos con la presencia de importantes y reconocidos arquitectos a nivel mundial. Entre ellos, Francis Metzger, arquitecto belga contemporáneo que posee su estudio de arquitectura MA² - Metzger & Associés Architecture, el cual alterna con sus actividades académicas en la Facultad de Arquitectura de la Universidad Libre de Bruselas, donde imparte el curso “Taller de Arquitectura” y “Teoría de la Arquitectura: Filosofía”, conjuntamente con varios proyectos de construcciones contemporáneas y restauraciones de edificios notables. Destaca su actitud por continuar pensando y trabajando en el ámbito de la enseñanza y el aprendizaje de la arquitectura; muestra un marcado interés en comunicar, motivar la reflexión y confrontar a los estudiantes, así como generar, construir y alimentar el pensamiento. Al escuchar su conferencia consideramos importante compartir con la comunidad académica algunas de sus reflexiones, las cuales conducen, inexorablemente, al planteamiento de interrogantes sobre el acto de hacer arquitectura y ciudad pero, sobre todo, en cómo deberían actuar los arquitectos y urbanistas a partir de ahora. Compartimos sus reflexiones como una invitación retadora a pensar en la ciudad como una materia prima, donde el lugar, el contexto y la historia juegan un rol de vital importancia. Es necesario buscar el equilibrio, entender el tiempo y su implacable influencia ante la complejidad del acto de hacer arquitectura y ciudad.

This article aims to expose the importance of the Intensive Workshops about the relation educationlearning in the didactic and research areas of the architectural, urban and landscape disciplines in the schools or architecture. Starting from a conference from Le Corbusier to the students of architecture of the University of Buenos Aires, it’s possible to detect three key words, three concepts that, besides to be valid nowadays, could well being the base of the structure of a Workshop’s program. Difference, Process and Coherence constitute the vertebral column of the formation and investigation experience that students, teachers and lecturers share. Along the text it is underlined that a Workshop has to be a place of education, learning, and experimentation that put the bases to future research programs. All these aspects, which structure an intensive Workshop, are verified through a recently concluded experience in the School of Architecture and Urbanism of the University UTE of Quito. The International Workshop WinAReQ 2018 has been developed from the 10th to the 22nd of September 2018 on the bases of the concept previously introduced. The success of the experience confirms the importance of this way of learning from a different point of view: from the didactic, the research, the communication and the international relations.

The incorporation of wind farms in the territory not only involves the selection of large areas but a precise distinction of the land for its implementation that guarantees its viability as an energy production project. As a consequence of this, new territorial footprints emerge, configured by these facilities that are arranged as rural borders. The research proposes to study systems of linkage between the existing territorial productive activities -agricultural, forestry and grazing- and the energy production of the wind farms located in the rural properties; through the case study of the Aurora Wind Farm in Llanquihue - X Region of the Lakes - Chile. These activities demand the use of the same territories; those that today are forced to the exclusive use for the generation of wind energy generating territorial isolation and mono production, due to the current model of geographic disposition of wind farms in Chile, canceling previous productive uses. It is under this condition that it is proposed to rethink the logics of land occupation and the resolution of this segregating edge of these two productive areas avoiding friction and exploring their interrelation.

This article develops a personal reflection on the role that some spaces, commonly considered residual, that play in shaping of green infrastructures at a territorial, municipal and urban scale. This reflection arises from the participation in the definition of the space networks that had been carried out over the last decade in the Valencian Community. This valuable experience leads to determining that it is necessary to reconsider all the negative values associated to concepts like ‘patchy’, ‘residual’ and ‘marginal’ -which are nowadays very present in the contemporary territory- in order to operationalize them within the concepts of urban project planning and public space design.

To inhabit the border of the city, the natural space, the ravine, the road, poverty, failure, success, and death. In Spanish, the definition of border transcends the bordering and the confining, it allows to be used in describing situations of transition. Thus, the edge implies a direct relationship with the physical or with the ethereal. In this case, the generated bond by the inhabiting proposes a spatial and virtual relationship between the human being and the place. Between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the accelerated urban growth experienced by cities had morphological consequences, including the elimination of elements that, prior to this transformation, served as a border and had a defined role. Through the analysis of Madrid, New York and Berlin in three different centuries an understanding of the border is sought as this active space, in constant evolution and with important attributes due to its continuous condition and its close contact with the city. Through the analysis of three urban and landscape projects, this essay intents to understand the border as an area capable of transforming the city and becoming an encounter space.