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

Los docentes en las escuelas de Arquitectura tenemos el compromiso de formar a los futuros arquitectos, por eso debe reflexionarse a profundidad sobre el proceso de formación en torno al quehacer arquitectónico, con la intención de contribuir a mejorar el plan de estudios y hacer evidente lo que en muchas ocasiones está implícito, y de forma inconsciente, es decir, el compromiso humano, social, ético y crítico del arquitecto. Dentro del taller de arquitectura, el papel de la investigación no debe restringirse a enseñarles a los estudiantes un método o diseño de investigación que pueda facilitar la elaboración de su anteproyecto y su proyecto, pues no se trata de llegar mecánicamente a un resultado del que quizá no se entienda nada al final. Entre los retos de la investigación destaca la necesidad de enseñarle al estudiante a documentar, analizar y proponer de acuerdo con la información recabada.

Reseñas de los libros:"La casa en la Ciudad de México en el siglo xx Un recorrido por sus espacios" de Lourdes Cruz González Franco"Contra el tiempo. Filosofía práctica del instante" de Luciano Concheiro"Historias que brotan de las rocas Experiencias sobre el Pedregal de San Ángel y su reserva ecológica" de Luis Zambrano y Zenón Cano Santana, compiladores"Tell. El llop solitari de l’exili català" de Gemma Domènech i Casadevall"La construcción espacial del miedo" de Alfonso Valenzuela Aguilera

Reseña de la Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas sobre Vivienda y Desarrollo Urbano Sostenible, conocida como Hábitat III.

Reseña de la exposición: Otto Dix, Violencia y pasión.

I didn’t cross the border, the border crossed meLos Tigres del Norte Nature imposes its own borders: drastic changes in topography, rivers and oceans all constitute borders because of the inability of other species to cross them; nevertheless, they ignore human borders and constantly pass over them. The rivers that have been used to delineate political borders change their course over time, despite the frustrated efforts of humans to straighten them out. Mammals, birds and insects migrate across the walls erected by nations to impede the movement of people. Flying insects freely cross from Central America to North America: you can’t ask them for a visa. Nature demonstrates the artifice of the attempt. Any territorial border imposed by man is arbitrary and uncomfortable, a violation of the right of free movement. None is definitive. As humans, we need borders and limits to deal with the infinite reality that confronts us. Each division we make of this reality allows us to appropriate units that we can comprehend in an attempt to understand it a little bit more. For this reason - which is natural and human - we surround ourselves with borders, both symbolic and physical. To a certain point, it’s inevitable. As is the case with other species, nomadism and migration are phenomena that have accompanied us ever since our origins. It’s in our nature to explore a territory to understand it and dominate it. One of the greatest human aspirations has been to transcend borders: those of knowledge, of language, of information, of stereotypes and, finally, of territory. Borders invite us to cross them. Consciously or unconsciously, borders are conceptualized as a division between civilization and barbarism; they conceal a contempt for the other. Social inequalities, political conflicts and war force millions of people to migrate to other territories to survive or improve their living conditions. When walls are insurmountable, these migrations occur by means of other routes. This is a phenomenon that cannot be peacefully avoided and has become a source of fascination for many disciplines: its complexity makes it a difficult problem to solve. Nevertheless, some urbanists and architects have been imagining nomad cities since the 1970s and there has been increasing interest in studying these proposals. An interconnected and globalizing world in which mobility and immediatism are privileged above all else seems to contradict the growing demand for border walls. The imaginaries that surround the idea of security are often contradicted by the impulses that define our condition in the world. We live in a reality composed of different types of cells, created with the certainty that their security increases to the extent that they close themselves off. The concept of the border is traditionally defined as the line delimiting two states, but nowadays we can say that borders can appear anywhere, can be of any size and can take on any form. Cities contain physical, symbolic or imaginary borders, which are sometimes invisible. We consciously or unconsciously cross them or avoid them. The great urban walls sell a naive idea of security while they deny the city. Thoroughfares create borders that drastically divide the urban fabric, instead favoring mobility and immediatism. Some borders are established to try to control and protect cultures, identities, diversities or endangered species. Respect begins with setting limits. We need them to mark differences in social agreements and for legal and administrative organization. To define ourselves and, through self-knowledge, to engage in a cultural exchange with the other. Borders also protect identities. Etymologically, the word frontier is related to the word facade. Without limits and walls, there could be no architecture, as each architectural element constitutes a border in some fashion, including the high walls that conceal the mystery sought by Luis Barragán. The act of tracing a line has, since its origins, been an exercise of power. Whether good or bad, it is a reality that must be explored through architecture, urbanism, landscape and design, because it is a habitual practice in these disciplines and it would be naive to ignore its political meaning. No dividing line or wall is a neutral ideological entity and its meaning can be read differently depending on which side of it you are on. The Berlin Wall had a powerfully imagined cultural meaning that ended up legitimizing capitalism: simple cartographical lines become discourses of power that play a decisive role in the inhabited territory. Walls that configure space accompany us every day, but each wall, each border, each limit has a symbolic meaning that can be emancipatory or asphyxiating. In territorial borders (geographical, academic, mental), dual or multiple realities are generated and manifested that, among other things, reflect asymmetrical power relations. In these border regions, it becomes possible to understand and produce the identity of each one of the divided territories, with their deepest and darkest aspects in tension: their reality is a mixture of both sides as well as something new, indecipherable, disordered, enveloped in an intense, complex tension. To truly understand a territory, a concept, a mental state or a field of knowledge, one must begin by understanding its limits. Identifying the types of borders that can exist is to understand their meaning and to define which are truly necessary. They may be solid, porous or open, allowing for an advantageous exchange for both parties: a space for communication with the other. Who we are is always defined in our reflection of the other. Cristina López Uribe 

La modernidad explotó la forma y la función de los muros.Dejaron de mantener fuera a la otredad disfrazada de invasores y bárbaros, y pasaron a contener la otredad al interior de la sociedad, a separar y, con ello, determinar a los locos, los criminales y los enfermos. Las penitenciarías, los hospitales y las cárceles servirían de prototipo para los muros del siglo xx, muros cuyo objetivo era aislar los elementos que amenazan la homogeneidad de una sociedad moderna y civilizada. El muro de Berlín, los de Gaza y de Cisjordania, así como el fronterizo entre nuestros países y, en especial, todos aquellos que recuerda Ortiz y que encierran fraccionamientos y clubes de golf, o que simplemente nos encierran dentro de nuestra propia casa, son el último eslabón de la historia arquitectónica del muro que aquí se propone. La dimensión simbólica de algunos puede ser abordada por medio de la literatura; la de otros, mediante la poesía, el cine, el drama o la televisión; la de unos cuantos más, quizá no cuenta con un medio de fácil acceso. En suma, el trabajo por realizar consistiría en encontrar el significado de cada uno, lo que cada sociedad y época dice sobre sus muros y, por supuesto, lo que los muros nos dicen de las sociedades y las épocas.

The border should not solely be interpreted in terms of separation and protection, but also as a space where opposed realities, through the creative potential of con ict, can move forward towards com- mon goals. Taking the frontier myth as a starting point, this article illustrates situations and experiences in which this concept remains useful in the present day for understanding, interpreting and even constructing territories.

The present study deals with changes in the architectural imaginary between the late 1950s and early 1970s, especially with regard to the promises of unrestrictedmobility (architecture and technology in favor of a society that would know no frontiers) and the subsequent representations, in which architecture not only continues to perpetuate exclusion and regimes of segregation, but also assigns a desirable status to this process.

Four forest species Cybistax donnell-smithii Rose, Cordia macrantha Chadat, Colubrina arborescens (Mill.) Sarg and Triplaris guayaquilensis Wedd were studied in association with Theobroma cacao L. Var. CCN51. The agroforestry system was located in Quevedo, province of Los Ríos, Ecuador. The age of the trees was six years, and of cocoa ve years, established in a plantation frame of 9 x 9 m and 3 x 3 m, respectively. A random block design with four replicates was applied. The evaluated aspects were: production of wood and cocoa, shade, production of fallen leaves, transfer of N, P, K, Ca and Mg, nutrients and soil moisture content. The total wood volume for C. donnellsmithii, C. macrantha, C. arborescens and T. guayaquilensis was 46.49; 27.06; 21.03 and 61.37 m3 ha-1, respectively. Cocoa production did not show signi cant differences between associations. The highest annual biomass contributions of the fallen leaves were produced in the association C. arborescens + cacao with 4079 kg ha-1, so that it carried out the greatest transfer of N, K, Ca and Mg with 56.45; 29.54; 73.96 and 16.38 kg ha-1 a-1, respectively.

In this paper an adaptive Clearing operator is applied to the Particle Swarm Optimization Metha-heuristic (PSO) in order to encourage diversity in the population. The goal is to determine whether the use of the Clearing operator improves levels of exploration PSO algorithm increasing diversity of the population without adding too much computational cost to the search process. Thus, an adaptive way is proposed to control the allowable distance between solutions and disturb the solutions that are very close to another with better quality. This idea allows to study different alternatives as to disturb the selected solutions, presenting at work two different approaches based on the current position and in the best historical position. In addition a study is detailed to determine when to be applied Clearing operator for maximum contribution to the search process implemented by PSO. The proposal was tested in a set of 20 multi-modal functions, where the results showed that the operator clearing improves exploration of meta-heuristic PSO, yielding signi cantly superior results in quality that Original PSO model.