Delirious Self-Production: Urban Links in the Self-Produced City

2013 – 2014

Faculty:

Ignacio Cardona, Instructor; Rodrigo Guerra, Visiting Professor

Students:

28 Architecture Students

Institutions:

Universidad Simón Bolívar

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Inspired by a reinterpretation of Rem Koolhaas’s Delirious New York through the spatial and social logics of the self-produced city, this urban design studio investigated how architectural interventions could reconnect territories fragmented by topography and unequal patterns of urbanization. Working in Petare, students developed Urban Links—vertical connectors conceived as both architectural projects and components of a broader system connecting self-produced neighborhoods with the surrounding city.

The studio approached the urban landscape through two interconnected dimensions. The Physical Landscape explored architectural connectors responding to steep terrain, mobility, and spatial discontinuities; the Social Landscape engaged the cultural complexity of a territory shaped by more than 250 years of migration and community formation. Students subsequently discussed their proposals with residents of Petare, extending the studio beyond the university and establishing a bidirectional learning process between academic design inquiry and community knowledge.