Planning Galápagos | Universidad Simón Bolívar

2006

Institution:

* Universidad Simón Bolívar

* Colegio de Arquitectos del Ecuador

Case Study:

* Galápagos Island (Ecuador)

Teaching Staff:

* Ignacio Cardona / Instructor

* Tomás Cervilla / Instructor

* María M. Hernández / Landscape Instructor

Group of 23 students of architecture.

This project was awarded with the third prize in the Students Competition in the 2006 Architecture Biennial of Quito.

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In 2006, the XV Quito International Biennale of Architecture launched a competition to intervene in the urban settlement of Galápagos, one of the most important natural reservoirs of the world. The proposal requires strategies to reduce the negative impact of urbanization on the island’s fragile ecology. This course developed learning strategies within the framework of this competition.

The Studio understands activities as parts of the ecological system. In their transit, humans and other animals create traces that affect energy use and the generation of waste produced. For instance, the spatial movement of a visitor from the hotel to the tourist attraction, the movement of the public transportation that serves residents, and the movement of a bird from one place to another are flows that generate specific corridors. The mapping of these journeys is the seed for planning sustainable connectivity between different environments.