Planning The [Not Really] Informal City | Universidad Simón Bolívar

2006 – 2012

Institution:

* Universidad Simón Bolívar

Course:

* Studio 7 equivalent.

Case of Study:

* Las Minitas / Municipality of Baruta

Teaching Staff:

* Ignacio Cardona / Chair Instructor.

* Maria Mercedes Hernández / Instructor

* Josefina Baldó / Visiting Professor.

* Federico Villanueva  / Visiting Professor.

* Carmenofelia Machado / Visiting Professor.

Group of 45 students of architecture in four Semesters

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Self-Produced Environments -wrongly called informal settlements- have inspired several courses at Universidad Simón Bolívar. Some of them have included the cooperation of the most important scholars about the topic in Venezuela.

I have coordinated multiple Studio strategies, from which these stand out:

* The analysis of Self-Produced Environments from traditional planning methodologies includes data compiled during visits and planimetric investigation. These studies have followed the methods of the MIT Urban Settlement Design Program, which divides urban studies into three categories: Natural and Environmental Conditions (NEC), Forms Of Urban Development (FUD), and Collective Services and Facilities (CSF).

* Non-traditional approaches to exploring the site’s phenomenology and mapping of non-tangible variables through tridimensional digital techniques.

The Studio topics have been the absence of connectivity, facilities, and services in self-produced neighborhoods and, especially, the socioecological variables that have perpetuated these spatial inequalities. Finally, the Studio always finishes with the design of multiple intervention strategies: hinge projects, architectural and urban links, bridging projects, incorporation of new urban and environmental corridors, inclusionary zoning, etc.