Alejandro Aravena Zumtobel just received the innovation award for a project that reconstructs part of Constitution, destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami of 2010. Considered a visionary, this Chilean architect is at the forefront in the world in its discipline. In this interview, he explains his model
By Pablo Marin
Illustration:. Ignacio Schiefelbein
“For many years architects have hit the key artist of genius. But the price to pay was the irrelevance” says Alejandro Aravena, a Chilean architect who has long been moving in Major League Profession: just won through Elementary office, Zumtobel Award for Innovation, Sustainability and Humanity in the Built Environment, a project to redesign the destroyed city of Constitution
Not bad for who, between 1995 and 1997, was removed from the architecture because it not around, and later be dedicated to designing social housing, educational, institutional, corporate, cultural and public buildings.
On Monday 22 the Austrian company Zumtobel, the world’s largest maker of LED lighting, handed London their namesake award recognizing aimed at reducing the overall energy consumption and at the same time, to improve the quality of life innovative solutions. 15 were finalists and winners were three. One of them, Elemental
Why? For the PRES (Sustainable Reconstruction Plan) project, plan to raise Constitution, severely hit by the earthquake and tsunami of 2010, which includes a housing for 482 families, a river park mitigation and reconstruction of the Civic Center, with a new library, a theater and a stadium, along with walkways and plazas. None of stunning buildings. The ego of the architect / artist, beyond the media coverage of the prizes–and stays in second row.
“There are many examples in which both the state and business, with the best intentions, come to a certain community to solve the wrong problem. “
Against the star architect Frank Gehry-the kind and colorful construcciones-, Aravena has chosen projects working from shortages and try to deliver new solutions to old social problems. “Inequalities are not only an economic issue,” he said. “It’s a cultural thing. The role that cities can play in creating opportunities is irreversible. If properly designed cities can be a great tool for efficiently improving quality of life issues. They are a great shortcut to create equality. ” Says
-From draft constitution have said it is a “working model that channels social unrest as a change agent.” How this strategy is expressed in concrete form?
-The earthquake and tsunami of 2010 destroyed about 80% of the flat part of the city, so it was obvious that the reconstruction would require a lot of money. And that money one can spend the better or worse, solve problems or paradoxically aggravate. It happens that the entire system of public investment comes from a time when problems were Chile and deficit coverage: in the 60s had to do many houses, many schools, many roads, ports and airports, and for that challenge, the State adopted structure “sectorial”. The 2010 earthquake struck Chile in a completely different time in their development, so a sectorial approach would not give the width: the city immediately reveals that second generation problems are not sectoral but cross. And the scarce resource tackle complex problems is not so much the money but the coordination and synthesis
‘What a way to get involved community
.? – As counterintuitive as it may seem, the emergence required to include rather than exclude people to move fast. Together with Tironi y Asociados, participation was addressed as the fuel of the process instead of a resistance or friction to overcome. For a participatory process not ask people seeking the answer to a problem but, on the contrary, identify the question. There is nothing worse than answering the wrong question well.
Is it usual that misdiagnosis?
They’re many examples in which both the State and companies, with the best intentions, they come to a community to solve the wrong problem. Then, by a misunderstood notion of participation or negligent interact with citizens asking people for a solution to a given problem. People can help pinpoint the question, but does not have to know the answer. It’s like going to the doctor: only the patient can know what, how much and where it hurts, but it is the doctor that translates the symptoms to diagnosis and treatment. Obviously, the patient has a say in the way they will be treated and also entitled to a second opinion, but there are certain things that are not traded. If a guy’s arm hurts and I, as a physician, I know that the origin is in the heart and not in the arm itself, I will not operate the arm because the community voted overwhelmingly preferred the arm. I can negotiate whether surgical intervention or medicinal herbs, but no business is the heart of the problem.
that is, at some point move from consultation to treatment. How intensive should be the process?
It’s true that smells cliché, but every problem is an opportunity. There are certain changes that require stress time: without some tension, inertia to continue just as it is always very strong. So the cities artificial stress invent time when they want to change the standard. Olympics, a World Cup, a cultural capital or the like
in this case, the stress came from a disaster: the earthquake and tsunami of 2010. How to work at such urgency
-In Constitution had “naturally” social pressure that forced her to have quick answers?. And the challenge was to make haste not mean mediocrity but an opportunity for rebuilding off a jump standard. The typical time stressed emergencies requires organize the information available, including conflicts, threats and restrictions in key proposal and not diagnostic. Conventional consultancies always remain in the comfortable realm of make available to the client the information for it is he who makes a decision. Therefore, the classical result of consulting is a report that often expands the problem rather than synthesize. The model then you proposed move “from consulting to authorship.”
‘What you mean authorship? -A
expert, says Italo Calvino It is a guy who in a certain field can say everything there is to do. A “responsibility” instead assumes the risk of saying what to do. And have quick point is important because an early proposal channels the social forces around proposals, rather than claims. The most powerful synthesis mechanism there is intuition. The power of the design is that it can be translated into a universal language such abstract forces that govern reality and that makes it possible to iterate many times the answer is required. When these forces are aligned, it is the community which gives relevant changes the momentum necessary. Therefore we must not stop this citizen energy, it may seem conflicting, but channel it. The big difference between consulting and authoring is that there are certain questions that are not answered with a solution but require an invention.
-¿Este same model as applied in other cities?
-he had felt then bring this approach to Calama, where there was a “social tsunami” 25 thousand people in the street, manifested by the poor quality of life that had caused him bancarse wealth while the rest of the country. PLUS Calama, Sustainable Urban Plan commissioned by Codelco, seeking to be the city itself the shortcut to that quality of life demanded. We Choapa, commissioned by Minera Los Pelambres, the model is applied at regional level, but always used the city as a means of channeling discontent and place in key proposal.
“The shortage is a great antidote to arbitrariness. It is a filtroa against superfluous. Tuning projects because it leaves no room for what is irrelevant “
-¿Te felt in Calama you came from somewhere else and did not understand their problems?
I never wanted us to go through what we are not. Always declare that to come from outside, we could provide a certain perspective. But that our contribution would make no sense if the question is not charged those who knew and lived the problem from within. The inclusion of the Aymara, for example, was not for nostalgic reasons, even international agreements signed policy or anything like that: they take 10,000 years in the oasis and the desert know how to deal in a way that we have no idea . There are layers of accumulated wisdom.
-¿El central government often ignore such local knowledge?
remember that one of the forums in the Plaza de Calama where we built an Open House for the discussion of the future of the city, he arrived in mid-2012 A well-known personera the central government. And to “make” people said, “Yesterday I was in Temuco and there is Mai Mai greeting Peñi. But I do not know how to say good night in calameño “. And the people answered back: “conch good nights …”. And they papered. The key was the horizontal, without arrogance and without complexes.
How public and private interests are articulated in a project like PRES? ‘The source
PRES is a public-private partnership. Forestal Arauco proposed that its contribution to fund a rebuilding plan was able to efficiently coordinate the investment that is going to have to do, both public and private. In fact one of the first actions was the creation of a consortium of the state, the municipality, the various area businesses and citizens. The consortium sought eke out each actor while adding the different logical and contributions of each: the state and the municipality are guarantors definition of the common good, but his investment system is designed only to reduce deficits. Businesses in general are viewed with suspicion, but if anything is to harness know windows of opportunity. And here it was key not lose Constitution which will open.
What was the role of the people?
-The citizenship is not just who better You can identify the question, but you can give continuity to plans like these. Equally important to stress the time to have synthetic ideas, it is to understand that these ideas, before being implemented, will go through times much larger administrations. The public presence in the consortium sought not only politically and socially validate the project, but especially empowering people to be the ones who ensure compliance with the agreements in successive administrations.
‘From your experience in this kind of project, what companies should change their focus to engage with communities
-The relationship between companies and the communities seems to have shifted its axis: on corporate social responsibility in what I would call the “social license to operate”. He ran to relate to the community once was you well, you have to deal with it so that it may go well. It went from sharing profits at the end of the production chain, by the departments of public affairs, to reach agreement at the beginning of the chain, as part of the departments of studies project. Same with the project costs. The insurance experts define this as a paradigm shift, because the current legislation is a necessary, but not sufficient in the times we live in.
What’s missing?
– We must enrich the instrument that measure the social benefits of the projects. While the social profitability of a project is assessed -that sectorally say, measuring one benefit at once, we will continue falling short address social demands. The forest mitigation Constitution, analyzed on a sectoral basis, it is more expensive than a typical public space more difficult, a more complex than a coastal defense infrastructure work; therefore it loses to the “sectoralists” alternative. Citizen participation identified that people not only had problems with the tsunami, but more with flooding by rainwater; there was also resentment over the historical debt of public space and a longing for a democratic access to the river. The forest mitigation and cross-project turned out to be cheaper, faster and more efficient than uncoordinated sectoral projects.
What assign value to the awards, in general, and particularly to you just received?
-The great virtue of the awards is that they allow you to be increasingly unsafe. Having to prove increasingly nothing anyone can doubt over oneself. Despite what you believe, the awards enable increasingly believe the story. And that freedom is a luxury. This award in particular had a very strong jury, which gives it a very high status and places our Chilean experience as a model. On the basis of the award I touch me being on the other side, as the Pritzker Jury, and the choices that one makes, like it or not, send messages about what is desirable in architecture.
-In some blurred spot 90 in some forums architecture wondered whether social housing, was it or not architecture? Where does your interest come for this type of project? If
architecture has some power, it is the power of synthesis. Social housing is a complex issue and believed that design could help not as a matter of aesthetics but through the strategic use of form. In that sense, the questions like is this or that architecture or not? They give a bit the same. The important thing is to ask for this issue, what kind of design is relevant, irrelevant, sheds new light where it is believed he no longer had anything to do? Seen this way, there is not a single area to which the design can not contribute. And this is reflected in the types of projects that come to us Elemental: the design of a public transport bus to a plan for the development of Patagonia; a building for Novartis in China, at a writers’ colony in Geneva or reducing the number of links in the value chain of certain crafts so that resources remain in the artisans and not intermediaries.
“The momentum to continue as is always very strong. So cities are invented stress when they want to change standard:. OG, a World Cup, a cultural capital, etc. “
-¿Supone that break down certain boundaries profession and work in a more integrated way?
-Integration and multidiscipline are no guarantee of success for themselves. The boldness, clarity, originality, relevance, war on cliché, however, I think they are poor. The line seems much more challenging than the professional diversity.
What do you think to the idea of the architect as an artist?
‘One of the greatest threats to Architecture is arbitrary. For many years architects have hit supposedly valuable key genius artist needs freedom to pursue their worldview. And that creative jurisdiction paid a very high price: the irrelevancy. The company said: “Well, it’s genius, but not get into tough issues.” That was the origin of the project in Elementary when I was invited to be a professor at Harvard. Try to use the power of synthesis of architecture in hard issues, understanding the design not as an extra cost but as creating value
-A topic these days and future is the shortage of resources. Does the approach of your projects is structured from this reality? -The
shortage is a great antidote to arbitrariness. It is a filter against superfluous. Tuning projects because it leaves no room for what is beside the point, which should not be treated with only satisfy the functional. The intangible dimensions are sometimes equally or more important than concrete. The artistic dimension of architecture has nothing to do with dealing with “cultural” issues, but common themes to move with partial certainties. No need to clarify all propose some evidence enough: the complete intuition, between the lines. So architecture can work on unresolved disputes, in emergencies and on issues governed by contradictory forces.
-A celebrated architect housing defined as “machines for living”. How do you understand
‘I’m moving with ineffable certainties: the deeper truths one knows them, but refuse to be verbalized. The definition of a particular noun (house, social housing, architecture, etc.) is an unnecessary onanistic pleasure. It is much more conducive to specify the conditions, attributes or restrictions useless phrase for bronze.
To what extent your participation in law enforcement realize your interest in influencing policy decisions in urban or other materials in the city?
My participation in law enforcement has only to do with Andres Velasco consider a luxury for policy and would like to see it by their contributions from the position highest possible. What we try to do is take relevant issues and translate them into concrete actions. So when we founded 14 years ago Elemental, we propose to be a Do not Think Tank and Tank. Being around politics or study centers as public space allows us to learn of issues and challenges that make sense, but our way of commenting is not in “Letters to the Editor”, but doing projects. •••
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