How to Cite: Hernández Villamizar, Mayra Ximena. "From the Constructed Work to Projected Knowledge. Study of Amairis and Ancestral Knowledge Educational Park Projects". Dearq no. 39 (2024): 46-56. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18389/dearq39.2024.05
How to Cite: Hernández Villamizar, Mayra Ximena. "From the Constructed Work to Projected Knowledge. Study of Amairis and Ancestral Knowledge Educational Park Projects". Dearq no. 39 (2024): 46-56. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18389/dearq39.2024.05
Mayra Ximena Hernández Villamizar
arquitectura.ximenahernandez@gmail.com
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
Received: June 15, 2023 | Accepted: January 29, 2024
The only true voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in looking with new eyes.
Marcel Proust, El tiempo recobrado.
Traditionally, architectural projects are analyzed based on an understanding of the triad site, activity, and technique. This research highlights how the analysis of architectural projects extends beyond previous studies. Instead, spaces are shaped through users and events that unfold over time. A performative cartography of users is employed for this purpose, revealing the unplanned actions and versions of the projected spaces. The investigation begins with built work as a generic support, anticipating certain forms of use and utilization of its elements, allowing for the observation, examination, and analysis of usage production. Projected knowledge is connected to the interpretation of the ordinary and every day, capturing and making visible (re-presenting) users' daily situations and scenarios. This representation consists of multiple spatial scenes where the time factor engages with units of spaces and users.
Keywords: Use, built work, projected knowledge, spatial scenes, units of time, cartography.
Since the classical world, the main inquiry into architecture has focused on its stability and resistance: firmitas. This article invites exploration through change, understanding another aspect of reality, in line with a constantly evolving world that compels us not to settle for a clear image and to move away from the idea of permanence. Thus, analysis of the formal structure of built work is taken for granted. This is not because it is less important, but because it enables an approach to the idea of spatial support and, consequently, to the projected knowledge manifested in cartographies. The theme of this issue of Dearq, "Between the Ephemeral and the Enduring", suggests an investigation into the relevance of the preposition "between". This considers the concept of what oscillates, vibrates, or shifts, to name just a few singularities of what occurs in spatial support. In the book Lo ordinario, edited by Enrique Walker (2010), there is a reference to architectural project thinking from the construction of fictitious and ephemeral architectures as permanent entities. This text explores two built works in which other possibilities of use emerge from everyday particularities.
The construction of project thinking in the last ten years in Colombia has revealed a shift in which the scenarios of teaching, thinking, and doing are interconnected with the formation of architecture teams or collectives focused on structuring disciplinary work from social order. Reflections on the social, human, and democratic aspects are unveiled through architecture. It is precisely in this exploration of conscious responses to collective challenges that observation and analysis of situations allow these working teams, within a dynamic timeline, to construct and manage an architectural project. The idealization, production, and fabrication of space designed to support human activities arise from this process. Páez i Blanch (2014, 122) calls it "élargir la vie", that soft way of demonstrating the seeing manifested to others in the same scenario with words. Undoubtedly, the reflection found in this line enables the understanding and capacity of these architectures by allowing the demonstration of the Amairis architectural project through a broad management of uses.
Figure 1_ Timeline. Source: Ruta 4 Taller.
Figure 2_ Design process with community involvement. Source: Ruta 4 Taller.
Figure 3_ Community Meeting. Source: Ruta 4 Taller.
The architecture teams Ruta 4 and Taller Sintesis align with David Cuartas and Maya Farhid from the "Parque Educativo Saberes Ancestrales" project, asserting that "architecture should not be a matter of control but a matter of freedom" (interview by Mayra Hernández, June 2022). For instance, in this project, removing the door element for accessing the building and proposing an inclined platform resembling a ramp exemplifies one of the operations-procedures that merges the interior with the exterior, clearly indicating the possibility for "life to happen". This initiates human connections that can eliminate the boundaries between the project and the city. Indeed, it reveals the idea of democratizing space, giving rise to alternative modes of use that are not rigid but rather permeate the humanized, the common, the everyday, where the presence of others is close.
The architectural project's program arises from the community's needs, where the term "collectivity" is understood as a group of people united by a specific need. Two aspects gain relevance at the beginning of this process of thought and community construction. These are community knowledge, which delves into social and cultural themes, worldviews, specific needs, and economic resources, and the possibility of change. With change comes the idea that the project is an open process born from listening to people and their needs. In the example of the Amairis architects, they had to design a space to hold a certain number of women sewing. The women took on the role of "narrating" the necessary spaces for their productive processes to the architects. The possibility of new uses becomes evident when the same space takes on a versatile character, serving multiple events such as meetings, weddings, baptisms, and funerals; a common space for all. These unplanned uses emerge over time. For instance, in subsequent years, the space could transform into a dance hall or two classrooms. Essentially, the space could evolve according to the community's needs. Therefore, the project's idea implicitly includes adaptability and mutation based on the community. This aligns with what Christopher Alexander (2019) calls "the timeless way of building" which, in this case, results from an interpretation of needs but contains patterns that enable optimal structures for living. This means that the architect no longer imposes a way of life, rather it is the user who completes the built project.
The program, therefore, does not adhere to the idea of the absolute and radical. The updating of activities over time provides other ways of efficiency and space usage. It becomes possible to understand space from the malleability of its uses. These are not listed, categorized, or inventoried, but reveal other human needs. Consequently, understanding the present and configuring it around the event facilitates the comprehension of reality (Toro Ocampo 2020). In this regard, the built project is the laboratory where multiple scenes unfold without a script. It is the user who constructs lines of actions that ultimately structure and organize the production of everyday narratives that complete the projected space over time. In architecture, one cannot speak in "absolute" terms (interview by M. Hernández with Cuartas and Farhid, June 2022). Such projects, with limited resources and in places with few amenities, according to the interviewees, involve creating things that serve more than what has been requested.
The common denominator of these sites with a scarce state presence is their lack of scenarios: those that the rest of the world assumes are present in all cities but are conspicuous by their absence in these small towns. This compels an architecture designed for the free development of the everyday, stepping away from control, as seen in the case of the 'house for everyone' project developed in Vigía del Fuerte (Antioquia department). In contrast to these site deficiencies, and inversely proportional, it opens the path to new ways of working and conceiving space. For example, the construction of an educational facility, undoubtedly an event for such communities, offers an opportunity for creating a project with limitless activities. It can be a town library, laboratory, sports venue, and even an auditorium. The context and its understanding demand the execution of relevant projects, offering possibilities not initially laid out in the program.
Figure 4_ Ancestral Knowledge Educational Park, on the banks of the Atrato River in the Antioquia Northwest. Source: Taller Sintesis. https://tallersintesis.com/portfolio/pr-parque-educativo-vigia-2/.
Figure 5_ Model of the Ancestral Knowledge Educational Park Project. Source: The author.
Figure 6_ Ancestral Knowledge Educational Park, on the banks of the Atrato River in the Antioquia Northwest. Source: Taller Sintesis. https://tallersintesis.com/portfolio/pr-parque-educativo-vigia-2/.
In this sense, the projected social space responds to characteristics such as elasticity, malleability, and variability, as referenced by Páez (2013). These characteristics allow us to understand the diversity of programs, translated into possibilities of actions that can occur in spatial support, with clarity within the essential framework in the logic of its limits and its technique. Another feature of these actions, as continuous processes in the use of space, is that they allow other possible activities that construct different spatial scenes.
As in Life: A User's Manual, a novel in which Perec (1993) reconstructs objects, memories, sensations of the everyday or what happens in the ordinary, these lines aim to reveal the possibilities of use in what has been called "spatial support", all translated into actions. Similarly, Michel de Certeau (2000) exemplifies the possibilities of doing in the ordinary, resorting to processes that resist reason, and how space should be used (Garriga Gimeno 2022). Thus, the everyday-ordinary differs from the radicality of strict, programmed function, meaning that the user will produce multiple natural actions in a space. Therefore, a variability of actions and scenes can be proposed by experimenting through the representation of time cartographies of use, thus approaching the idea of novelty in activity.
Now, in the spatial thinking of the Japanese architect Junya Ishigami, everyday actions are visualized and understood. From there, reality is interpreted with possible movement simulations to find the position of the elements that configure a space and explain other ways of mapping. These are manifested in tensions and efforts are converted into vectors (Belogolovski 2019).
In this way, the drawing will go beyond functional or programmatic problems and approach a visual construction of new actions in a built space. Indeed, the posed inquiry allows an approach to the project and its synthesis that no longer parts from the starting point of an architectural product that can be pigeonholed or described from a scalar or typological perspective. Instead, it parts from the understanding of multiplicity, related to the production of entities among which this concept is included. It results from the union of a set of entities that are outlined with a specific intention (Deleuze and Guattari 1980).
The purpose of representing architectural projects was tied to the standard of drawing, and with it, defined through plans, sections, elevations, and perspectives which were, at the time, the way to fully define and visualize a project. On the other hand, defining space in a 21st century scenario occurs in a transdisciplinary manner, prompting a search for other tools that allow for thinking, managing, and creating. Thus, the language of representation changes, aligning with the changing relationship of use and productivity corresponding to the duration of the activity.
Understanding that the architectural project is a "spatial support" and a "support for a productive system" indicates that changes in uses over time produce a series of activities reflected in the well-being of a specific community. Therefore, economic, social, and cultural changes will verify the transformation and progress of a community. The idea that support is generic and that the everyday can be an ingredient of reality is unique and is on the other side of what is systematized and programmed. Consequently, understanding the singularity of reality/time and experiences/actions in the built object involves maneuvering data that corresponds to the change in use over a specific period. However, it is this interval between events that will allow visualizing the essence of the technique. In other words, from this exploratory examination, one can infer or demonstrate the real elasticity of space.
The resources supporting this article are interviews and photography, through which everyday data is obtained to map spatial scenes and units of time in the use of spatial support. In an architectural plan, numbered vectors are placed to determine different trajectories captured over time. Thus, the representation of time becomes visible through layers that overlap and expose the multiplicity of events. These are not programed like a checklist but fluctuate in the "spatial support". The objective is to visualize it in images that reveal the event, where the time category supports the definition of what is constantly changing.
The reading of the sheet reveals six aspects identified by letters, from A to F:
A: Numbering of the spatial scene and name of the constructed project.
B: Denomination of the everyday activity.
C: Cartographic definition according to activity.
D: Interior photograph of the spatial support: everyday image.
E: Upper part: architectural plan of the built work. Lower part: map of people's movement.
F: Cartographic data.
The origin of the cartography is found in the architectural plan of the constructed work and in photographs taken of everyday activities. In this way, the logics of order (axes - purple lines) establish the spatial capacity of the support. This repository of activities does not have elements that subdivide the interior space; it only has walls at its boundaries, loaded with possibilities for operating in both interior and exterior spaces. In the lower horizontal, spaces alternate, such as small storage warehouses, perforations for ventilation and lighting, and technical rooms. In the upper horizontal, the idea of a door-window in contact with the exterior is defined. In effect, what is exposed is a simulation of usage movement and its projection is on this support.
Figures 7 to 10_ Cartographic Sheets. Source: The author.
Interviews with architectural teams and community leaders allowed us to understand the design process, procedures, and management methods for the realization of the constructed work. They reveal another way of thinking about the discipline, no longer from the unilateral perspective of the commission but from the understanding of the territory, the interpretation of the local material and construction logics, and the comprehension of multiple human needs. These needs ultimately manifest as new uses in spatial support.
Understanding the change in limits will allow for the comprehension of different units of time, where a variety of actions will take place in a space. Thus, these already defined limits will be analyzed from "what interests us today, which is not necessarily what we can predict with certainty" (Prigogine 2009). Therefore, units of time are transformable as the limits change, and considering that variation, the representation of time in the cartographies of use must be elaborated, opposing an initial order or program. From here onwards, it could be inferred that the idea of novelty will be determined by situations of probability and not by initial determination in resolving an absolute space program.
Moving away from the paradigm of stability does not purely and exclusively indicate responding to the strict forms of the ordered. Rather, it allows for the possibility of encountering movement and fluctuation. In other words, understanding the changes and modifications of what we call nature tends to become the object of knowledge and constant transformation. At one point, classical or fundamental science, represented by figures like Newton, Schrödinger, or Einstein, found its essence in stability, balance, and permanence. However, the world we live in today is framed by fluctuation, evolution, and instability, shifting from a science of geometry to a science of narration that does not seek to fit into a defined and aligned mold for mass production.
When examining these projects regarding their use, everyday practices are identified as a reflection of the population's needs, influencing the departure of programmatic stability and the generation of other types of events, not foreseeable at the time of their projection. For this to happen, spatial support must be designed to allow for a change in activities. Time will probably be a constant that can be alternated, and it will be impacted by the variant duration of the scenes.
In his essay The Birth of Time, Prigogine (1988) asserts: "the future remains open, linked to always new processes of transformation and increased complexity, proposing, therefore, a universe in which time is not an illusion or dissipation but creation".
Now, each scene presented in this "spatial support" analyzes the following: designation of the activity, location of each person in use, internal path determining the action, duration of each action, and sequences that form the overall image. Linked to this, Aby Warburg configures the capturing of images with links that construct a narrative that persists over time through the Atlas of Mnemosyne. Reading the panels from top, bottom, center, right, left, and vice versa, reveals that the understanding of actions could be seen as a system that is not static or immobile. It could account for another type of relationship arising from the everyday where ways of seeing, being, and living in space coexist.
Figure 11_ Aby Warburg, abstraction of panels 14, 15, 16: System of multiple reading relationships. Source: The author.
In fact, the reflection will be focused on the program and the use understood as a scenographic element that becomes a choreographic analogue (Quesada 2021). The quest to define the guiding theme of this article, projected knowledge, is without a doubt an irreversible process that brings the principles of structure and function into play. Hence, the study of the concept of time will not come from movement but from "internal evolutions towards a world in non-equilibrium" (Prigogine 2021). Thus, human activities and actions in constant change "correspond to accessible dissipative structures" (2021, 33). Even the representation of new situations will enable the understanding of new limits.
Throughout the article, an approach to drawn cartographies that can operate with usage data has been proposed. These highlight the frequent and common in spaces that are presented as repositories of human activities, including production, education, and recreation. This spatial support manifests the idea of the permanence of temporality, meaning that change enhances and expands the possibilities of use.
Cartography is presented as understandable knowledge through the demonstration of data converted into drawings, making it thinkable. As a practice that describes part of reality, cartography is represented in a specific and concrete way. Projected knowledge refers to how what is visible can be constructed. This type of cartography can convey spatial and temporal knowledge, aspects that respond to the changes we experience daily. Denis Cosgrove (1999) highlights four moments of cartography, namely scale (where relationships are established: support space), frame (space produced for cartography construction), selection (parameters: aspects, qualities, behaviors), and coding (the image: alphanumeric and textual information). In each scene, based on images of daily life, we overlay actions that allow a result, the sum of which is represented on an architectural plan in a unit of time. This data allows inferring a multiplicity of uses in space.
The project as support and the manifestations of the everyday-ordinary oppose what is stable and what is in continuous change. In this way, cartographies become graphic knowledge devices that are generated from the friction between spatial support and use and their relationships between the specific and the heterogeneous. That is, each cartography incorporates time and place, angle of view and perspective. Read over time, they provide a key to understanding space.
Juan Navarro Baldeweg (1972), in the text "Action and Design", grants the actor a dual role. The first is as an organizing agent of the system that transforms the structure of couplings, and the second, as an active element. On the other hand, the social management of space implies that the concern of interdisciplinary teams is connected to understanding the architectural project from the concern for the cultural, social, economic, and technical processes that spatially materialize, rather than from the conception of a finished and stable object. Hence, the interest in inferring what happens in the spatial support from the use the complexity of representing through cartographies arises, starting from ordinary events presented on generic platforms.
Given that if the representation system has reached the limit of demonstrating the physical project, from constructed work to projected knowledge other drawing systems appear that contain another complexity, aimed at understanding collaborative work systems with a common language. Therefore, the representation of what happens in real time is related to the uses that users give to space according to their needs. The complex reality, the time in which singular situations occur, forces us to think of representing that knowledge in another way, defining it as a phenomenon through spatial scenes that contain activity, duration (time), and relation to objects in space.
The next purpose is to overlay other types of data, including the technical and thermal mesh, on spatial scenes. Thus, stamping and overlapping will allow the visualization of cartographies that expose the extraordinary in the ordinary. The above is presented through a model of simulations whose result exhibits the part of reality referred to in this text. So, should limits be operated and established if what oscillates and vibrates in human activities is not permanent?