Project Statement:
The project is located
in Medellin, Colombia, with the focus on integrating
its informal settlements with the formal city. With
a population of 3.5 million inhabitants, Medellin is
nestled in a narrow Andean Valley at an elevation of
3000 feet. It gained attention in the 1980’s when
it became a center for the cocaine trade and one of
the most violent cities in the world. The violence between
drug lords and citywide organizations occurred mostly
in the poorer neighborhoods, located on the steep slopes
of the Medellin valley. The relative inaccessibility
of these settlements due to their density and structure
made them ideal places for drug lords to organize and
hideout. Over the last four years with a new mayor,
Sergio Fajardo, the city has undergone tremendous civic
changes. Through simple, quickly built, urban interventions,
the city has been able to provide accessibility to secluded
barrios and create new urban centers.
The specific site for our design intervention
is Santo Domingo, one of the informal settlements in
Medellin that has experienced this change from violence
and drugs to civic improvement over the last four years.
Santo Domingo was one of the poorer and most violent
informal settlements that was successfully targeted
by the Fajardo administration's urban improvement plan.
It was linked to the formal city through a metro cable
(an aerial gondola) which connected to the city’s
elevated subway line. The city’s development strategy
began with siting an iconic library near the metro stop
and existing community center, and building off of the
node other institutions and connections such as a community
center to tap local entrepreneurial skills, a high quality
elementary and secondary school, recreational spaces,
pedestrian links over the ravines, and new subsidized
housing to relocate the population displaced by the
introduction of the former amenities and services. The
success of these interventions is highlighted by the
considerable reduction in crime rate, the intense use
of these public spaces and a sense of belonging to the
formal city.
However, these interventions also bring
to attention other issues, largely ecological and urban,
that continue to plague Santo Domingo. These issues
are the city’s primary concern for Santo Domingo
and form our main design task. Within the area there
are some 500 dwellings constructed on extremely steep
slops at risk of mudslides during the rainy season.
These homes are to be relocated within the neighborhood,
and the vacant land occupied in such a way as to keep
it from being informally reoccupied.
Accordingly, the project has three major
design goals: Community, Connectivity and Ecology; working
in tandem with each other to achieve the main objective
of relocating housing and programming vacant land.
‘Community’ represents the
issue of unstable housing and lack of open space in
Santo Domingo, but at the same time builds on its
strengths of existing interventions and community
identity. It was important to us that the new housing,
though formal in its design, allows for its owners
to informally build additional units, as is the custom
in the neighborhood. We determined where to situate
the new housing developments based on a slope analysis,
in which we chose areas with a lesser slope. This
is different than the city’s proposal in which
new high-rise housing located along existing urban
edges. Along with building new housing on the slope,
comes access to basic amenities such as water, electricity,
sewer, and emergency vehicle access. New community
institutions border the open space within the development
or at its edge, serving not just as community anchors
but as guardians of the larger programmed open space
in order to insure its protection from reoccupation.
‘Connectivity’ is about
providing legible connections between Santo Domingo
and its surrounding context while strengthening connections
between existing nodes and proposed interventions.
There are four main connections: 1) a ring road around
the hill at relatively the same contour which connects
the various programs, allowing for access and a range
of experiences. The path itself functions hydrologically,
channeling water along runnels into collection cisterns
located within and along the path. 2) vertical pedestrian
links through both hillside developments create links
from the top to bottom of the hill 3) a new road connecting
the two developments 4) enhancing the connecting road
between the library and La Silla, a isolated community
of Santo Domingo.
‘Ecology’ addresses the
issues of steep, unstable slopes prone to landslides
and flooding by providing water management systems
and planting schemes to control erosion. A network
of pathways function as surface drains and collectors,
channeling water to cisterns at relative low points
along the path. This system helps to drain the slope
during the rains and provides a source of irrigation
for the community agricultural fields. Irrigating
through releasing water from the cisterns, crops can
be planted according to a hierarchy of their water
needs. Both the agricultural fields and the Experience
Ecology area create new venues for the community to
experience large swaths of unbuilt space (a rarity
in the barrio) and engage the community in food production,
water management, and native tree species. The Experience
Ecology area is composed of densely planted swaths
of native trees, functioning both to retain the slope
and as the ecological wing of the existing library.
These interventions have physical implications
that are defined by a basic framework for design. These
include: the importance of contextual and cultural nuances,
the use of materials and structure as suggested by the
existing barrio, to explore the treatment of open space
and the built that bounds it, provide user adaptation
while making strong design moves and understanding our
design moves as part of the larger context of Medellin.
The intention is for the three strategies
of ‘community’, ‘ecology’ and
‘connectivity’ to work simultaneously in
the design move, to accomplish the variables involved.
In this regard, the involvement of the community and
the phasing of the design process become important.
Accordingly, the phases outline the following design
process: to relocate housing in high risk areas and
the two areas of redevelopment, immediate transformation
of two nodes into open space or built interventions
to avoid reoccupation, develop pedestrian systems within
nodes and extend outwards to form connections across
the site, and a planting scheme to both organize and
protect the slope from erosion.
Phasing outlines the
immediate priorities of the intervention and sets up
the process of design to allow for strong initial moves
while maintaining a flexibility and place for user adaptation.
This is important in resettlement of housing, particularly
in informal areas and is a part of sensitizing and involving
residents in the design process. Ultimately, the design
moves work together in this context of informality,
and informality lends itself to weaving a process of
design rather than an end result.
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