Care based design methodologies. Or how to perform some of the results of Sophie Calle’s artwork “Take Care”

Taller presentado en Symposium Urban Studies in Education and Research, 15-16 November 2018, TU DresdenEste paper explica un taller de diseño de infraestructuras ubicadas en la huerta de la vega del Segura y que constituyen pequeñas instalaciones ligeras con las que reflexionar sobre modos de uso, estancia y disfrute del paisaje: “… detectar extra-domésticos o micro-arquitecturas, desplazamientos fuera del espacio residencial de usos que tradicionalmente se suponen interiores a las viviendas...”. Objetivo del taller es considerar, en el momento de diseñar los enunciados, cuestiones relativas a la ética, deuda, huella de los cuidados o afectos, esas situaciones de tutela, hospedaje, cuidados higiénicos, dependencia o celo presentes en las relaciones humanas. Se habla de esta huella de los cuidados en términos equiparables a lo que se conoce como huella ambiental: es el rastro invisible, tiempo compartido o vínculo emocional que garantiza la sostenibilidad de una familia para permitir la continuidad generacional o de un colectivo para el sostenimiento de los bienes comunes (Pascual, 2010,176). Se consideraba una atención, un regalo y una obligación de las mujeres, y se alejaba de la primera línea de atención en el estudio de las ciencias sociales de las sociedades occidentales (Moll, 2010)

Dibujar (con) el mundo. La aceptación de una contingencia incesante entre lo disciplinar y lo contemporáneo

La representación formal y espacial implica acotar los límites de un fenómeno cuando se observa desde la geografía; añade lo humano estudiada desde la sociología; se complementa de cartografías cuando se aborda desde los estudios urbanos; o añade dimensiones relacionales cuando se trabaja desde la arquitectura. Estas cuatro definiciones demuestran que hay conceptos aparentemente propios de una disciplina pero que son interpretables desde otros ámbitos. Esta comunicación refleja el interés por ampliar las competencias de la representación formal y espacial a través de la discusión de para qué o hasta dónde dibujamos, planteada desde el instante en que la primera línea digital es trazada, ordenando la producción en categorías del tipo “entrelazados ecológicos”, “metáforas de lo global”, “el sueño verde”, “el rol activista”, o qué ocurre después de “un acontecimiento disruptivo” (como la pandemia que nos ha asolado), los cuales sirven como pretexto para merodear cuestiones que laten y reverberan cerca nuestro mientras buscamos cada año casos de estudio para construir enunciados prácticos. Al final del trabajo, se demuestra que los códigos gráficos disciplinares pueden permanecer para aproximarse a asuntos de la complejidad mencionada siempre que la estrategia gráfica sea suficientemente reflexiva y el alcance bien acotado

Performing Objects and Interpretive Techniques: Textual Rewriting and Other Methods to Raise a Set of Landscape Designs for a Rural Community

Based on the concept of ‘interpretive community’, it is possible to trace how humans can become interpreters (or decoders) of their own reality through, say, written excerpts and architectural works. This chapter is intended, therefore, to report on an interpretive-community workshop where students of three different disciplines (namely, Architecture, Sociology and English Studies) were assigned specific chapters of literary works with the goal of making a collective interpretation through a process of rewriting and restoring architecture. These projects allow students (or any participant, in fact) in their recognition of salient concepts that are not necessarily ascribed to a specific domain; for instance, the understanding of architecture not solely as a construction process, but as a mechanism intended to protect traces of life that are naturally perceived through narration and the use of metaphors

“Isla de información”: experiencia de cartografía ciudadana. Iniciativa para la Huerta de Murcia

“Isla de Información” fue una experiencia que tuvo lugar en abril de 2013 mediante la cual un grupo de ciudadanos, expertos y ayudantes en cartografía (arquitectos) peinaron una porción del territorio huertano a la búsqueda de indicios y de situaciones relevantes desde el punto de vista de la productividad o abandono, el patrimonio hidráulico, el patrimonio inmaterial, las redes familiares, ambientes naturales, conflictos de la accesibilidad, etc. Durante la excursión a pie de una mañana de duración, los asistentes pasearon, aprendieron, fotografiaron, debatieron y dibujaron el entorno huertano y sus particularidades. El objetivo era crear un denso mapa de virtudes, conflictos y oportunidades de un pequeño sector de la Huerta de Murcia entorno a un antiguo meandro del rio Segura. Si la acción significó el descubrimiento de un formato de taller adecuado para que todas las edades, incluso niños, pudieran participar con sus familias para disfrutar y compartir el medio huertano y subir los datos a internet, esta comunicación reflexiona, además, acerca de si la experiencia puede entenderse como un ensayo de empoderamiento de la ciudadanía a la hora de construir la representación pública de su paisaje y ciudad

Transcultures and Communities: exercises to validate and design a set of tales on migrations

Comunicación presentada en 5th International Conference of the Association of Architectural Educators, University of Westminster, 24-26 April 2019.Literary studies’ main object of study is the dynamics and devices involved in textual stories. Traditionally, architecture studies design spaces for experiences. It corresponds to sociology studies to reveal the interrelations between humans and their environment. Finally, geopolitical studies classically focus on political powers linked to the geographical space. In this context, this paper presents a multidisciplinary set of exercises that took place during the first semester of the academic year 2018/19, in which these four disciplines shared objectives and methods in relation with a common topic: migrations in the mid-20th Century. These exercises are based on literary narratives and non-literary texts about migration, border-crossing and transcultural identities compiled in the volume Journeys. How travelling fruit, ideas and buildings rearrange our environment (published by the Canadian Centre for Architecture in 2010), acknowledging the value of non-human migrants through topics and stories by establishing complex connections between them. The work presented in this paper describes how students are capable of implementing procedures learnt from other fields of knowledge (e.g. such as storyboards, sociograms or image tagging) for developing a traditional architectural design project. The educational challenge is presented by the definition of methodologies and the identification of statements. The research developed in this contribution focuses on different degrees of integration and rootedness of modern migrations caused by climatic, cultural, labour or economic reasons. Is it a suitable topic for the four disciplines involved? It certainly provides an opportunity to speculate with non-humans, goods and knowledge beyond anthropocentric discourse. In particular, the subject allows us to compare migrants and remittances i.e. non-monetary transfers such as consumer goods, customs and technologies

Anatomizing NetLogo. Some advices on how to consider a programmable environment for designing inhabited landscapes

NetLogo is a freely programmable environment that offers an interface whose graphic synthesis is sufficient to depict emergent and complex phenomena as long as they are characterized by the appropriate variables; it looks for ways to incorporate geometric and geographical bases of real cartographies; it has the capacity to speculate with the future of reciprocal, cooperative societies; is able to diagram the virtual model on the graph of real data; finally, it helps researchers and teachers to set methodologies to project from the consideration of minimum knowledge units and neighbourhood conditions. This paper explains some resource implications as well as examples chosen in recent years by students of the UA

Synchronized Artificial Natures: The Secret Life of Trees Connecting York, Delft and Alicante

This paper presents an experiment that explored teaching limits in architecture and computational arts. Three universities (York, Tu-Delft and Alicante) collaborated, commissioning and producing three Interactive scenographic spaces. These were formed by visitors, artificial trees as well as reactive technologies and emulated the way in which fungi communicate by connecting their roots underground. Over the four months of duration of the experiment, students learnt about programming resources in contemporary musical scenographic creation; graphic resources and digital manufacturing for 3D printing; component design; Arduino programming; and interfaces such as the “Game of Life” to explain the project in terms of cooperating particles. Theoretical backgrounds such as the architecture of contingency, readings such as “the secret life of the trees” by Wohlleben and performance practices such as “A-volve” by Mignonneau and Sommerer or “Hylozoic series” by Philip Beesley were approached in the workshop. The ultimate goals of this teaching practice described more explicitly in the paper include: understanding the ways in which communities cooperate; synchronous communication between scenic spaces as well as transparent design processes; and efforts to reduce excessive subject learning encapsulation in new Degrees based on the Bologna model

Modelos de brotes arbustivos o algas en arquitectura. O cómo replicar un vegetal mediante la Agregación Limitada por Difusión (DLA)

En el presente artículo se expone el desarrollo de un método de diseño de estructuras ramificadas del tipo algas marinas o formas arbustivas que se basa en la agregación limitada por difusión (DLA) para definir su geometría. Se ha usado la DLA para reproducir unas reglas de crecimiento convincentes o verosímiles a partir de lo aprendido de visores programables como el NetLogo (Wilensky 1999). En concreto, las herramientas que reproducen la simulación aprendida de NetLogo son el software Grasshopper para generar las geometrías, el plug-in Exoskeleton para obtener superficies envolventes a dichas estructuras alámbricas, y el plug-in Weaverbird para suavizar transiciones entre caras de malla. Ésta última herramienta permite suavizar la malla mediante iteraciones que aumentan o no el número de caras, lo que permite entender algunas teorías sobre transiciones suaves en bifurcaciones de estructuras naturales (Mattheck 1990). Este artículo sirve además para reflexionar acerca de cómo modelos físico cinéticos basados en mecanismos inspirados en la Inteligencia Artificial ayudan a compartir métodos de análisis con otras disciplinas como la cibernética o la dinámica de fluidos o las ciencias sociales y del medioambiente. ¿Por qué puede ocurrir esto? Por el rigor en el lenguaje que todo el rato pretende referirse a poblaciones de individuos, a ciclos de vida, a sistemas multivariables, a reglas de reciprocidad o a pactos con partículas próximas.This article discusses the development of a design method for branched structures with seaweed-like or shrub-like forms based on diffusion-limited aggregation (DLA) to define its geometry. DLA has been used to reproduce convincing or credible growth rules from what has been learned from programmable displays such as NetLogo (Wilenski 1999). In particular, the tools that reproduce the simulation learned from NetLogo are the Grasshopper software to generate the geometry, the Exoskeleton plug-in to get surrounding surfaces to these wireframe structures, and the Weaverbird plug-in to smooth transitions between mesh faces. This last tool allows smoothing the mesh by iterations that increase or not the number of faces, which allows to understand some theories about smooth transitions in forks of natural structures (Mattheck 1990). This article also serves to reflect on how kinetic-physical models based on mechanics inspired by Artificial Intelligence help to share methods of analysis with other disciplines such as cybernetics or fluid dynamics or the social and environmental sciences. Why can this happen? Because of the rigor in language that all the time tries to refer to populations of individuals, to life cycles, to multi-variable systems, to reciprocity rules or to pacts with near particles

Young women’s contradictory constructions and experiences of cigarette smoking

The impacts of cigarette smoking on health are now well documented. Although overall rates of smoking in Australia have been declining for many decades, smoking remains a leading cause of death and disease. Research has begun to explore the ways in which smoking is experienced by young women, however, several gaps in this field of knowledge remain. There is a need for further research to help us understand the multiple, contradictory, and intersecting identity positions which shape young women’s smoking. Moreover, there is a need for research which adopts novel methodological approaches, such as participant-produced photography, and different theories such as poststructuralist and intersectionality theory, to further our understandings of the social context in which young women’s smoking is situated. In this thesis I explore the ways in which young women smokers and ex-smokers construct and experience cigarette smoking. In order to do this, I situate my thesis in a social constructionist epistemological paradigm, and ask two research questions: “What discourses do young women draw on to construct their smoking?” and “What implications do young women’s discursive constructions of smoking have on their subjectivity, smoking practices, and interactions with anti-smoking campaigns and policies?” Data collection for this study took place between 2014 and 2015. Young Australian women aged 18 to 31, smokers and ex-smokers, took part in a three-stage qualitative study involving interviews, a participant-produced photography activity, and follow-up interviews. The data were analysed using discourse analysis, and intersectionality and poststructuralist theories. The analysis of the data is presented in four referred journal articles. The conclusion, bringing together the findings from these four articles, argues that smoking takes up multiple, often contradictory meanings and functions in young women’s lives: feminine and unfeminine, a source of risk and a way of coping, an addiction and a choice. These findings have implications for the development of tobacco control responses which recognise young women’s agency and the complexity and contradiction that characterises their smoking, as well as acknowledging the multiple identities that shape their experiences with smoking