Medellín: A Tale of Two Cities

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building.Medellín, Colombia, is the quintessential example of a city reborn. In the last two decades, architecture has played a significant role in the changing perceptions of the city’s urban reality. This is underpinned by Medellín’s self-established urban binary: a narrative of violence and transformation. Global media has set these two parallel urban conditions against one another to produce a convincing image of the city’s architectural integrity. This thesis explores how this image of Medellín is constructed and understood from afar by tracing the development of the project – : – and how it opened a dialogue on how to unpack, interpret, and represent Medellín’s urban reality despite issues of perception. A methodological experiment, : tests how to look at the city through image-based inquiry. The result: a three-dimensional diorama that surveys how Medellín’s urban narratives are produced and disseminated. Placing descriptions of the diorama and Medellín’s urban operations together, this thesis seeks to reconceptualise the form architecture takes when shaping ideas of the city to ultimately provide a new way of reading the city. The thesis does this in two distinct ways: (1) by analysing the diorama and its ability to interpret and represent information through images; and, (2) by using the diorama to describe Medellín’s urban reality. Furthermore, the thesis identifies how the diorama’s production method reveals the powerful ways in which Medellín is perceived by visualising the interactions between linear, non-linear, and transversal navigations across historical, conceptual, political, and/or material territories to build an equally relevant portrayal of Medellín’s urban and architectural history

Skanderbeg, Tirana. Una sección llena de nada (plano fijo)

Las imágenes del fotógrafo belga Maxime Delvaux de la plaza de Skanderbeg en Tirana completada por el despacho de arquitectura belga 51N4E y el artista albanés Anri Sala en 2017 tienen al menos tres lecturas. Su contenido nos permite acceder a la compleja historia del proyecto, revelando las conexiones entre las decisiones de diseño, las políticas de transformación urbana de la ciudad y sus dirigentes, e incluso, en algunos casos, la imaginación política de Albania frente a la Unión Europea. Su formato, a medio camino entre fotografías tradicionales y videos de plano fijo, nos ayuda a entender como 51N4E trata de explicar no solo sus proyectos sino sus los procesos de diseño y la reorganización de la oficina. Finalmente, como fotografía de arquitectura, nos desvelan los efectos que la irrupción de la fotografía digital ha tenido en la documentación de proyectos arquitectónicos