Planes parciales, Urban Design, Stadt Entwurf

Esta publicación es la primera de un Plan Parcial. Me parece que le he sacado el cuerpo a lo que es el centro de mi blog, que es contar mis ideas sobre la ciudad, y lo que me propongo.
Este plan parcial tiene que ver con un terreno en el centro de Bogotá, donde funciona una clínica que se especializa en asuntos de salud mental para personas mayores. Inicialmente se nos llama como arquitectos diseñadores de la residencia de los Hermanos de la Orden Hospitalaria de San Juan de Dios. Pero existen muchos factores que llevan necesariamente a contemplar facetas màs amplias de diseño. Ese es el aspecto que más me interesa. Como hoy estoy apurado, y despues de màs de quince dìas sin publicar algo me siento culpable de algo, publico dos dibujos a mano alzada de dos aspectos del proyecto.
Primero un bosquejo de la residencia de los Hermanos como me la imagino por fuera

Despuès un boceto de un baño tipo en una habitación de la residencia. La idea es que el baño es una instalación como la cocina: Aparatos que pueden quitarse y ponerse en un espacio cualquiera. Pienso que esa transitoriedad de las funciones de alguna manera refleja la transitoriedad de la vida y las vanidades que predica la Orden Hospitalaria.

Seguiré con más fotos y dibujos a medida que se desenvuelva este proyecto.

Ich hab genug von Kolumbien gehabt

Und ich wuensche deutsch sprechen. Wahrscheinlich ich hab genug von Kolumbien gehabt.

In no mood to do anything serious. Find that every institution to which you propose something is a tribe, an endogamic one.
Find that my age is a drawback. All new jobs are for young people. No place for ablebodied, educated, experienced and seasoned people.
The electronic maya warrior drawn with a single line is something I have wanted to do for a long time. It´s sort of my style.

Sniff, Sniff, me rechazó la Cámara Comercio de Bogotá

En español porque estoy cabreado.

Hasta ahora, este blog ha sido una mazamorra de todo. hablo de lámparas, y botas ortopédicas, y muestro dibujos en tinta de capricornios, y hasta menciono la estategia de las metalturas, pero no muestro lo que me interesa, la idea transversal que une tanto disparate: El Diseño Urbano en forma de Planes Parciales es la única manera de densificar cohesionando la metrópoli disparatada. Todo lo demás se desprende de ahí: Las arquitecturas que nacen y mueren, la biología para nuevas vegetaciones urbanas, el diseño universal de micro a macro.

Pero la Asesora Nùmero 1 de la Dirección de Proyectos de Gestión Urbana de la Cámara de Comercio no está interesada en mi blog: Cuando una yuppicita bogotana dice que tu idea me parece muuuuy interesante, eso quiere decir en su convolutado lenguaje, que no es interesante.

El tonito descalificador de esa burócrata profesional me subleva. Talvez eso hacía falta para darle foco a tanta energía.

Propuse a la A1 de la DPGU de la CCB (me encanta cómo se disuelve la vanidad en esa nomencaltura jeràrquica) introducir en Colombia una figuran que existe en EEUU y varios otros países: La de las Veedurías Ciudadanas sobre Planes Parciales de Renovación Urbana (PPRU). Es muy útil para lubricar lo que la CCB llama procesos de gestión asociada. Se llaman así porque buscan que los tres actores sociales en un Plan Parcial (PPRU) armonicen sus intereses particulares en el propósito de densificar la ciudad y crear negocios gananciosos para todos.

Obviamente que hubiera querido ser yo quien lo implementara, pagado por la CCB. Ahora no me pagará nadie, pero igual alguien tendrá que hacerlo, porque eso no se puede parar.

Luego es posible que termine siendo yo ad honorem, o alguien más, él sí pagado, se alzará con el crédito. Esa inevitabilidad de tragedia griega es mi karma.

Mientras que se me aplaca la piedra y preparo dibujos de diseño urbano para deleitar a mis hordas de fans, dos fotos más:

La primera un engaña ojos. A que no adivinan dónde esta tomada

Y otro ejemplo de metaalturas

miscellaneous 2

Remember carparks and phone walls articles of last year? Well, found another example of the expanding fauna of hybrid architectonic genii that proliferate in the heat and congestion of the urban jungle.

Notice the phones row in the carpark entrance. The comptroller checks the bussiness across the entrance. It only lacks design

Who says that orthopedic devices can´t be sexi? Design can also be only an embellisher? Anyway, it looks better than the old devices I had to use when I was a kid and had broken legs playing football

Urban Scaffolds & Miscellaneous

In January I published an article about urban construction enclosures (is this the correct expression?). I said that maybe the ugliest construction enclosures in the whole world where to be found in Bogotá. Now I saw enclosures in the old part of the city that show a willingness to become something better. Here's one example I found walking around


In old buildings, particularly adobe works, the roof is essential to keep the mud masonry dry. That's the reason they take care to cover the roof while working on it.
At least, the appearence is better than expected.

Metafloors (continued)

The title says it is a continuation of something already begun. Adding floors to existing buildings is a way of increasing urban density. I´d call this strategy "Metafloors", or "Metaheights".In february I published some drawings proposing ways for doing this. Now I´ve began to see real examples. This is one of them. I find this example interesting because the addition is soooo light (a tent), and temporary too


TO BE CONTINUED

miscellaneous

Today I´m sort of low. The following drawing expresses it succintly, doesnt it?



The following photo is a rainy day near my apartment. This part of the city is the only one that really has big city urbanism. It shows, doesn't it?



Concerning the taxonomy of new spaces in the modern city, this photo of the university odontology service shows how many new architectures have arisen since the days of the Ledouz typologies

REGIONAL ORDERING PLAN Amazonas (continued)

The following drawing shows the basic components of the proposal for the "CONTINUOUS CANOPY AREA" of the Amazon Bassin. The keys in red show how nomadic the life there should be. The river and the jungle are to be left as undisturbed as possible.

Regional Plan for the Amazon Jungle (Continued)

In Wikipedia found a geographer (Karl Musser) who made a very clear map of the Caciquiare river with the boundaries of the Orinoco and Amazon basins.



There is an organization called Infa-Sars www.infa-sars.org, based in Bogota, and they have the same idea of travelling by river from the delta amacuro to buenos aires. Ill make contact with them and tell you. Meantime, here is a map by them of my dream:






It is possible to travel by river from Buenos Aires to Amacuro. Ill keep you, my hordes of readers, well informed

Regional Plan for the Amazon Jungle

Frank Lloyd Wright made this drawing in the first half of last century. Its a Regional Plan in the american terminology.In ours it is a Plan de Ordenamiento Territorial (POT) The ideal american territory.

Im doing the same in a proposal for a regional plan for the amazon jungle. I have experience in this kind of works for I have done POTs for cities. So my imagination leads me from the gloves to the jungle back and forth in a pendular process.



My drawing is expressive but lacks depth. It`s only a sketch that i`ll fix and complete, for I want it to become a working project. The red vertical lines are anchors and beacons for the zeppelins. They are to be situated along an important river, at the mouths of tributaries. These spots are the human settlements. Next issue i will show how I imagine these spots.

I´ve been going to the National University, faculty of odontology for the last months. I very much like the ambiance of those vast rooms where everybody mingles, old and young patients and doctors and teachers and pupils, and police secret agents and FARC agents provocateurs. It´s a kind of living morgue!



Graffiti have always attracted me. One would expect the university to be a display place of the very best. But our leftwing students are rather dull characters. I found one that seems interesting, although with spell errors. Charitably one would suppose the error is not due to ignorance but to haste, for the POLICE IS ACOMING!!!

Streetwise cellphone operators

Yesterday I published some photos of the cellular phone operators that work in front of my apartment. I dreamed a design business, and early in the morning I sat down to draw ideas. Here are the first sketches:



The idea is to let the operator sit in a cocktail type chair. Also to protect her from the sun and rain, and to be atractive enough as a street object that decorates.




The second drawing is a detail that shows the mechanism that allows it to swivel. The umbrella should be detachable, the chair folds, and when the police makes one of its arbitrary and periodic raids, she can dissapear easily and mingle with the crowd.

Design Miscellaneous

Almost three weeks without uploading anything. Feel guilty. Grown accustomed to blogging.
My loofah thermogloves have been delayed. My building design too. The crisis is being felt by everybody everywhere. So I`m supposed to have more time for blogging. Hope so.
Here are a couple of workshop drawings






Look at this photo taken in front of the building where I live% Notice the mobility of the cellular operators. They drift along the streets with their cellphones. They have become the ultimate urban nomads. But they lack DESIGN!!!




Sometimes other trades attach themselves to the celloperator like remorae to a shark. These two in the photo are synergic partners. But they lack DESIGN!!!!

THE PLAGUE & Design

The plague is the threat of the moment. It is also an oportunity for design. Here is a photo of a "manito" with an ingenuous mouth protector.



I will add my own version in the next issue of this blog

Increasing number of visitors: Pop or Rock?

Suddenly there are more than 80 visitors in three days. That's an increasing rate. Because none of them leaves a commentary, it's hard to figure out the profile of them. But the same question I put myself a couple of days ago still lingers. They are a moral booster and a challenge.

Another "Refrito"

Eduardo Fonseca was a client for whom I designed a country house a couple of years ago.

The house was to be built in phases. Each phase should be an architectonic object by itself. Here are some views of the AutoCAD 3d model for the first phase.


The orange hemicicle is the parking area.


The plan of the second phase can be perceived in the architectonic blueprint beneath the 3d object.






For every project built, how many unbuilt projects? They are more than dreams, because each one of them has resolved the program for which it was designed.
Sometimes, it was a luck it wasn´t built!

Refritos, or nothing to say for once

For once, got no new material. So I´ll treat you to "refritos", recanned old themes.
Flexon Estruturas&Herrajes is a client for whom I did some refurbishing of old structures, like the photo of the aerial drainage system for a factory I showed you in the 14th april issue. In the top floor of their factory was a derelict space. Here´s what we did three years ago:



We wanted an open space office. so we asked Solinoff to do some proposal. Here´s what they designed. I liked it.




We did our own design, which only walled the extremes: In one corner the chief, in the opposite corner, the personnel service area. In between an open space with the only surviving column painted blushing red. The outstanding feature is the curved drywall that encloses the service area.



The axis is empahized by cenital light. A construction photo shows how we put transparent roof along the axis



I like the end effect. Do you?

XSS design Ambidextrous Thermo Loofah Gloves

Keep to Rem Koolhaas recipe for dilettantism. This is XSS design.

Loofah thermo gloves for use in the kitchen. It was all an accident. The same as old Newton and the apple, you see. It just happened. So this is my smallest design so far. The photos are from the second prototype, but already show the chalk outlines of the lineal stitching for the third prototype.






My thesis is that, because of loofah's cellular structure, you can design a very decent family of very thin, pliable and thermostatic loofah gloves for use in the kitchen enviroment, that can be used with either hand.

The first prototype was only for use with the right hand. The second prototype is interchangeable, and works very nicely. I´ve had problems uploading Nokia videos to Blogspot, but I´ll show you soon how well the glove handles itself in the kitchen.

It only has one predictable problem and that is a certain planar rigidity due to the double loofaah plane that allows it to work with either hand.

The solution leads towards the third prototype. The workshop sketch and the initial photos show the stitching work that will articulate it as a medieval gauntlet.



As soon as the third prototype arrives, I´ll show it to you.

The purpose of this excercise is not only to furnish myself with useful kitchen ware, but to further exacerbate my alredy swollen ego into believing, first that I´m a forgotten genius, and second that I can make myself rich one of these days with one of these objects.

graphic correspondent in El Tiempo

A photo taken by me from my apartment has been published in EL Tiempo. Click in the link below to see it

http://www.eltiempo.com/yopublico/imagen/home/multimedia.php?id_recurso=500002198

Hope to publish much more

The besieged city (La ciudad asediada)

This is my first article in english. I´ll be writing in english for a while, so that the phrases in the title block don´t appear hollow. Besides, I sort of like it. English is flexible, and very expressive with a short tempo that´s like Rock'n'roll.

This photo has been taken from the book Camacol 50 Años. I don't know who took it, because the book doesn´t say. It doesn´t require too much text, either, it´s very explicit. The buildings look like they´re being smothered to death by cars, cars, cars.


This other photo is by MEE! It shows the same situation, just in another part of the city.

It´s a dilemma: To be individually motorized, or no to be. "Are there in betweens?"


The city central core then appears to be a fiction: IT´S HOLLOW!!! It´s like a gruyere cheese. The urban facade, the continuous parament, all these things are like a Hollywood studio. They´re two dimmensional. What a concept! What shall we do?