Cities Plus Issue
Speed
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Cities plus Speed Cities Plus is a periodic publication. It presents urban issues through multiple and surprising perspectives. Each issue of Cities Plus focuses on a specific theme which is used to explore and analyse cities. Editorial Team Shareen Elnaschie Sahar Faruqui Lina Gast David Kostenwein Daniela SanjinĂŠs Richard W J Shepherd Cover Image Sahar Faruqui Contact
www.citiesplus.org
citiespluscities@gmail.com July 2017
Speed noun /spi:d/
Definition
The rate at which something happens or is done. The quality of being quick. (Definition of speet (noun) from Merriam Webster)
THIS ISSUE...
by Richard W J Shepherd
We live in a world in which, we are told, time is rapidly quickening. The pace of change in human life is ever increasing as we fold more into our days, as patience wears thin and every free second is filled with distractions or manifold tasks. The idea of speed is inherently wrapped up in our urban world; not so for our rural counterparts who count the years and months rather than hours and minutes. At least nostalgically. But the only thing that travels at a constant speed, for humans at least, is the earth itself. People and cities all travel at different paces, for different reasons. It is somewhat ironic that this issue has been an extremely slow production; not due to disinterest in its completion but due to the complexity of everyone’s lives and the way a day will fill up with anything other than what we want to be working on. In other words, blame the speediness for the slowness (we’re sorry!).
This issue sees all speeds for all walks of life - the richness we’ve come to expect from an issue of Cities+. Usha Rao invites us to appreciate the speed of change in Bangalore through the sounds of a city in flux. The parsing of Los Angeles through film is explored by Christian Tonko via the drainage canal bicycle scene in Terminator 2 - and how we understand speed and urban development is influenced by what constructs and deconstructs a logical narrative. David Kostenwein explores our fascination with the automobile and the city - paradoxically speeding up and choking our cities in turn, depending on where you are and where you’re going - and explores the mismatch between urban and rural advertising. And Aida Murtic takes us into a warzone how to understand speed and war in the city! - and Sarajevo through a ‘run or R.I.P.’ approach to moving in the public city. We could ruminate for hours, dear reader. But, as Shakespeare would say, an honest tale speeds best being plainly told. And the plain examples (and by plain I mean stark and clear) within our issue will speed up your thinking, your day or even just your commute to work. Speed on!
IN PRAISE OF SPEED RUNNING IN THE BESIEGED CITY by Aida Murtić
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INERTIA by Saira Raza
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A CASE STUDY ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF CINEMATIC SPACE by Christian Tonko
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AUGUST (EDITED) IN BANGALORE by Usha Rao
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APOCALYPSE, FEAR, EMPTINESS THE AUTO-INDUSTRIES’ TAKE ON CITIES by David Kostenwein
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BEIRUT by Alison Hugill & Dan Dorocic
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LIMA SEMICOLON by Gabriela Aquije
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EDITORIAL TEAM
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THE LAST PAGE by Lina Gast
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IN PRAISE OF SPEED RUNNING IN THE BESIEGED CITY by Aida Murtić
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S
everal years ago, a group of tourists equipped with assorted maps and guidebooks about Sarajevo asked me for directions, wishing to get to “Sniper Alley”. I suggested to them that they leave aside the ‘prose’ and allow themselves to be guided by the urban landscape and spatial images as alternative sources of evidence. The Siege of Sarajevo is usually defined in terms of its temporality as the longest siege of a city in modern military history. But it is its spatial dimension that catches attention and asks for an encyclopaedic description into the original physical setting. Victim to its own unfavourable topography, the city in the valley, surrounded by mountains, was besieged during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and isolated from the rest of the territory from April 1992 until February 1996, while its citizens were exposed to the everyday dangers of snipers and shelling.
The term “Sniper Alley” that sparked interest among tourists from the beginning of the story, was a nickname that journalists and UN soldiers attributed to the main boulevard in Sarajevo. This arterial road was longitudinally exposed to the sight lines of snipers camping in the hills, which made every intersection, bridge and wide road a dangerous place for civilians. From my viewpoint, “Sniper Alley” is rather an emblematic line that joins multiple points where one feels how slim the margin of the existence is. “Run or R.I.P.” - that is how a street sign in Sarajevo urged passers-by to navigate their decisions in urban space. Hence, this is a short story of how the people of Sarajevo made their decision to start running.
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The map of the besieged city
(Source: Author, 2016 - based on Yugoslav National Army maps, topography maps of Z. Rujanac and Google maps) 10
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This article emerged as a result of exploring literary, visual and cinematic portrayals of Sarajevo during the siege of 1992-1995, and as a consequence of being immersed in experiences that my Sarajevan friends shared with me. The stylistic quality of the stories I came to know in that way was situated precisely at the intersection of sports jargon, the aesthetics of surreal fiction movies and held the sharpness of an anecdote, challenging my imagination in its effort to document its hybridity. In particular, scenes from the streets of Sarajevo encapsulated in the photography of war correspondents from the early 1990s provoked my thinking about the various ways the human body adapts to regimes of movement within the altered geography of the besieged city, as well as how a distorted urban morphology accommodates or dictates the speed of human movement. The siege condition suffused the urban landscape of Sarajevo with sources of danger, disassembling it into fragments which were governed by sniper-ruled systems of action.
Collage “Subversive athletes”
(Source: Author, 2016 - based on original photographs of Morten Hvaal, Danilo Krstanović, Rémy Ourdan, Tom Stodd 12
From the perspective of ordinary people, annihilating gaps and putting urban remains together in order to artificially reconstruct the perception of flow in the city, was possible only by running fast from point A to point B and further on, hanging close to buildings whenever it was possible. Therefore, speed was vital. The ability to move rapidly within the non-negotiable constraints of the cityscape while simulating normality in dealing with everyday activities was a routine that provided the framework for survival. Being speedy meant increasing your chances of staying alive. While looking at the various ways running people were photographed in blank spaces between solid building blocks, the human body appears extremely vulnerable and yet remarkably resilient at the same time, speaking about a universal dilemma: whether to venture into the unknown, to turn back or keep going.
dart, Michale Stravato, Dejan Vekić) 13
Tršćanska Street: It takes 15-20 steps to reach the other side of the street Scene from the film “1395 Days without Red” (2011) & Drawing by the author (2016)
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“Running”, suggests the Sarajevo Survival Guide, “is the favourite sport, practiced by everyone in Sarajevo” (Prstojević, et al., 1993: 51). The great parody of a travel guide compiled during the war, also gives a tip to “travellers” to be prepared and bring good shoes, which would help them run fast. This idea that there is such a thing as a proper outfit for running on the streets of Sarajevo is a true paradox of civilian wartime life. By foregoing bright coloured clothes, people aimed to avoid becoming an easy target. The female protagonist in the film “1395 Days without Red” (2011) performs her silent city walk full of individualized hesitations and stop-and-go decisions, wears a dark coat. The general absence of colours in her and other peoples physical appearance speaks clearly about the standard “uniform” of the day: the one that dilutes human materiality and facilitates the blending of a person into an environment. 15
Because experiential learning provided them with the awareness that there should always be an intermezzo between two snipers bullets, people turned toward mastering their individual running styles. Thus, knowing your limits of personal performance was of great importance in order to properly regulate a strategic pacing strategy and calibrate the daily race, especially in cases when fetching water and transporting it back home in canisters was part of the plan. The character depicted in the book “The Cellist of Sarajevo” (Galloway, 2009: 32) says that deciding how much water you can carry was something of an art in this city: “Carry too little and you’ll have to repeat the task more often… But carry too much and you lose the ability to run, duck, dive, anything it takes to get out of danger’s way.”
The environment is not static; as long as we move, our environment transforms. Moving along the besieged city quickly and with a dose of caution redefined the usual spatial-temporal links, mutating the perception of distance and the idea of what reachable, and when. Wartime conditions in Sarajevo converted regular fifteen-minute walks into one hour city races, and crossing a familiar intersection into a true action movie. Moreover, the Siege transformed ordinary individuals into subversive athletes. Their struggle in heading for the other side of the street is remembered as the one where a human body produces “choreography instead of verbal discourse” (Sala, 2016) holding the ability to affect our understanding of the relationship between city and speed.
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Works cited: 1395 Days without Red. 2011. [Film] Directed by Šejla Kamerić, Anri Sala. UK: Artangel.
Galloway, S., 2009. The Cellist of Sarajevo. Toronto: Vintage Canada.
Prstojević, M. et al., 1993. Sarajevo: Survival Guide. Sarajevo: FAMA.
Sala, A., 2016. Music Before Language [Interview] (February 2016). 17
INERTIA by Saira Raza
INERTIA is an album about movement and change, themes we tend to think about it when we're experiencing a sudde by definition is the natural tendency of objects to stay in th environment, to even notice that we've not changed until t ence - as we encounter new information and challenges, we 18
s that come up a lot in my work in general. I was intrigued by the concept of inertia en sensation of shift or change in speed or direction in a car for example. But inertia he state of motion. It takes the introduction of something new, a shift in our reality or that moment. In this way, it serves as an allegory to our mental and emotional existe are constantly renegotiating what we think we know about ourselves and the world. 19
Describe Atlanta for you as a musician and your impressions based on your musical knowledge: I moved to Atlanta in February 2009 from New York, where I had just been laid off as a result of the “too big to fail” bank crisis. I immediately saw it as an opportunity to get music back into my life. It wasn’t a specific outcome of mine to become a performer, I just wanted to play again. As I started to make more room in my life for it, I kept meeting more performing musicians. And after a while, I found myself on stage with them, and it just hasn’t stopped. In this way, I can say that Atlanta is an incredibly accessible city for new artists. It’s relatively easy to find a platform and a community with open arms in just about any genre. The people I know in this community run the gamut from people who make a living touring, teaching, or working in the arts in some other way to people like myself who have other careers and day jobs that are completely unrelated to music.
I would not say that Atlanta is a real “music city.” We have a thriving scene and a lot of talent, but too often we see the music community undercut by local and state policies. For one, we have very poor support for low income individuals in general when it comes to healthcare and housing, so many artists have the added stress of trying to find stability to work on their craft. There are a few non-profit organizations (such as C4 Atlanta, The Creatives Project, and Nuçi’s Space) that offer support in these areas, but there’s no clear articulation from the state or local government to take on this role. On top of that certain developments within the city have mixed results for the art and music community. One of Atlanta’s historic music venues recently relocated because the building was sold to developers who are turning it into yet another trendy “work, live, play” complex. Currently, several underground music and art spaces are at risk of being overrun by developments in the city’s downtown area. And 20
a city councilperson has submitted a proposed ordinance that would require recording studios to acquire special use permits and to stay 500 feet away from residential areas. These restrictive proposals are just one more hoop emerging artists will have to jump through and in the end, it will stifle the music industry in Atlanta. Make no mistake, the music community is never quiet about these things. In fact, C4 Atlanta is already organizing artists and musicians to attend the hearing about the recording studio ordinance, and I am confident our voices will be heard.
The city’s Office of Cultural Affairs provides resources to lots of arts organizations via grants and also sponsors a few key events each year that support local artists such as Art on the Atlanta Beltline and ELEVATE. But there is much more that could be done to bring stability and vitality to the music industry in Atlanta. Is there really such a thing as a “music city�?
Maybe there is not a perfect one, but they do exist. Austin is a good example. The city is a destination that attracts national and international acts for events like SXSW and Austin City Limits, but they also find ways to engage local acts in those festivals, elevating local talent on a global stage. The Mastering of a Music City report had some wonderful anecdotes of cities that created strategic plans to advance the music industry, which I found very inspiring. I also love the idea of a Music Officer. The City of Atlanta recently created a role for a Chief Bicycle Officer because of the demand from citizens to address serious issues related to bike infrastructure, so perhaps a role will emerge in the future that entails the infrastructure of the music industry? Atlanta has a huge opportunity with the recent proliferation of the film and TV production industry. Our population is meant to reach 2.5 million people in the next 25 years, which means more people who need to be entertained! I certainly hope to still be making music and performing then, and I hope many of my friends are doing the same. 21
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INERTIA, released in January 2016.
https://soundcloud.com/sistersai/4-inertia-inertia-by-saira-raza h t t p s : / / w w w. yo u t u b e . c o m / watch?v=IJbvbsSAUIU.
Song credits: Written & produced by Saira Raza Bass, guitar, synth, and cello performed by Saira Raza Drums by Eric Grantham Co-produced by 10th Letter 23
A CASE STUDY ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF CINEMATIC SPACE by Christian Tonko
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n 2011 a scholarship afforded me the opportunity to travel to Los Angeles to investigate the magical cinematic techniques which could transform very ordinary suburban space into an exciting setting for an action sequence Like many Europeans born in the eighties, the image I had of LA had been heavily shaped by movies and television - especially the action genre. Protagonists traversing great areas of the city at high speed, often during vehicle based chase scenes, gave me an idea of what the real Los Angeles supposedly looked and felt like.
My personal favourite chase scene has always been the iconic segment from James Cameron’s Terminator 2 - Judgement Day (1991) in which the young John Connor tries to escape on a dirt bike from the T-1000 driving a tow truck while the T-800 attempts to catch up with them on a Harley Davidson motorcycle. The three types of vehicles convey a great sense of scale and represent the protagonist’s strength and menace while the sequence itself is beautifully scripted and paced as a whole. What stuck with me most, though, was the setting. The chase takes place within dry and empty concrete flood water channelsare cutting through a flat suburban area. At intersections with the street grid the channels run underneath bridges but as the base of the channels lie a few meters underneath street level it is usually possible for vehicles to pass underneath. The channel banks are sometimes vertical walls and sometimes tilted slopes and the size of the cross-section varies depending on the branching hierarchy of the system. 25
(Terminator 2 - Judgement Day / James Cameron / 1991) 26
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Before travelling to Los Angeles I had already defined my project as research into the relations between actual urban space and the projection of it into the (mayby: picture plane) plane of the image, as well as the temporality of that projection. As Aat least since the discovery of linear one point perspective we have realized that a projection of space is never just a mere representation but always a construction and in that context I wanted to use this chase scene as a case study. The filming locations of major movies are easy to find and it turned out that the scene was shot in the San Fernando Valley. This extensive part of the Los Angeles metropolitan area is home to over 1.7 million people and covers approximately 900 square kilometers. It is dominated by a suburban street grid and 1-2 storey single family houses. Branches of the Los Angeles River historically drew through the valley but are now contained in respective concrete channels which intersect the orthogonal street grid at various angles. While this general information was easy to find, the process of identifying the exact localities where filming took place was laborious. The most important clues were the names of the streets printed on the side of the bridges which are visible a few times during the chase. With that information I could identify a few likely spots through Google Maps and Street View before actually driving there and confirming it in person. Other clues included the peculiarity of confluences of channels as well as a few buildings which could be identified via Google.
Using this method, I found the four separate locations where sections of channels were used for filming. It turned out that theses locations are spread around the valley and are as far as 15 kilometres apart while the edited scene constructs a continuous chase along a single coherent trajectory. Here the ex-changeability of a uniform backdrop fosters a cinematic spatial construct which literally cuts the city apart, removes certain parts, stretches or compresses certain parts and reassembles it to create an augmented and thrilling virtual reality. Protagonists enter under one bridge and emerge 28
in a completely different place after the cut. The direction of the chase can suddenly switch 180 degrees and the T-800 rides along a completely different channel in another part of town and yet catches up with them after the cut. Through rearrangement, the cinematic spatial construction creates a more enticing city and in that sense it is a critique of the banality of suburban space. Here cinema basically achieves a congestion - or urbanisation - of the endless repetitive uniformity of suburban Los Angeles.
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My intention was to unveil the principles of cinematically constructed space by means of mapping all frames of the chase scene in plan. The result are two ribbon-like maps with a central vein which is always the segment of a channel where the chase is taking place. The SpaceTime Map shows the location of all camera positions and focal planes around the Valley but in a second step merges the different city fragments together into one coherent sequence. Additionally the map shows the presence of characters in each shot as well as the constant change of geographic direction. The map reads from top to bottom. Then, through adding another layer of information, the TimeSpace Map equally distributes all frames along the central vein. This means that the running time of the chase is translated proportionally into distance along the central vein. In that way for example slow motion takes stretch the space where they were shot. Thus the TimeSpace Map is a representation of the temporality of cinematic space.
SpaceTime Map 30
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AUGUST (EDITED) IN BANGALORE by Usha Rao
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hese are my impressions as I move through Bangalore, a city that is in transition. It is being dug in out for a new Metro and wider roads – fast transit from here to somewhere. But what lies in between?
The recorder and my camera is the avenue through which I can explore my disconnection with the city (my home) as well with myself. My impressions draws on a poem I had written (August Edited) one day when I was caught at a traffic jam in the driving monsoon rain. It reflects the disorientation I experience every time I travel through the city choking with traffic that seems to be going nowhere. I see this as a metaphor that describes today’s city that is imagined as a network of conduits for people to move through on their way to ‘somewhere.’ Spaces and people are disciplined to become efficient, rational and streamlined like ‘global’ cities elsewhere. The deafening din of ‘development’ – the screaming electric saws, bulldozers and roar of traffic drowns the sounds of nature and of ordinary life that were once part of the cityscape. This discordance is echoed in the angst of searching for coordinates that can help fix my bearings within an inner landscape which is in a state of unsettled flux as well. I move through the city – the streets, the malls, the metro, into flower markets slated to be demolished, coffee houses and eateries in the older part of the city, and pass through a site where one of the oldest slums is being cleared for another gigantic mall. 34
https://soundcloud.com/user811610150/august-edited-in-bangalore
Sounds: Location sounds in Bangalore. Some effects from freesoundhttps://www.freesound.org Title song from a 1970s popular film “Mr. Rajkumar� Other key credits: Sound Editing: Vasanth, Bangalore Thanks to: Gautam Sonti
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APOCALYPSE, FEAR, EMPTINESS THE AUTO-INDUSTRIES’ TAKE ON CITIES by David Kostenwein
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C
ities and cars. Well, that’s a tricky relationship. It doesn’t matter how you feel about urban mobility- it is impossible to deny the influence of the car on urban development. Cars have indirectly created modernism, killed public transport, created the suburbs and dismantled inner cities. But not only has the car shaped how we built our cities over the last 80 plus years, it has also become central to contemporary visions of the future smart city. How driverless cars roaming our streets will solve any of the myriad problems we have today is a mystery. At least to me, anyway.
As an urban planner, it’s not only the cars impact that interests me, but also that of the car industry and their ideas and urban visions. Car companies like BMW and Mercedes are entering the urban discourse with special research programs and car sharing offers. And they love to advertise their cars in the context of cities. I must admit that seeing auto companies using urban scenarios to promote their cars makes me a bit angry. But on taking a second look, you can see a quite entertaining pattern to the urban car ad. Cars marketing themselves to the rural adventurer portray scenarios of speeding on scenic highways, in stunning landscapes. The urban car owner however, is subjected to visions of fear, apocalypse, darkness. Cities in these ads are something one needs to escape from, a hostile environment.
Denying that they are the perpertarors of the grim urban reality of traffic jams and pollution that we need to escape from, the urban car ad disguises itself as the rescuer from the scary urban jungle. The city apparently is the enemy of the car (just as the car might be seen as the enemy of the city). The celebrated automobile frees you from confinement in the claustrophobic urban maze, the deserted urban landscape, with no signs of normal human life: the perfect scenario for car manufacturers. 37
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nissans take on the urban jungle
Lancia Batman.
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“Welcome to Sant’ Agata Bolognese. Home of Lamborghini.” - how city life should be organised according to Lamborghini 40
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the city is a maze. taken literally by renault.
This car is actually called urbanproof.
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Escaping the city by chevy
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cars, the other end of the city.
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cars bring green nature to the world? let’s call it creative‌
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Here are some of my favorite urban car ads. If you find more of these city hating car ads, please let me know: autourbanism.tumblr.com
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BEIRUT by Alison Hugill & Dan Dorocic
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he accelerated urban development, cranes and scaffolding everywhere reminded us of home. On one side of the bay there was a freshly built shiny condominium. From the outside, the apartments looked deserted save for the typical minimal … mall of ready to buy living quarters. On the opposite side of the bay a huge banner hung over the facade of a 1930ies hotel “Stop solidaire”. Later that night we attended an art opening in the same deserted central area in the city curated by Hans ……and generously funded by the same mysterious name “solidaire”.
Solidaire, we learn is the french acronym of the Lebanese company for the development and reconstruction of Beirut central district. The hybrid public private company has been the sole proprietor in charge of developing Beirut city centre for the last two decades. Founded in 1994 by billionaire business and then Prime Minister Rafic Hariri. He was assassinated in 2005 by a car bomb right in front of the hotel in question. Solidaire is listed on the stock exchange but it also enjoys special powers as a regulatory authority of the area , deciding what can be built and by whom. Beyond the highrises, Solidaire has taken charge of reconstructing the souks, traditional covered market places. They are now home to Pizza Huts, Safeways, McDonalds, Bodyshops, Burger Kings, Starbucks, Benettons, KFCs, Baskin Robbins, Gaps, Blockbuster Videos.
As we walked around the center our path was i… obstructed by police barricades. The heart of the city with its colonnades and cobblestone was inaccessible. There was a sense of perform (??) in the city - all the parts were there, all the signifiers, but the flow of life so common in the rest of Beirut was conspicuously absent.
The speed of construction is rapid, but what is constructed is already sterile and disused, perfect for foreign investment by people who have no interest in inhabiting the city. 50
This article is based on a film. Check it out here:
https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=EDijIrgF4xk&feature=youtu.be
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LIMA SEMICOLON by Gabriela Aquije
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ast year Lima, the capital of Peru, was put in the spotlight due to an international architecture competition. The task was to design the New Contemporary Art Wing of the Museum of Art of Lima (MALI), housed in the 1872 Palacio de la Exposición. The complexity of the project site was its location: the entrance of the Lima’s historic center. Within the Parque de Exposición, an invaluable public space heritage and the corner of Paseo Colón and Av. Garcilaso de la Vega, two heavy traffic avenues qualified as a historic cityscape. 52
The proposal also included a connection between the new cultural building the Central Station where lines 2 and 3 of the future metro will stop. Furthermore, there will be an underground link to Lima’s bus rapid transit (BRT) system, the Metropolitano. According to Gary Leggett, director of the international competition, this public transportation improvement will provide connections to three universities and six educational institutions, including 35 stations along the metro line route. The future station that will serve the museum will be the nodal point of this entire system with over 60,000 citizens using it every day. This project faces the speed of Lima’s urban dynamics. The design challenge surpasses the building architecture and relies on the complexity of urban time lapses, changes of velocity and pauses. As we try to understand the pace of Lima’s citizens, it is inevitable to ask about its diversity of backgrounds and economical voids, and how these are linked. Therefore it is crucial to review the evolution of the city and its public realm: from being an epicenter to an urban network.
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Lima’s fast urban growth can be explained in three different stages. First, it evolved from a compact colonial model to a sectorial republican city. Within this change from 1950 to 1980 the population of Lima increased by 500%, meaning an increase of 1 million people in nearly three decades. Currently Lima is experiencing its third stage of urban growth leading to a polarized city with nearly 10 million inhabitants. In opposition to a linear construction, the city has exploded in cellular pieces of suburbanization. This fragmented urbanity was based on concepts of self-sufficiency and deliberate exclusion of the lower social strata due to the privatization of public space. (Ludeña, 2006)
As the quality of public spaces decreases, the violence and insecurity reached higher levels. The middle and lower class urbanizations literally locked themselves up with fences closing streets, parks, and avenues. The lack of connection between the city center and the periphery has only increased the mistrust and indifference between inhabitants. In addition, the effort of implementing a formal public transportation system moves at a slow pace. The Metropolitano and the Metro Line 1, which only covers the North-South demand, are insufficient. Therefore daily commutes are still dependent on high-speed bypasses with private cars and poor quality informal buses. Amidst this chaos, the MALI New Contemporary Art Wing Competition highlighted the need to move beyond architecture, urging for an urban strategy to bring together the fragmented parts of the city and work with each social group to find a common ground. Following the examples of other Latin-American cities such as Mexico DF, Santiago, and Medellin, this initiative acknowledged that urban accessibility is key to a democratic cultural exchange. According to the 2016 Lima, ¿cómo vamos? * survey only one out of four citizens were satisfied with the quality and quantity of the cultural offer in Lima. Showing the lack of accessibility as the main cause of the gap in inequality between social classes. 54
On a larger scale, social gaps and geographical distances will be positively affected by the accessibility provided by the high-speed commute. It will connect Lima’s historic center, among other low-income districts, to the progressive art and cultural hotspots of the city such as Miraflores, Barranco, and Callao. These three neighborhoods have managed to engage their communities through public art and education initiatives within residential areas. Stations across the public transport system could create a new urban network of public spaces, bringing people of different social backgrounds together.
Museums have assumed the role of urban landmarks and have the potential to be spaces that contribute to a more equitable city. The piece of art is no longer an object; it overcomes its aesthetic condition and acts as a mediator of history that appeals to the collective memory of the visitors. Natalia Majluf, director of the MALI, explains that this Contemporary Art collection is special because it manifests the national artistic activity but with an open yet critical point of view. Moreover, this exceeds an art exhibition in its strict sense, becoming a cultural and social manifestation for the Peruvian people to explore and appropriate. Lima won’t stop growing, and probably we will move on to another stage of urban evolution. Nevertheless the historic center will remain as the urban imaginary of the capital, with the grid street plan to favor pedestrians rather than cars. After several years of desertion, this project gives the historical center its former relevance and will act as a catalyst for further historical public spaces along a pedestrian circuit that may connect the districts of Rimac and Barrios Altos. Pedro Gadanho, director of the Museum of Art, Architecture, and Technology (MAAT) of Lisbon, compares the city to a life experience museum, where we gather pieces of architecture and urban landscapes we inhabit in our daily life. Lima 55
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center is that, is an amalgamation of architecture from all of its historic stages: colonial, republican, modern, and even contemporary restorations. The Parque de la Exposicion is the perfect example of this analogy. Once the greatest public park during the republican era, it now holds a collection of pavilions and memorials that represent architecture´s cultural production across Lima’s history. The Palacio de la Exposición that houses the MALI, it’s the crown jewel of this collection. The new art wing will bring the contemporary architecture liaison that could contextualize and redefine the approach towards our historic constructed heritage. To work directly with this timeless space is a huge opportunity provided by this project. Overall, the true value of this proposal lies in transforming this cultural platform, as a pause created and offered to the hectic, polarized and moving city that is Lima.
“Accepting architecture as cultural production, its performative dimension must also contribute to a critical role, that is, to architecture’s capacity to produce commentary regarding the ongoing transformations of culture and society. (…) Considering such inheritance, it is no surprise, then, that the architectural interventions that we may today relate to this notion of performance often combine an artistic modus operandi with a deep sense of social responsibility.” (Gadanho, 2007) * Lima, ¿cómo vamos? is an annual state survey on opinion and satisfaction of citizens with their capital.
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References Gadanho, Pedro. (March 2007) Architecture as Performance. Dedalo, N02. Porto. On line version: https://shrapnelcontemporary.wordpress.com/archive-texts/architecture-as-performance/ Garcia, Jorge. La Vigencia del protecto moderno: Emocional, Relacional y Cotidiana. Tres tácticas del arte contemporáneo para reactivar la arquitectura. Neutra, N15. Sevilla
Lorente, Pedro. (1996). The Role of museums and the arts in the urban regeneration of Liverpool. Leicester: University of Leicester. Ludeña, Wiley. (May 2006). Ciudad y patrones de asentamiento. Estructura urbana y tipologización para el caso de Lima. Eure, XXXII, 37-59.
Paredes Laos, Jorge. (2016). La necesidad de volver a los concursos de arquitectura. May 22, 2016, de El Comercio web page: http://elcomercio.pe/eldominical/actualidad/ obra-abierta-noticia-1902853 Various Authors. (2016). Lima Como vamos. Asociacion Unacem. Lima
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Daniela SanjinĂŠs David Kostenwein
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Shareen Elnaschie
EDITORIAL TEAM Ilustrations by Polina Koriakina
Sahar U Ahmad
Richard W J Shepherd
Lina Gast
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Ilustration by Lina Gast