JOTA SAMPER design portfolio

Jota Samper [email protected]

Informal Settlements Research http://informalsettlements.blogspot.com

Copyright © Free Vector Maps.com

Jota Samper, Ph.D.

Copyright © Free Vector Maps.com

Jota Samper, Ph.D.

FORECAST, ANTICIPATE AND CONDITION: BUILDING IN THE MANGROVEMumbai

Medellin Innovation DistrictStrategic Master PlanMedellin

infoSite_05/ inSite_O5San Diego

Frames for Living: Manufactured Start-Up HousingTijuana

Living Rooms @ The Border Tijuana / San Diego

What are the meanings of architec-ture that moves across borders?

Can an urban project bring economic development and social inclusion, especially in a context of violence and displacement?

How can we manage urban growth and coexistence between formality and informality?

How can a border community transform its enviroment through its social and physical cross-contaminations?

In a shantytown context what is the value of an architect?

San Ysidro, Californiaestudio teddy cruzProject Manager

Awards and Exhibitions 2010 Small Scale Big,Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement, MoMA, New York 2001 Progressive Architecture Award, Architecture Magazine 2001 Young Architects Forum Award, Architectural League of New York

Living Rooms @ The Border, 2001Casa Familiar

How can a border community transform its enviroment through its social and physical cross-contaminations?

San Diego, US -Tijuana, Mexico Border

San Ysidro, Casa Familiar Projects

layer one

layer three

layer two

1 existing church

2 terrace garden above parking

3 parking

4 garden corridor

5 concrete arbor

6 church’s studio units below garden terrace

7 community center’s kitchen

8 path to existing senior housing and garden

9 link to existing park

10 alley

11 street

12 affordable housing

13 market

layer one

layer three

layer two

A Bordertown Church Renovation into Community Gardens, a Marketplace and Affordable Housing for the non-profit organization Casa Familiar

Inspired by the possibility of challenging inflexible zoning laws, this project focuses on strengthening a network of underused alleys and narrow streets, increasing pedestrian circulation and linking residential units with a park and a major tram station serving the border. An historic 1927 church is currently surrounded by parking on the existing site. Supported by public housing funds and private grants, Living Rooms @ The Border will transform the parcel in increments, unfolding in time as community programs are funded and further parcels become available. The program is conceived in three principal phases or “layers.” The first encompasses the transformation of the church into a community center (with new offices for Casa Familiar on the attic floor) and the creation of a community garden corridor. Extending these gestures that inscribe into the site new infrastructure and circulation corridors, the second phase will add poured-in-place concrete arcades to support flexible “urban rooms” or pavilions for community activities. Opening onto the public garden, the arcades also generate space for a provisional market. In the third phase, the concrete frame of the arbor will be built out with 12 flexible, affordable, wood-frame housing units.

layer one

Tijuana, Mexicoestudio teddy cruzProject Manager

Exhibitions “out of the box: design innovations in manufactured housing” 2005 University of Illinois at Chicago

archilab 2004 “the naked city / la ville à nu” Orléans, France

Frames for Living: Manufactured Start-Up Housing, 2004


puts them on wheels and brings them to the border where they wait in line for the right to cross

a Tijuana speculator buys houses slated for demolition in San Diego

in Tijuana they are placed on steel frames, leaving a space of opportunity under them

Lacking legal title to land, 837 million people live in shantytowns or favelas – half of the urban residents in Africa, one-third of those in Asia and one quarter of those in Latin America and the Caribbean. These start-up settlements gradually evolve, or violently explode out of conditions of social emergency, and are defined by the negotiation of territorial boundaries, the ingenious recycling of materials, and out of human resourcefulness.

In the context of these global issues, our proposal consists of a maquiladora-produced and manufactured frame that is inserted into the trans-border urbanism of the Tijuana-San Diego region. Our “frame” empowers the already-in-process negotiation of the multiplicity of recycled materials and systems brought from San Diego and which are then re-assembled in Tijuana, giving primacy to the layered complexities of these sites over the singularity of the object.

This small piece is also the first step in the construction of a larger, interwoven and open-ended scaffold that could help strengthen an otherwise precarious terrain, without compromising the temporal dynamics of these self-made environments. By bridging between the planned and the unplanned, the legal and the illegal, the object and the ground, as well as man-made and factory processes of construction, this frame questions the meaning of manufacturing and of housing in the context of building community.

Land available for invasion;pirate urbanizer organizes the invasion.

Invasion happens at dawn; invaders carry materials for start-up shelter.

First consolidation takes advantage of leftover materials.

Progressive consolidation of a family dwelling.

Recycled materials are incorporated.

puts them on wheels and brings them to the border where they wait in line for the right to cross

a Tijuana speculator buys houses slated for demolition in San Diego

in Tijuana they are placed on steel frames, leaving a space of opportunity under them

discarded tires become retaining walls

discarded wooden pallets become dwellings discarded garage doors become walls and partitions

certain recycled systems, such as retaining walls made of whole tires, are further improved by the ingenuity of necessity

as people construct their own sites for inhabitation. conventional tires are dismantled and

transformed into a system of clipped and interlocking loops to build a more solid and stable structure

Exploring answers to this question taught us that what the community needs is not someone to build them a totality, but rather someone to facilitate the process they are already creating. In Tijuana, this means some kind of corner stone where all the recycled materials from the northern neighbor can be attached. We conceived of the idea of a “frame”: a pre-fabricated structure as a minimum gesture for maximum effect. This pre-fabricated frame acts as a hinge mechanism to mediate across the multiplicity of recycled materials and systems.


San Diego, Californiaestudio teddy cruzProject Manager

infoSite_05/ inSite_O5, 2005

One day, while inside my apartment where I lived in Tijuana just a few feet from the gate that separates Latin America from the United States, I heard unusual screams. Through the window, I saw, for the first time in my life, a house on wheels. This would never happen in (my native country) Colombia. There, new houses are built from heavier material and older houses are made from centuries-old, three-feet-thick adobe walls. This house not only was moving through the streets; this house had just crossed the border. I later learned that this was part of a Mexican man’s business: buying houses in the United States scheduled for demolition and bringing them to Tijuana,where they are placed on stilts (to create parking spaces or another business underneath).

What are the meanings of architecture that moves across borders?

inSite is a biennial contemporary art project based in the bi-national region of San Diego-Tijuana. The idea is to facilitate new works of art developed through the long-term engagement of artists with the communities of San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico. At the heart of the project is a process of two-year artists’ residencies that culminate in the realization of new projects in the public spaces throughout San Diego and Tijuana.

From August 26, 2005 through November 13, 2005, inSite_05 brings international attention to the region with an intense, three-month schedule of project openings, museum exhibitions, performance events and outreach programs. inSite_05 includes more than 100 artists, theoreticians, curators, architects, and promoters from around the world. There are 24 projects from 15 countries.

infoSite_05 is a temporary building that serves as a base for the public to learn about the content and location of the events. Upon entering infoSite_05, the public arrives at an infodesk which houses all the inSite_05 books and other printed information. From there the public enters two main rooms: one with computers and videos for online searches and visual media, and the other a lounge space where public listen to art pieces in audio format. A third room houses infoSite meetings and art conferences for the public.

The project as a building explores the mobile condition imposed on the houses which are selected for demolition and sold to Mexico developers when these houses are moved from San Diego through the border between the U.S. and Mexico to Tijuana. The project desires to bring awareness about the recycling of San Diego trash in the construction of the new city of Tijuana. infoSite_05’s use of pre-existing construction elements - canopy canvas, storage racks, truck beds - are part of this recycling metaphor. The place that the infoSite_05 appropriates is the front parking lot of the San Diego Museum of Art in the lush, green expanse of Balboa Park. The project parks here and transforms the parking lot into a public plaza.

The plaza ramps up toward two modified truck beds where the public begins their infoSite experience at the infodesk. Seated on the ramp plaza, adjacent to the truck beds, is the skeletal frame of a house that serves as the conference and meeting room. This room, with translucent canvas walls, is the metaphorical house crossing the border.

All the materials of the infoSite_05 were donated to a poor community in Tijuana at the end of inSite_05, so the project became part of the city.

124 4 URBAN DESIGN STRATEGY STRATEGIC PLANMEDELLINNOVATION DISTRICT

Chagualo and Jesus Nazareno: Incremental TypologyA different housing strategy is proposed for Jesus Nazareno and Chagualo, based on a prototype of incremental, infill development. Rather than clearing whole blocks, this approach looks to weave smaller and larger scale new buildings into the fabric of existing blocks, preserving, re-using, or incorporating existing structures where practical. Design guidelines and incentives (from the city) can shape this process to insure a humane scale, sympathetic relationships among buildings, and the incorporation of appropriate public, private and shared spaces.

The result will be a more diverse pattern of neighborhood, mixing different housing and family types, along with work places, shops and services. This strategy will also open the opportunity for small-scale entrepreneur development firms to participate in the regeneration process.

In a complex and contested urban environment, big urban projects such as the Medellín District generate high levels of conflict in terms of acquiring the necessary large plots of land for development. Eminent Domain is a important tool for large urban projects but it carries with it large social and political costs. Urban Renewal projects as traditional developed incurred in added economic and political cost that also generate delays on the process of urbanization. A project such as this one need a urbanization strategy that permits the development to take advantages of new building requirements and upcoming technologies that will allow flexibility of building types and also a strategy that acquires and developed land in a expedite way.

For that the Strategic Plan here proposes a hybrid of urbanization that uses some of the traditional tools of private development in Medellín with a final unique build form. This idea is what we call “incremental development”. By incremental we mean development of small parcels instead of entire blocks. The intent here is that dealing with individual plot owners can accelerate the process of development of the district. A clear goal in which the process of building does not compromise the development of the entire district.

Urban design guidelines coupled with zoning incentives can coordinate individual projects to create courtyards and other shared amenities within the blocks.

PHASE ZERO

PHASE ONE

PHASE TWO

PHASE THREE

Mixed uses

Existing fabric

Added mixed development

Public / semi-public access

Block perimeter

Inner court (public with shared amenities)

PHASE THREE

4 URBAN DESIGN STRATEGY STRATEGIC PLAN 125MEDELLINNOVATION DISTRICT

Three cases of incremental development have been studied involving blocks in the Chagualo and Jesus Nazareno neighborhoods (see plan at beginning of this section). The studies illustrate how the blocks could transform over time into a pattern of higher-density, mixed use development using a parcel-by-parcel strategy. Urban design guidelines coupled with zoning incentives can coordinate individual projects to create courtyards and other shared amenities within the blocks. The cases include:

A. PRESENT A. FUTURE

B. PRESENT B. FUTURE

C. PRESENT C. FUTURE

A. OPPORTUNITY SITE + INCREMENTAL: New residential and production spaces, coupled with existing buildings, define a shared courtyard at the center of the block. In the barrio el Chagualo there are several blocks that have large opportunity lots in which new big footprint manufacturing development can be implemented along with small mixed typology that uses the incremental model.

B. AXIS INCREMENTAL: A major office/R+D building facing Carabobo, shares the block with incremental housing behind, facing Juan del Corral. Juan del Corral is a important and traditional street that needs to be preserved in a way that also activates it. To achieve this goal the idea is to increase its density permitting the location of varied typologies of housing that do not endanger its urban performance. The plan here suggest that for blocks that are between Carabobo (the main street of the District) and Juan del Corral the incremental approach be applied towards the section of Juan del Corral while towards Carabobo a larger footprint be implemented to create both the mixed residential section at Juan del Corral and the larger mixed Institutional street of Carabobo.

C. ALL INCREMENTAL: Small-scale residential buildings infill vacant and underutilized lots, creating a fine mix of old and new housing and retail. The typical condition of a block. Each site is developed as required by the market following the “the rules of incremental development”:• Build the perimeter to create a

continuous and active street. • Release some of the ground floor

at the interior of the block to share public amenities as public space, underground parking, recreation and leisure.

• Permit a mixed use development • Maintain or reuse some of the

existing fabric as the urban market required

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Medellin, ColombiaCarlo Ratti Associatti & Dennis FrenchmanDesign team

Medellin Innovation DistrictStrategic Master Plan

The Medellínnovation District will provide a space where traditional andnew industries can converge in a creative cluster to invent 21st centuryproducts, ways of doing business, and lifestyles. A key resource of thecluster will be the people who live and work in the District, primarilytalented young people who will help Medellín to innovate its way into thenew economy. For this reason, development of an attractive, amenity rich,digitally enabled environment that includes opportunities for personaladvancement is important to the business strategy, as are incentives forcompanies to locate and grow in the District.

The District will create an environment in which the people who make upthe innovative ecosystem can work, live and interact. Underlying the plan isa network of parks, public spaces, and pedestrian oriented streets that willcreate an open, healthy and productive environment. Carabobo becomesthe “main street” for major companies as well as the shopping and sociallife of the District. Research and educational facilities are clustered along aspine connecting University of Antioquia to the river. Finally, places to liveand work - in new enterprises - are woven into the Sevilla, Jesus Nazareno,and Chagualo neighborhoods. With new facilities supporting publiceducation, training, and engagement anchoring the District.

Can an urban project bring economic development and social inclusion, especially in a context of violence and displacement?

5 DIGITAL STRATEGY136 MEDELLINNOVATION DISTRICT STRATEGIC PLAN

DEVICE LAYER /SENSOR NETWORK

BUILT ENVIRONMENT

CLOUD SERVICES

5.1 Transforming Technologies

The city is where the digital and physical world merge. It is both a city of bits and a city of atoms; that is, atoms are augmented by bits of information and a layer of networked digital elements blanketing its built environments, blending the information sphere and the physical space of its inhabitants in a seamless way. Just a couple of decades ago many urbanists and sociologists were predicting the end of cities. The Internet, they said, would eliminate problems of distance and space. Despite the influence of the global Internet, the physical world is still important and the network functions to strengthen the physical structures, but the digital revolution has significantly changed our reality.

Our contemporary lives are being completely mediated by digital technologies.

A City of Atoms and Bits

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1 A STORY OF TRANSFORMATION STRATEGIC PLAN 29MEDELLINNOVATION DISTRICT

100M 500M

STRATEGIC PLAN - Illustrating potential build-out after 15 years.

A. RIVERFRONT PARK AND GREEN NETWORK - open space, recreation, water sports, pedestrian movement.

B. NEW NORTH SPORTS VENUE - connecting Parque Norte and U. Antioquia.

C. UNIVERSITY RESEARCH AXIS - hospital expansion, Science Center, University Antioquia Main Entrance and River Gateway projects.

D. CARABOBO BUSINESS AXIS - ‘Main Street’ of New North; local and international companies, restaurants, shops, services, and entertainment.

E. MEDELLÍNNOVATION SQUARE - centerpiece of the district: Ruta N, hotel, major shopping, and research clinic.

F. DIGITAL PRODUCTION CLUSTER - Techno/Lab offers shared equipment, training, and research; enterprises, incubation, in nearby buildings.

G. URBAN GARDEN CLUSTER - conversion of existing flea market into locally produced food and garden center; surrounding hydroponic food production and distribution.

H. SEVILLA HOUSING DEMONSTRATION - innovative energy saving design coupled with high performance urban operating system.

I. LIVE-WORK INFILL HOUSING - incremental development of mixed use and re-use housing, serving diverse family types.

G

I

DF

B

A

HE

C

Public Education Facilities, Museums

Public Recreation Facilities

Retail, Restaurants, Services

Hotel

University Research, Health

Live-work Housing

Park Recreation

Corporate Research, HQ

Local Enterprises, Production

Medellín River

Key Pedestrian Linkages

Proposed Metro StationsM

1 A STORY OF TRANSFORMATION STRATEGIC PLAN 29MEDELLINNOVATION DISTRICT

100M 500M

STRATEGIC PLAN - Illustrating potential build-out after 15 years.

A. RIVERFRONT PARK AND GREEN NETWORK - open space, recreation, water sports, pedestrian movement.

B. NEW NORTH SPORTS VENUE - connecting Parque Norte and U. Antioquia.

C. UNIVERSITY RESEARCH AXIS - hospital expansion, Science Center, University Antioquia Main Entrance and River Gateway projects.

D. CARABOBO BUSINESS AXIS - ‘Main Street’ of New North; local and international companies, restaurants, shops, services, and entertainment.

E. MEDELLÍNNOVATION SQUARE - centerpiece of the district: Ruta N, hotel, major shopping, and research clinic.

F. DIGITAL PRODUCTION CLUSTER - Techno/Lab offers shared equipment, training, and research; enterprises, incubation, in nearby buildings.

G. URBAN GARDEN CLUSTER -conversionofexistingfleamarket into locally produced food and garden center; surrounding hydroponic food production and distribution.

H. SEVILLA HOUSING DEMONSTRATION - innovative energy saving design coupled with high performance urban operating system.

I. LIVE-WORK INFILL HOUSING - incremental development of mixed use and re-use housing, serving diverse family types.

G

I

DF

B

A

HE

C

Public Education Facilities, Museums

Public Recreation Facilities

Retail, Restaurants, Services

Hotel

University Research, Health

Live-work Housing

Park Recreation

Corporate Research, HQ

Local Enterprises, Production

Medellín River

Key Pedestrian Linkages

Proposed Metro StationsM

5 DIGITAL STRATEGY STRATEGIC PLAN 161MEDELLINNOVATION DISTRICT

Courtyard - acoustics

Courtyard - privacy

Courtyard - lighting

Courtyard - responsive climate control

Street dehors

Shared production space

Ground floor - shared working spaces

Ground floor - research spaces

Courtyards for outdoor working

CO-WORKING SPACE

Co-working spaces design collaborative areas where people can learn and interact with one and other. The concept behind is the idea that creativity can be increase through collaboration with people with same or different backgrounds.

OUTDOOR WORKING

Outdoor working is based on the pleasurable climate conditions of Medellín along with the highly mobile features of workers in the 21st century. Therefore it envisions places of work and relaxation that interact closer with nature.

PERMEABLE GROUNDFLOOR

Permeable ground floors in buildings allow the penetration of the population into more private spaces, increasing that way the security of the place. Additionally, opening access of the buildings and blocks results In more vivid an enriched public realm.

NETWORKING INNOVATION

Networking innovation makes use of the new technologies in order to support creative activities and enhance interaction among users. Generate virtual platforms to network consumers, manufacturers and suppliers that would increase their marketing of the products and productivity.

5 DIGITAL STRATEGY STRATEGIC PLAN 161MEDELLINNOVATION DISTRICT

Courtyard - acoustics

Courtyard - privacy

Courtyard - lighting

Courtyard - responsive climate control

Street dehors

Shared production space

Ground floor - shared working spaces

Ground floor - research spaces

Courtyards for outdoor working

CO-WORKING SPACE

Co-working spaces design collaborative areas where people can learn and interact with one and other. The concept behind is the idea that creativity can be increase through collaboration with people with same or different backgrounds.

OUTDOOR WORKING

Outdoor working is based on the pleasurable climate conditions of Medellín along with the highly mobile features of workers in the 21st century. Therefore it envisions places of work and relaxation that interact closer with nature.

PERMEABLE GROUNDFLOOR

Permeable ground floors in buildings allow the penetration of the population into more private spaces, increasing that way the security of the place. Additionally, opening access of the buildings and blocks results In more vivid an enriched public realm.

NETWORKING INNOVATION

Networking innovation makes use of the new technologies in order to support creative activities and enhance interaction among users. Generate virtual platforms to network consumers, manufacturers and suppliers that would increase their marketing of the products and productivity.

Mumbai, IndiaPublished in Landscape + urbanism around the Bay of Mumbai (2010)Edited by Alan Berger and Rahul Mehrotra. MIT

FORECAST, ANTICIPATE AND CONDITION: BUILDING IN THE MANGROVE Landscape + urbanism around the Bay of Mumbai

SUSCEPTIBLE AREASIn Mumbai today, formal and informal development strategies encroach upon ecologically sensitive areas. It is crucial, in a moment in which urbanization is happening at an accelerated pace, to generate a technique that protects these sensitive ecosystems in a way which responds to informal and formal land appropriation strategies. Susceptible areas are those territories that will be encroached upon in the near future. Usually these territories are located in the intersection of the following: Ecologically endangered areas, interstitial spaces of infrastructure, and non consolidated ownership. Using these indicators, we create the susceptible areas map of Mumbai. Later I rate the pre selected areas to find which of those are the most

endangered. I have selected the Sonari area( because it is the largest of the susceptible areas and is the one suffering the largest encroachments from private developers, and is surrounded by traditional towns that behave like informal settlements as they grow. This area epitomized what a susceptible area is.

CONTROLLING ENCROACHMENT Based on observation of the patterns of encroachment by informal communities in Mumbai, I found that program public/institutions at the edge of susceptible areas behave as anchors that stop development. This opens the opportunity to locate the program of the IIHS (The India Institute of Human Settlements), a national university in India, as a structure that conditions development. Based on

these phenomena, a series of development rules can be created:a. The Institute (IIHS) needs to be located in the susceptible landscape and should be the connector between the natural systems of the mangrove and any future development.b. The solid edge between the mangrove and the areas to be developed should be a finite object, and should be built first.c. Flexible unknown areas, any area left behind the solid edge, should be left for free market speculation.d. The mangrove is a productive landscape, and as such, should continue to be developed in ways that are sustainable and ensure maximum visibility: energy, phishing, transportation, tourism.

This book explores future planning and design in and around the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, specifically focused on the Bay of Mumbai. Over the summers of 2008 and 2009, a multidisciplinary group of graduate students from Massachusetts Institute of Technolo-gy’s School of Architecture + Planning traveled to Mumbai for field research. Studio was led by profes-sors Alan Berger and Rahul Mehrotra. MIT

How can we manage urban growth and coexistence be-tween formality and Informality?

JOTA SAMPER design portfolio

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