Students undertook the challenge of researching and designing experimental tools which would enable them to perceive, communicate and generate processes for urban connection. This was developed through the creation of events which sought to work on the transformation of social relations. The projects sought to build new collective knowledge through these changes in order to generate new social ties without which urban interventions would not be possible or sustainable. The presentation concluded that the articulation of these urban-rooted proposals with a participation network would become the key to an integrated and cohesive citizenship.
The results are five interventions which reimagine the city and reflect a dialogue between academic knowledge and the experiences and desires of local residents.
ROUTE OF COLLECTIVE MEMORY
EE & PUCP_Urban Connections
After identifying a general lack of collective memory and identity in Pisco, which has led to the generation of physicial and emotional voids in the city after the earthquake, the group of students that undertook this project sought out to create a new productive, conceptual and expressive use of these empty spaces using the slogan ‘No more forgetting’ (no más olvido). The objective of the project became the appropriation of spaces in order to develop a sense of belonging and relevance for the citizen. This was done through the creation of a ‘Route of Collective Memory’; where citizens’ stories and testimonies were collected in order to define the community’s version of the history and character of those spaces. These were later inscribed in strategic physical voids of the city, thus creating a route connecting these points.
EE & PUCP_Urban Connections
EE & PUCP_Urban Connections
This presentation was designed to confront this fragmentation through the active participation of the local community, and through a wide urban understanding as a result of the direct experience of students with the everyday reality of Pisco. The local association in Pisco Espacio Expresión enabled this participation strategy, and offered valuable research developed in the International Encounter: How To Transform the City?
Non-profit organisation Espacio Expresión in joint venture with the Urban Studies Department of the Pontificia Católica del Perú [PUCP]
EE & PUCP_Urban Connections
Pisco, a city which was radically transformed after the 2007 earthquake, challenges the limits of all disciplines in its demand for a strategy that can tackle the complex physical and social fractures left by this natural disaster. This urban phenomenon of fragmentation -which affects the general development of all Peruvian cities-, is the direct reflection of the estrangement taking place between urban structures and social networks, between architecture and society and between the demands of our cities and the actual political and academic context.
