BUENOS AIRES: UNLOCKED

SYMBIOSIS: RESISTANCE,  RESILIANCE, AND RETREAT

Buenos Aires: Unlocked is a set of explorations, analysis and visions towards the prospective future of the Argentinian capital. As urban and architectural issues arose, numerous questions were raised, resurfacing from the “trajectories of spatiality-historically and sociality” quoted by Edward Soja. The research manifested the intersections between culture, morphology and social networks and reopened the possibilities of exploration beyond one of the most complex cities in the world. This project explores further beyond the possibilities of an arising global issues, the lack of resilience and the inescapable rising of water levels.

From the regional context towards the very human scale, constantly resonating and highlighting the issues that were indeed to the architectural strategy surfacing the water of poverty, exclusion and pollution. The multiplicity of mappings, representations, and architectural fantasies are separated into several sections: “Beyond Greater Buenos Aires” (analysis), “The Threats of Neglect” (scenario), “Inescapable World” (vision), “Deconstruction of a Metabolism” (strategy), “Symbiotic Architecture” (architectural proposal).

The coined term of this project “archipelago of villas” introduces three intersections that arise from the numerous informal settlements, the geological water formation and the urban grid. All three have formulated the reality of misappropriating territories that pose a threat. This a danger that could lead to disasters, as the research points out occasions through the limited social media articles and cries of help from photographs taken by artists and photographers on sites. The author’s name, archipelago, is taking a course towards a flooding scenario which is more evident in later stages of this analytical mapping and representation. Now we pose the question: How to dissect all the urgent needs in-between the urban grid and within the morphological threat that has been mishandled throughout the many decades?

In this urban context, the villas of Buenos Aires will lose most of their structures due to the government’s constant neglect and disinterest in the safety of others. Buildings there are in massively poor condition, surrounded by walls and industries that throw all the negative aspects of the city into them. Additionally, most of the alluvial zones are located in these slums, which makes their situation far more critical even during early stages of flooding. The case is bound to its economic and social context, even considered chained, indicating that solutions will be impossible to be implied. In order to make a change detachment from reality will be of need. These three concepts are based on forecasting and backcasting methods, where we suggest an image of a city without constraints and give it a chance to be traced. All three designs can be applied to single architecture despite their functionalities. However, some provide more support towards sensitive aspects of a particular building. In this case, resistance stands for elevation, resilience for floating and retreat for sebmersive.