The search for honest solutions to everyday city problems has been and is the obsession of many people throughout history. Complex expert groups: anthropologists, sociologists, architects, engineers ... or even politicians trust each other to develop mechanisms to make citizens’ lives easier and, of course, to take advantage of them.
Unfortunately the reality of architecture today has a high level of violence. I guess this is anything but the answer to that famous Newton's Law. A negative 'reaction' caused by the speculative and unconscious “action”. But it happens as well in many parts of South America, as a result of poverty.
They call them: colonies, barrios bravos, lost cities, slums, favelas, or shantytowns. They emerge sporadically due to the need to accommodate their inhabitants who are the ones who start the ‘self-construction’, picaresquely. They have no access to the basics such as: water, electricity, a paved street with sidewalks ... they are a tangle of alleys and shanties that expand throughout the hills, under the bridges or on the riverbanks. Delinquency attacks the life of these forgotten people with impunity and the State rarely shows up with its vision of repressive police officers.
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In contrast, large urban developments, luxury condos, walled cities, and militarized neighbourhoods appear. It is possible to find affordable houses or luxury mansions, but they are all aligned on the territory. Urban mutations as a result of insecurity. And so, residential segregation is generated, with no option to improvise or interact with social and exclusion issues , due mainly to the reduction of space-time in the city itself. Urbicide or urban genocide (*), with a full plan, with no sensitivity and under the shelter of power.
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So we are facing two opposite poles whose approach is more distant every day. To find the gray scale goes to rethink that famous 'head of the architect' and to rationalize Latin America from the most difficult of goals: social justice. If we add to the problem of social differences the current violent climate caused by 'drugs', the picture is rather bleak. The Mexican border and the wall of shame that it represents, makes the 'narco' appear as a patriarch, strengthening the settlements with his best weapons which are none other than fear and ignorance. This way he takes control of the life of the people, their villages and even their homes. He controls everything. From the economy, to security, to infrastructure or even architecture.
We are facing a phenomenon that seems to repeat already experienced models such as the “bunker' model, directly linked to military purposes. But also the 'shelter' with a much more bucolic sense.
Ultimately, it seems that narcoarquitectura brings back the Speer symbolism as a trademark of bad taste with the only intention of shocking and terrorizing its lackeys. The vulgarity of Ornament and Crime that Loos had already written about around 1909...
But Mexico will always have the magic of the master Barragan in her womb. His colours and light will make you free.
Viva Mexico!
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Luis Barragán Casa y Estudio, 1947.
(General Francisco Ramirez, 14 - Colonia Tacubaya, México, D.F.)
(*)Slavoj Žižek "Sobre la violencia. Seis reflexiones marginales". Ed. Paidós, Barcelona, 2009.
TO BE CONTINUED... NEXT WEEK MORE!! > "THE SNAIL STRATEGY"
IN TREATMENT - METALOCUS
DIRECTOR: JOSÉ JUAN BARBA. COORDINATION: INÉS LALUETA. ORGANIZATION: INÉS LALUETA, PEDRO NAVARRO. ENGLISH VERSION: KAREN SIMPSON. GUESTS FIRST SEASON: JOSÉ JUAN BARBA, MARINA DIEZ-CASCÓN, SERGIO DIEZ-CASCÓN SOLER, LARA FERNÁNDEZ GONZÁLEZ, CARLOS GERHARD PI-SUÑER, MONTSE PLA GARCÍA-CASTANY, XAVIER NICOLAU CUYÀS, FERNANDO RIAL PONCE, VERÓNICA ROSERO.
