A World Habitat Awards submission

Browse Ethnoarch by theme:

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

As of June 2007 the participatory interface of the project is being finished. Direct contributions should be possible later this summer. In the meantime, you are welcome to participate by using this form (membership required).

Members:
Login | Register

Note - Site Map

You are in: Ethnoarch Home » Notes Home » A World Habitat Awards submission
Go to previous note « A World Habitat Awards submission » Go to next note

'Released by Ethnoarchitecture.org' showcases personal - professional notes related to Ethnoarch webmaster's current work. In other words, this is Ethnoarch's blog. The section also details new content added to the site, technical improvements and, in general, how Ethnoarch.com is going.
A World Habitat Awards submission June 4, 2005 A rapid planning approach with families in San Cayetano - Istepeque, El Salvador. The main purpose of this project was to assist a community who had been squatting by railroad reserve land, in the design of their neighborhood. In order to accomplish this, a rapid participative design approach, with children in a protagonist role, was used. Through Irish NGO Trocaire, the community had obtained funds for buying land and build houses, but they were unsure about the planning process of the neighborhood itself. We at SIGUS proposed a participatory approach in which, through the methodology of workshops, families themselves, including the children, and not experts would tell how their neighborhood should be designed. This would be an alternative to having experts impose their point of view on how the neighborhood should be, and that way, would shift the traditional roles of designer and client. Local NGOs El Bálsamo (specialized in community development) and REDES (specialized in infrastructure building), as well as National and Albert Einstein University architecture students facilitated the process. The municipality of Istepeque gave their support and provided space and food for the meetings. The result was an urban plan with definition of properties, roads, land use, and infrastructure for water provision. Also, the organization of the community in task-teams to help implement the project was an outcome. Building started in December 2004 through self-help. House design and construction were not explored in the workshop, as the community and partners had decided to follow the experience from previously successful reconstruction projects. July 2005 is the completion target of the project. As of June 2005, building works progress as scheduled. About this article I have submitted, on behalf of SIGUS, the project of San Cayetano - Istepeque to the World Habitat Awards 2005 competition. That was an urban design project developed in partnership with local organizations by Reinhard Goethert, Susana Williams, Melody Tulier and I, last year in El Salvador. Some of the key features of the project were that it worked (so many times community projects don't!), it worked very rapidly (one year between preliminary workshops and final building), it was participative (most importantly, it involved children in that participation in the role of designers), and it proposed to switch the role for architects in such participation: the community would design, and we would only be their "consultants." By the end of the summer we will know if we made it into the finals.
Previous note: New Voices revised abstract « Browse notes (English and Spanish) » Next note: Etnoarquitectura de nuevo, y más visual...

Statistic Data
This page has been viewed 61484 times. Database queries executed: 26.
Most recent document was published on: Jun/10/2010 7:50 am.
Total Members: 171. Total Logged in members: 0. Total guests: 22. Total anonymous users: 0
The most visitors ever was 285 on Mar/24/2005 6:02 am

Site Links
Database     Areas: Africa - Americas - Asia - Europe - Oceania     Data: Countries - Groups - Types - Models - Images
Knowledge     Content: News - Articles - Books - Notes - Español     Essentials: Glossary - Vernacular? - Ethnoarch? - FAQ - Search
Site     Members: Publish - Log in - Register - Settings - Forum     Website: Home - About - Contact - Terms - Privacy

© Copyright 2003 - 2012 by Gabriel Arboleda. All rights reserved.
Unless otherwise specified, all published material remains copyright of its respective authors.
Technicolor is a trademark of Thomson Multimedia and is mentioned with the purposes of commentary and/or critcism.
To see the context of such commentary or criticism, please click here.
No contents, including text, tables, photographs, graphics, videos, etc. may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.
In addition, no material or contents may be reproduced on the world wide web by mirroring, framing, posting, etc. without written consent.
Contact Information:
Gabriel Arboleda - PhD Program in Architecture - College of Environmental Design - University of California at Berkeley
370 Wurster Hall - Berkeley, CA 94720-1800
Terms and conditions - Privacy policy