AAD_SU21_059

Film Stills A compendium of architectural videos displayed in framed stills, Film as in layers, Film as in movements.

Collected Works Magdalena Valdevenito B. Ms.AAD | GSAPP 2021

Index As collective engagement happened through screens, and modes of communication became digital, films conveyed ideas better than stills.

This recollection of audiovisual projects is reduced to images: scenes become frames and movements become posters.

Architecture is treated as a performative action towards understanding and designing environments. Like the imaginary of a film, it proposes new worlds through a specific lens, considering multiple scales of proximity and a broad spectrum of actors who participate and it. It can be interpreted freely, and utilized personally. It will create a narrative to depict its plot, with key moments and images that characterize its space, society, politics and environments.

Mood and attitude towards form become crucial, and emotions matter more than shapes. Architecture is forever shifting, broadening its realms of operation and activism, finding synergy with its context for each new idea.

For this, we define: Architecture as a film - films as in layers that can be weaved with others.

A multiplicity of scales and ways of manifesting itself.

Film as in movement - architecture as evolving principles of what it means to inhabit, and how humans and non-humans express themselves spatially. A vehicle for change.

Architecture as a still - a diagnosis of society in a moment in time and a vision of how it could evolve.

Still as in ongoing - an imaginary of bodies that are palpable, entangled and alive.

Welcome to Film Stills.

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Life Support Ecosystem

4

Gradients of Sharing

26

Manufactured Landscape

42

Origami Brick

66

Infra-politics of Waste in the Global South

74

Multiscalar Extractive Taxonomies

90

Plot Life Support Ecosystem is an Architecture and urban movement tested in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, in Cooper Square. Initially, the transition to collective ownership through a Land Trust System in Cooper Square took place in the 1990’s, following a series of events that threatened its inhabitants with slum clearance and displacement.

The movement is driven by the idea that a society that functions under the basis of collective ownership requires its own spatial, material, and relational arrangements. Reflecting on the work of feminist writer Silvia Federici, the idea of “The Commons” has been adopted within the Life Support Ecosystem on the basis of cooperation and sharing among humans and non-humans.

Life

Support Ecosystem

The model caters to those who have been excluded from real estate hegemony in Manhattan or unwilling to participate in it. Five main spatial transformations has been tested in Cooper Square to nurture the soil, grow food, collect and threat the water, compost and establish various degrees of sharing:

1. Food : The street, facade and roof are transformed into urban gardens, where 30% of the food used for neighbourhood consumption is harvested. The gardens are not just a source of food security but are also centers of social activity, knowledge production, cultural and intergenerational exchange.

2. Water : Rainwater is collected over the roof in tanks, and used for irrigating the roof garden and herbs. In addition, water used in showers and kitchens are treated to provide 60% of the water needed in the rest of the urban farm. The water is treated through a living ecosystem containing microscopic algae, fungi, bacteria and snails, fishes, shrubs, and trees that clean the water.

3. Compost : An ecosystem of compost modules span over the facade, where worms feed on leftover food, to provide minerals and nutrients for the soil and help plants grow.

4. Gradients of Sharing: The tenement housing typology is transformed to allow for walls to be folded, dismantled, moved and repurposed, to create a space that is flexible and fluid, catering for various household sizes. The system attempts to multiply the scales of familiarity and kinship through its spatial and material arrangements. The shops on the ground floor have also been transformed into a “neighbourhood closet” where personal belongings are shared and exchanged.

5. Culture: A society based on collective ownership requires its own form of culture and entertainment. A culture that challenges and confronts capitalism and consumption.

Collaborators:

Instructor:

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GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Farah Alkhoury Pabla Amigo Magdalena Valdevenito

Actors:

Worms, Chickens, Vegetables and Fruits, Climate, and Humans.

Lens:

Sharing community that bases itself on the “Commons”.

Andrés Jaque

Stages:

Cooper Square, Lower East Side, New York City, United States.

Advanced Studio IV | Fall 2020

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GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

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Life Support Ecosystem

GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Advanced Studio IV | Fall 2020

Axonometric of Gradients of Sharing

Degrees of Sharing | Movable walls, hybrid use of private and communal spaces

Anti-Cleareance Studio

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Life Support Ecosystem

GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Advanced Studio IV | Fall 2020

Section of Gradients of Sharing

Water Recollection System from roof to purification tanks to bathroom grey waters and storage tanks.

Anti-Cleareance Studio

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Life Support Ecosystem

GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Advanced Studio IV | Fall 2020

Adaptability of Program and Use

Anti-Cleareance Studio

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Life Support Ecosystem

GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Advanced Studio IV | Fall 2020

Ground Floor Section

Axonometric of Ground Floor

Shared Warehouse Space. The Commons.

Anti-Cleareance Studio

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Water Recollection System Still

Rainwater is collected over the roof in tanks, and used for irrigating the roof garden and herbs. The system of collectors, pipes, and storage make the movement of water visible on the façade. The remaining water is collected and used for the gardens. This system allows us to be almost entirely independent from the city’s water system to irrigate and grow crops.

GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Advanced Studio IV | Fall 2020

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Life Support Ecosystem

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Anti-Cleareance Studio

Rather than using chemicals to treat the water, we use a living ecosystem within a series of 5 aquatic tanks for each floor containing microscopic algae, fungi, bacteria and snails, fishes, shrubs, and trees that clean the water. This requires us to use soaps and detergents that do not contain ingredients that could harm the living water treatment ecosystem.

GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Advanced Studio IV | Fall 2020

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Life Support Ecosystem

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Anti-Cleareance Studio

Farming and Food Consumption Still

My diet consists mostly of vegetables, fruits, berries, and herbs. A few months ago the community started a chicken farm, but since very few had the courage to kill them, the chickens have now been adopted as pets.

GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Advanced Studio IV | Fall 2020

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Life Support Ecosystem

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Anti-Cleareance Studio

Compoost

Worms feed on my leftover food, and their poop is great for the soil, because it contains minerals, along with humic acids that help plant growth and protect them from diseases. However, caring for worms is not easy. They require balanced moisture and a monitored temperature, that is why they span all over the façade, so they can be protected from direct sun and cold weather. Last winter I had to place my blanket over the containers to keep the worms warm.

The worms are an essential part of the ecosystem, perhaps even more important than me.

GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Advanced Studio IV | Fall 2020

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Life Support Ecosystem

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Anti-Cleareance Studio

Life Support Ecosystem

GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Advanced Studio IV | Fall 2020

Farming Systems as the main character.

Anti-Cleareance Studio

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Plot Living Together attempts to put the user and architecture in dialogue. Gradient of Permanence is the idea that architecture and housing have the opportunity to operate in a more flexible manner. A space that a New Yorker can grow alongside, with varied economic options of short-term renting to long term residences. At a more detailed level, the gradient takes on more specific roles. A gradient of privacy is considered in the organization of plans, taking into account specific needs, while allowing for flexibility. Across the three buildings; a community garden, shared terraces, and communal living spaces create opportunities for sharing with neighbors.

BUILDING SCALE - The organization of programs could diversify typical hierarchies. Rather than having the most expensive units at the top of the building, the unit distribution and building programs are varied throughout to confront different neighbors within their daily commute back to their apartment.

ECONOMIC SCALE - Each building would have different renting/buying options, with short-term emergency housing,

Gradients of Sharing

rentals, and homes with options to rent or buy. The rentals and residences would be managed by a Community Land Trust, making sure that these spaces remain affordable and off the speculative housing market.

NEIGHBORHOOD SCALE - These three buildings are emblems of gentrification to the neighborhood. Counter to this exploitative model, living together means having spaces that are open to neighborhood functions and needs. The introduction of large gathering spaces, communal gardens, and mutual aid markets bring an enriching exchange of knowledge, experience, craft, and vulnerability.

UNIT SCALE - The functions of a domestic unit such as a kitchen, bedroom, toilets and living room are taken apart, reconfigured and scaled up or down within a single apartment of within an entire floor, providing varying degrees of permanence, privacy and catering for various age groups and household sizes. The spaces are set up for maximum flexibility while considering specific needs.

Collaborators:

Instructor:

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GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Farah Alkhoury Florencia Yalale Magdalena Valdevenito

Actors:

Peoples of all ages entangled in mixed-use spaces.

Lens:

Individual Needs portrayed in transcalar operations.

Juan Herreros

Stages:

51 Astor Place, Lower East Side, New York City, United States.

Design Seminar | Fall 2020

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GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

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Typological Corrections

Gradients of Sharing

42 EAST 4th

215 CHRYSTIE

OFFICE BUILDING

LUXURY RESIDENTIAL

LUXURY RESIDENTIAL AND HOTEL

By Fumihiko Maki Maki and Associates 2013

By Robert Scarano 2009

By Herzog & de Meuron 2017

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Case Comparison

Axon, Plan, Elevation

51 ASTOR PLACE

GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Design Seminar | Fall 2020

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Typological Corrections

Program Circulation

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CORRECTION

Facade is equal in all orientations

Facade changes according to orientation, use and need of radiation and light.

Curtain wall of aluminum structure and glazed low-e glass

Facade as thermal envelope

Open plan for office use only

Footprints of apartments vary according to needs: larger kitchen, bathroom, living room or bedroom

Garden terrace with private access from offices

Garden orchard related to school and with public access for apartments

Public spaces are on the first floor only and with homogeneous access.

Public spaces with variety of users: shared between the whole building and others between only 2 apartments.

Serves the same demographic: office workers

Diversity of demographic: children, students, families, elderly and office workers.

Tower with single use (Program)

Use distributed by gradient of permanence

Core circulation in the center of the tower

Core remains at the center

Temperature and ventilation of building is controlled by a/c.

Temperature and Ventilation regulated by greenery, openings and materiality

Tower: Open Plan surrounded by a rigid and transparent envelope.

Tower: Ondulated walls delimit common area around the core for a dynamic space. Open for School activity extension or neighbour use.

GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Axonometrics of Operations

Table of Operations

Facade

CURRENT

Gradients of Sharing

Design Seminar | Fall 2020

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Gradients of Sharing

Existing Building Section and Detail

Existing Building Elevation and Detail

Typological Corrections

Curtain Wall System

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GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Standardized Office Space

Design Seminar | Fall 2020

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Gradients of Sharing

Corrected Building Section and Detail

Corrected Building Elevation and Detail

Typological Corrections

Thermal Envelope and Mediated Sun Exposure

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GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Interstitial Space: Shared Terraces.

Design Seminar | Fall 2020

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Gradients of Sharing

Plan of Existing Tower Distribution

Plans of Base : Original Building

Typological Corrections

Diagram of Corrections and new Typology

Base Floor Plan: Office Use

Terrace Floor Plan: Office Use and Courtyard

Plan of Corrected Tower Use

Diagram of Existing Typology

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GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Design Seminar | Fall 2020

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Typological Corrections

Gradients of Sharing

Scattering of Units in the Space

Diagramatic Plans of Room Apartments

Bedroom Apartment

Bathroom Apartment

Kitchen Apartment

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GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Design Seminar | Fall 2020

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Plot Labor is considered as the force that drives industry. Markets, economies and countries rely on their production rate and efficiency.

A capitalist society is determined by the goods it trades for money, and the more, the better; but humans involved in the process of making become a mere item in the chain of manufacture and transportation. A loss of principle and ethics can rise when the sight is set only in one goal: the production of Wealth. A city like New York knows well of this, its density permits overlooking ethical details and its speed forces efficiency. Raw materials are externalised to cheap-labor countries, and brought only to be put together for the “made in the USA” label and price tag.

Manufactured Landscape

Technology and automation have evolved in aid of human exploitation and towards the efficiency of the manufacturing processes, throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, industrial revolutions and machines became a necessity for factories, helping humans with high physical demand jobs. But Industries in New York have only recently started to question its production process from beginning to end: the life cycle of its produce from its extraction on earth to its disposal and decomposition. Ethics and sustainability are to be considered, and so is fair labor. No job is too small or unqualified if it plays a role in any part of making. Workers are not flesh machines, bodies get tired and need care.

We propose a factory that understands the dynamics of sourcing, and strives for the responsible creation of raw materials without the exploitation of natural resources, where the combination of automation and technology plays to collaborate with humans, and where labor is considered the most precious good. Training and education is fundamental in this Factory, because knowledge, skill and dedication is cherished as it provokes a safe environment and a quality product. We are a catalyst for sustainability, where the laboratory factory grows its own raw materials in machines operated by scientists, controlling its composition and decomposition, using its space for the production of knowledge and training of community members.

We strive for the industry of the source, creating a transparent and ethical space, where there is a correspondence between bodies and technology. A movement that starts with lab grown diamonds, the production of gems where its origin is clean and fair, and its use is multiple: industrial, medical, computational, jewelry, dentistry, optical, audio related, in beauty, and others. It continues with fabrics: lab grown strands and dyes, and can even end up in food production.

The Factory converses with its surrounding business, markets and community, elevating the responsibility for what is sold, where it comes from and how it is manufactured. If we are accountable for every step of the way, What can we grow together?

Collaborators:

Instructor:

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GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Konstantina Marinaki Magdalena Valdevenito

Mimi Hoang

Actors:

Lab-Grown Diamonds, Scientists, Educators, Local Community

Lens:

Urban scale productive landscape.

Stages:

Bush Terminal, Brooklyn, New York City, United States.

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GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

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Manufactured Landscape

Technically, lab-grown diamonds have the exact characteristics of an earth-grown one. But the value in the market changes due to the social construct that has been created around the product. A gem for love. But does love need blood to be valid?

Scales of approximation. The mine pit site, to the Diamond District in New York City, to a single room for Lab-grown diamonds. A crater is reduced to a single machine. The environmental and human footprint of extraction is changed to a sustainable, technology-driven productive process.

Diamond Industry Networks and Extractive Processess

Scale Shrinkage: from earth-grown lab mine to HPHT Lab-grown diamond machine

Factory Studio

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GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Advanced V Studio | Spring 2021

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Manufactured Landscape

GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Advanced V Studio | Spring 2021

Productive Processes of the Site and their governmental footprint

Factory Studio

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Manufactured Landscape

GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Advanced V Studio | Spring 2021

Diamond uses and their associated industries in Bush Terminal

Factory Studio

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Manufactured Landscape

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Human versus Machine Scale Diagrams

Productive Process of Lab-Grown Diamonds

Factory Studio

Sanding Machine

Diamond Growing High Pressure / High Temperature Machine

Cutting, Polishing

Laboratory Testing

Human Operated

Human Monitored every 3 to 4 weeks

Human Operated from a distance

Human Professional Labour.

GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Advanced V Studio | Spring 2021

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Manufactured Landscape

GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Advanced V Studio | Spring 2021

Social, Enviornmental and Labor Conditions of the Neighbourhood

Factory Studio

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Manufactured Landscape

GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Advanced V Studio | Spring 2021

Axonometric View

Master plan, Machines and Environment.

Factory Studio

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Manufactured Landscape

GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Advanced V Studio | Spring 2021

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Street Level Plan / Public Park Plaza, Paths, Productivity Observation

Bridge Level Plan / Education Centre and Productive Pier Building

Undergound Level Plan / Underwater Topography

Factory Studio

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Manufactured Landscape

GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Advanced V Studio | Spring 2021

Section of Productive Space

Factory Studio

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Manufactured Landscape

GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Advanced V Studio | Spring 2021

Section of Bridge and Pier Building

Factory Studio

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Manufactured Landscape

GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Advanced V Studio | Spring 2021

Section of Bridge Building, Turbines and Enviornmental Remediation

Factory Studio

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Plot Fabrication, speculation and error are a vital part of any creative process. In this instance, the design of a three dimensional tile that could be casted con composed in space, challenged those topics. Designing, 3D printing, mold making, casting, mold making again, casting again, polishing, tiling, lighting, and then photographing.

This project looked at recreating in a hard, solid material a shape that can be most likely associated with a bendable one. To design sharp edged geometries that look like origami, or folded paper, but then cast them in rockite seemed like an interesting experiment.

In the other hand, having these geometries in solid form, it would allow them to collaborate in ways light paper can’t. Standing on top of each other, leaning on one another, receiving weight from other objects, etc.

Fabrication then became an interesting process that also allowed to re-evaluate the compositions, and think of the mold as a means to create half tiles within the same larger geometry. An iteration process that is never ending ans always in reminiscence of the past batch.

Origami Tile Collaborators:

Instructor:

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GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Magdalena Valdevenito

Joshua Jordan

Actors:

Rockite, Silicone, Glue Gun, Plexiglass, Safety Goggles, Gloves.

Lens:

Geometric Experimentation and Physical Fabrication.

Stages:

GSAPP Shop.

Technology Elective | Spring 2021

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Origami Brick

GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Visual Studies Elective | Spring 2021

Geometry Evolution

Mold Making Diagram

Transitional Geometries

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Transitional Geometries

Origami Brick

3D Tile Scenarios

Surface

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GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Structure

Screen

Visual Studies Elective | Spring 2021

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Origami Brick

GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Visual Studies Elective | Spring 2021

Underwater Totems

Textured Landscape

Transitional Geometries

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Plot Political action occurs under the eye of infrastructure, below its defining conditions, and sometimes, in its absence. The noxious effects of waste often affect vulnerable and poor communities, further perpetuating existing social and spatial inequalities. We understand the infrapolitics of waste as a field of dispute that defines ideas of citizenship, belonging, and territory.

Systems for waste collection and disposal represent an important yet often overlooked component of urban landscapes. Each of the five cases explored throughout this project prove that centralized landfills encourage peripheral urbanization. These landfills are often geographically located on the outskirts of major cities. The accumulation and agglomeration of refuse represent a challenge for cities both in environmental and in social terms, since the allocation of waste management facilities affect low-income communities – their usual neighbors – in a disproportionate manner.

Waste

Infrapolitics of the Global South

Meanwhile, a dispersed geography of waste co-exists alongside these “peripheral” landfills, reconfiguring urban marginality.

Not only are we dealing with an exclusionary system that condemns the periphery to bearing the brunt of the noxious effects of waste, but this system breeds a marginality within, from informal settlements to informal economies.

The trash we produce is part of an intricate array of urban infrastructure that manifests itself in both formal and informal ways. From Chile, to Colombia, Haiti, South Africa, and Tunisia, this project explores the relationships between waste, the built environment, and city dwellers, through a series of maps and diagrams, to manifest the spatiality of waste flows and its impacts on informality, segregation, and dispossession.

Despite the evident urgency to tackle issues of poor waste management and to address the precarious conditions falling upon already vulnerable communities, there is an overwhelming unevenness in data availability when it comes to the ecologies of waste, particularly in our five case studies. As such, the project uses varying techniques– from satellite imagery, to archival maps, tabular data, written reports, and media platforms– to paint an accurate picture of the current conditions in each of the five case studies.

Collaborators:

Instructor:

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GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Johane Clermont Juan Sebastián Moreno Keneilwe Ramaphosa Zeineb Sellami Magdalena Valdevenito

Actors:

Waste, Informal Settlements, Informal Labour.

Lens:

Infrapolitics, urbanism, policy social action.

Laura Kurgan

Stages:

Bogotá, Port-au-Prince, Cape Town, Tunis, Santiago.

History & Theory / Urban Design Seminar | Spring 2021

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Conflict Urbanism

Waste Infrapolitics of the Global South

Centralized landfills peripheral urbanization

encourage

We begin our exploration with a premise that underlines the uneven character of urbanization and, in a parallel way, of the burden of waste.

Landfills represent a potent contradiction in infrastructure, and conflicting urban forces gravitate around them. While landfills function in the realm of formality, as nodes in vast networks of waste collection and disposal, they are simultaneously powerful catalysts for informal development. Two case studies will help us understand the effect of centralized landfills in peripheral urbanization.

Doña Juana is the only operating landfill in Bogotá, Colombia. It receives 6,300 tonnes of waste everyday, which are then buried in an extension of 592 hectares in the southeastern border of the city. It was opened in November, 1988, after a series of overlapping crises resulted in the closure of the previous two facilities where waste was buried. Since then, Doña Juana’s influence - in contamination and urbanization - has only grown.

Similarly, Truitier is the only landfill in Port-au-Prince (PAP), created in 1980 on 618 acres of land in the municipality of Cité Soleil, a densely populated and extremely poor commune. It serves Port-au-Prince and its seven municipalities, which produce between 1,400 and 1,600 metric tonnes of waste each day. A dozen private operators collect 20% of rubbish, while the informal sector handles 10%, and the Metropolitan Service for Collecting Solid Waste (SMCRS), an autonomous entity under the Ministry of Public Works (MPW), collect 30%.

Around both landfills, the drive for informal urbanization is not antagonistic to public intervention. Instead, they often go hand-in-hand and they acquire a salient nature when informal settlements are formalized. As Anaya Roy (2005:150) explains, “the legalization of informal property systems is not simply a bureaucratic or technical problem but rather a complex political struggle.”

The main formalization strategy in Bogotá has been a program to “regularize” neighborhoods. Regularization, for city administrations of different political colors, has represented a similar process of allocating public resources to previously underserved informal settlements, extending service networks, building asphalt roads and concrete sidewalks, and starting social outreach programs. Between 1952 and 2020, Bogotá transformed 1,787 informal settlements into formal neighborhoods. The highest number of regularizations occurred between 1986 and 2000, when 1,057 settlements of informal origins were added to the city’s inventory of formal settlements.

However, recent trends in peri-urban development around Doña Juana has shown that neighborhood regularizations have had little effect curtailing the growth of new informal settlements. New informal dwellings are still being produced as a result of overlapping forces: a relative scarcity of land readily available for new development; a connection to the local informal economy; and infrastructure provision centered around the landfill.

Santiago

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Cape Town

Port-au-Prince

Bogotá

GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

Tunis

In 2010, within thirty-four seconds, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake crumbled four major cities including Port-au-Prince. The earthquake exacerbated all issues in PAP, including waste management. The earthquake produced millions more tons of waste. As part of the recovery efforts, Direction Nationale de l’Eau Potable et de l’Assainissement (DINEPA), and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) began efforts to incorporate renewable energy and aerobic biodigestion technology (biogas) as part of the sanitation solution for Haiti.

Truitier was one of six selected sites studied and chosen to become an anaerobic digestion (AD) process that breaks down biodegradable material–facility.

History & Theory / Urban Design Seminar | Spring 2021

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Conflict Urbanism

Waste Infrapolitics of the Global South

They are not static, either. As cities expand, so do landfills. For this reason, the environmental cost of urban growth is unevenly placed on the landfills’ neighbors. In Latin American and Caribbean cities, centralized waste management has exacerbated patterns of urban informality, and created places where poverty meets toxicity and dispossession acquires multiple meanings.

Dispersed geographies of waste reconfigure urban marginality The previous section shows how communities living around landfills engage in forms of resistance that lead them to create forms of daily life which gravitate around the presence of waste without letting it define them.

The toxicity of the landfills themselves – i.e., the environmental and health damage it causes to those living in their proximity – and the dangerous conditions thus imposed on networks of informal waste pickers, are evidence of collapses in established systems, which are failing to properly dispose of solid waste and thus transferring the burden of waste management and recycling onto the city’s most vulnerable communities (MEO, 2019). In the face of the deficiencies of central and local governments, informal waste management systems emerge within the heart of cities.

Bogotá, Colombia

Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Then, 78 people were officially employed by SMRCS and over 100 informal sorters earned a living sorting and reselling materials. These sorters were part of the informal community residing on site, which operated 24 hours a day. Today, that informal community is now 200-500 families living on the edge occupying fragile shelters composed of cloth and wood and still foraging through miles of toxic trash for food and materials to resell to earn a living. The proposed AD facility was never developed. The site lacks working equipment, drainage systems, a waste separation location, and most significantly capital, it would cost an estimated $370 million to increase solid waste collection from 20 to 90 percent by 2022.

Doña Juana’s presence has incentivized new informal developments by being an infrastructural anchor to the types of networks that are rarely accessible to new peri-urban settlements. The landfill is a form of locational capital crystallized as infrastructure, representing both the promise of formalization and the physical and symbolic extension of the city’s frontier. In an analogous movement, Truitier is a node of formal and informal economic activity. Despite the environmental degradation and health risks, or hell on earth, as described by current sorters, working in the landfill is an opportunity to make a living.

Placing and operating landfills represents the allocation of multiple burdens on the environmental and social infrastructure of a city. The first type of burden is a form of contamination that is both vertical and horizontal. It spreads in simultaneous manner through the air, the land, the soil, the undercurrents and the human settlements in between. Landfills are not only “garbage graveyards,” but festering wounds on the urban fabric.

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GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

History & Theory / Urban Design Seminar | Spring 2021

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Waste Infrapolitics of the Global South

In the city of Santiago, waste gets dispersed from within the city to its periphery, ending up as a new geography of garbage that hovers over vulnerable communities. There are 79 “mega-wastelands” (more than 1 acre), but there are over 600 “micro-wastelands” (less than 1 acre) distributed in the lower income areas of the city (Bravo, 2019). Of these, 43 informal landfills imply a health risk to those who inhabit around them, compromising the many informal settlements or “camps” in their proximity (SEREMI, 2012). The Metropolitan region, where the capital and its peripheries are located, generates 44.9% of Chile’s waste, equivalent to 360.451 tons of waste, for a density of 7.11 million inhabitants. According to the Ministry of Environment, 96.3% of this waste gets properly collected and placed on formal landfills (SEREMI 2017).

active landfills in the country, often located in urban peripheries (and on the border of administrative lines), cater to about one third of the country’s urban population (World Bank Report, 2014). The other two thirds of the population rely on about 400 uncontrolled and undocumented dumping sites, along with an intricate network of an estimated 15,000 informal waste pickers called barbéchas (World Bank Report, 2014; Fouroudi, 2019). Since the 2011 Revolution, clashes between national and municipal authorities, private actors, villagers living in proximity to landfills, and the barbéchas have escalated (Mahjoub et. al, 2020) leading to a number of governmental and non-profit responses addressing the infrastructure of waste.

In Cape Town, the ever present remnants of South Africa’s Apartheid spatial planning perpetuate inequalities across demographics, in addition to disproportionate service provision in different socioeconomic groups and geographies. Different tiers of waste management, informal dumping tolerance, and formal landfill adjacency correlate to socioeconomic status and property values. Those closest to landfills with the least efficient municipal waste management are those living in poverty in informal settlements on the outskirts of the city. Highincome households generate the most waste and receive the best waste management service provisions by the government. They are located furthest from landfills and suffer the least from issues around informal waste disposal. Most informal settlements don’t receive weekly door to door waste services therefore 9.2% of South African households will resort to using informal dumping sites. (APWC, 2020)

In South Africa, local municipal governments are responsible for solid waste management and collection infrastructure. “239 municipalities collect waste in 8.4 million households using direct labour, appointed contractors or community co-operatives.” (APWC, 2020) The bulk of all unseparated solid waste is collected by municipalities and transported to formal landfills. In unregulated areas, such as informal settlements, there’s little to no formal waste management services. Communities will resort to burning, burying or dumping their waste anywhere within the surrounds of their informal settlements (i.e. empty fields/parks, curbsides, etc). Informal reclaimers extract recyclables from private/public bins, and both formal landfills and informal dumping zones for self utilisation or to sell to recyclable collection companies and brokers who in turn buy and sell to recyclable processing companies. In the informal settlements, informal reclaimers often provide the only waste management services.

Adjacencies: Formailty and Informality.

Conflict Urbanism

Finally, in Tunis, Jbel Borj Chakir, located in the suburbs of the Tunisian capital, is one of the country’s largest landfills, employing nearly 80 workers (Bocchi, 2017) and spanning nearly 120 hectares of previously agricultural land. This landfill, along with the ten other

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GSAPP | Ms. Advanced Architectural Design

History & Theory / Urban Design Seminar | Spring 2021

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Conflict Urbanism

Cape Town

Waste Infrapolitics of the Global South

Santiago

Tunisia Landfill Capacity

Santiago is an example on how poverty distribution is linked directly to waste mismanagement, and it’s informal disposal. The Ministry

of Environment has extended plans for healthy management of waste, but these policies get applied only on high-income areas of the city.

As recycling points multiply on these sectors, the rest of the city has multiplying micro wastelands.

In Cape Town, waste management tiers are hierarchical regarding waste management service provision to formal and informal households but formal and informal waste management service providers have a symbiotic relationship and sustain each other.

Tunisia

Waste management in Tunisia is a complex affair between a variety of stakeholders from national to local government bodies, contracted private companies, local associations and advocacy groups, and the waste workers themselves. At the highest level, a central department within the Ministry of the Interior oversees the country’s solid waste management, developing policies, strategies, and programs. At the local level, municipalities are responsible for the day-to-day collection of waste. (Mahjoub et. al., 2020) Each municipality hires its own waste workers who collect waste (either door-to-door or from neighborhood refuse bins) and transport it to treatment facilities or directly to the landfill (Aydi, 2013). Though the collection and transport is undertaken directly by the municipalities, the landfills (and treatment centers) are operated by private companies. Finally, there are two types of barbéchas (informal waste pickers): those that work in certain neighborhoods, collecting recyclables to take to treatment locations, and those that work in the landfills themselves, collecting and triaging different forms of waste (Chaabane, 2015a).

Municipalities face barriers such as insufficient budgets, outdated equipment, and a lack of qualified personnel (Blaise, 2014). In addition to these difficulties, corruption among higher governing bodies and the private landfill operators have led to workers strikes (Bocchi, 2017). Meanwhile, central government continues to plan for an expansion of landfills, often against the will of citizens and local residents.

The following country-wide map* shows plans for new landfills despite existing deficiencies and lack of stakeholder involvement.

Whether in Tunisia, Chile or South Africa, municipal shortcomings with regards to these critical pieces of infrastructure, have led to severe mismanagement of landfills and waste collection, leaving citizens with no other choice but to take matters into their own hands, spurring informal development.

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In the case of Cape Town and Santiago, informality is dispersed. The maps depict informal settlements and informal landfills, showing in both cases, higher concentration of sites on low-income neighborhoods. The circled spots are cases where informality of waste and living are superimposed, and sometimes, in close proximity to formal landfills. In the case of Santiago, informality is located mostly on borders: near the Mapocho river, on the city’s periphery or in limits between municipalities, where control is scarce.

Inequitable service delivery across demographics in South Africa is anchored in the historical legacies of colonialism and Apartheid. During the Apartheid era, under the Group Areas Act “non-white” communities were relocated to the city outskirts and the high influx of displaced people caused the rapid growth of informal settlements.

Santiago, Chile

Capetown, South Africa

Conflict Urbanism

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Waste management service delivery provisions vary significantly between provinces, municipalities and often between neighbourhoods adjacent to each other. With little to no waste service delivery in informal settlements, occupants resort to informal waste dumping which results in unregulated, far spread informal dumping zones intersecting across many informal settlements.

The City of Cape Town spends approximately 10% of its cleansing budget, for the removal/rehabilitation of informal dumping zones.

(APWC, 2020) Socio-economic inequality in Chile is visible in the way waste is handled. Most of the government’s initiatives depend on each municipality and its budget to recollect and properly dispose of waste, and given that the majority of micro or informal wastelands are located in low-income municipalities, waste is disposed of by individuals outside the governmental system. These disposal sites are located in borders between municipalities, as they are zones with less regulation.

Tunis, Tunisia: Stakeholders map.

Informal economies The existence of these informal landfills and dumping sites is inherently linked to a network of informal waste pickers. In Cape Town, informal waste economies have formed around waste pickers and both formal and informal waste reclaim/recycling centres. Up to 90,000 people make their livelihood through the informal waste sector by reclaiming and recycling mainline recyclables, either on the streets or on landfill sites (Godfrey, 2016).

Meanwhile, in Tunisia, an estimated 15,000 barbéchas collect nearly two-thirds of the country’s recyclable waste (Foroudi, 2019). “Many waste pickers live in poverty, selling the waste they find to middlemen recyclers who then sell it on for a marked-up price to the national waste collection system or, more often, a private recycling factory.” “And like thousands of other Tunisians who work in the informal sector, barbechas lack an official status and lead a precarious life, carrying out their jobs without workers’ rights or health insurance, say human rights activists.”

Both in Tunis and Cape Town, waste pickers enhance services provided by the government in areas that receive waste management services, providing higher recycling rates and in low income areas, often they provide the only form of solid waste collection.

The geography of waste in Bogotá extends well beyond Doña Juana, and includes more than the private trucks that collect garbage. A network of multiple dumping sites, mapped here, is mostly navigated by informal waste pickers.

Using spatial analysis on these dumping sites, we determined hotspots of waste outside the landfill. In order to tackle this issue, the city developed a formal system to integrate waste pickers into collection circuits, which consists of a series of warehouses where waste pickers go to classify, weigh, and sell the material they gather. The system’s coverage is minimal, and there are no technical solutions in place to improve or dignify the waste pickers’ work.

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Waste obfuscates the boundaries between formality and informality Ananya Roy (2005) defines urban informality as a mode of governance, as the expression of sovereign power on urban landscapes that purposefully relegates swathes of the city while letting others thrive. Her definition –“informality is not a separate sector but rather a series of transactions that connect different economies and spaces to one another”– is a lighthouse for any theoretical approach to the tangible consequences of planning processes in the Global South.

Waste Proportionality

Our five case studies have uncovered similar patterns of uneven urban development, illustrating the disproportionate spatial effects of waste. This is a story about infrastructure, but it is also a story of neoliberal assault on cities, as trash collection and disposal became privatized. It is also a story about resistance, environmental injustice, and emplacement in the midst of abject toxicity. Visualizing disparities in urban landscapes through the combined lens of (formal and informal) waste infrastructure and toxic environments is a way to confront the mode of urbanization imposed on cities. Contesting its political economy and its imperative to bury trash near the urban poor is, then, a political posture that refuses to declare territories and communities as disposable. Are landfills truly the only viable option for cities to dispose of their trash? Are there ways to work with and within the informal waste picking economy rather than penalizing/marginalizing it?

References: • Dias,

Sonia Maria. 2016. “Waste Pickers and Cities.” Environment and Urbanization 28 (2): 375–90. https://doi. org/10.1177/0956247816657302.

• Dias, Sonia Maria, and Melanie Samson. 2016. “Informal Economy Monitoring Study Sector Report: Waste Pickers.” WIEGO. • Fredericks, Rosalind. 2018. Garbage Citizenship: vital infrastructures of labor in Dakar, Senegal. Duke University Press.

Santiago

Cape Town

Port-au-Prince

Bogotá

Tunis

• Harvey, David. 2008. “The Right to the City.” New Left Review 53 (4): 23-39.

• Moore, Sarah A. 2008. “Waste Practices and Politics: The Case of Oaxaca, Mexico,” in: David V. Carruthers, ed., Environmental Justice

in Latin America: Problems, Promise, and Practice. The MIT Press.

• Roy, Ananya. 2005. “Urban Informality. Toward an Epistemology of Planning.” Journal of the American Planning Association 71 (2):

147-158.

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Plot A graphic narrative that describes a revolution. An estimation of the colonial footprint of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City is calculated by the recollection of stolen objects that are hoarded by this cultural institution, tracing back their origins and histories. Based on an ecofeminist perspective, this endeavour starts by analysing the labels of objects. The act of branding, classifying and categorizing them is a new layer of appropriation, one that is violent and hidden at plain sight. As we dismantle structures of power and visibilize the many scales of extraction performed, we understand the relationship between nature, gender identity and its exhibition as demonstrations of culture.

Multiscalar: Extractive processes range in all sizes, shapes and forms. From grains to costumes, to gallery rooms, to the

Multiscalar Extractive Taxonomies

museum’s layout. Only from the name, origin and donor that is described in each label, we can derive multiple actors and networks involved in the colonial footprint of the MET.

Extractive: The act of removing something from its source, separating it from its roots and rightful context.

Taxonomies: To ground and give weight to this claims, a taxonomy is done. Selected objects showcase these extractions from different perspectives. On one hand, there is the varied colonization processes in the Americas that became productive after gender binaries were installed in colonized lands, and on the other, the imposition of gender norms within the privileged white European artist circles.

White supremacy and the patriarchy hides behind paintings and romantic landscapes. By creating new images with excerpts of art we are reclaiming their freedom as individual objects that do not need to adhere to the whitewashed western version of history. The movement is designed to blend into the fabric of the museum and its aesthetic, so that it can begin from within. Sculptures that seem part of the exhibition are placed within the American Wing.

A Loudreading begins.

Collaborators:

Instructor:

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Magdalena Valdevenito

Nathalie Frankowski Cruz García

Actors:

Loudreaders, Museum Visitors.

Lens:

Anti-Colonialism, Ecofeminism, Anti-Capitalism

Stages:

Metropolitan Museum, New York City, United States.

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We are gathered in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A whisper of reappropriation begins. We walk around, observing the stolen objects placed in pedestals behind windows, and also their labels. We ask ourselves: Whose art is it?

Where does it come from?

What does a cultural institution represent? How does it forge its cultural identity? Is a recollection and re-branding of pieces a power move?

It is a quiet place: no loud sounds, no flashes allowed, a sort of colonizing ritual still taking place. Objects hide behind glass, constrained by frames, organized, classified, stigmatized, commodified.

How can we reverse these regimes of violence? How can we visibilize appropriation? We will teach you to observe around and within.

“I see the poet/translator as the person who goes into the darkness, seeking the “other” in ourselves, what we don’t wish to see, as if this act could reveal what the larger world keeps hidden.”

- Cecilia Vicuña, Language is Migrant (Poetry Foundation, 2016)

01 / ACCOUNTABLES Colonization processes feed off the need of cultural institutions to fill their galleries of valuable objects.

Removed from their source through extractive action, these objects are traded in with philanthropies for “humanitarian” causes.

Tax evasion through cultural appropriation is masked in this cycle of powerful white men that are interested in funding art.

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02 / FORMULAE Can we calculate this colonial footprint? We choose an ecofeminist perspective, acknowledging the eternal connection between land, memory and identity, where gender identity and nature are correlative to the liberation of all bodies, human and non-human.

Decolonizing this institution requires releasing people from all patriarchal impositions. “For females, colonization was a twofold process of racial inferiorization and gender subordination. The creation of “women” as a category was one the very first accomplishments of the colonial state”.

The formula relates mathematically concepts of extraction from the perspective that gender norms were a central factor in inseminating regimes of subordination and power hierarchies in colonization processes.

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“It has taken a life of its own, so that the same mechanisms can be applied to different societies whenever there are people in them that have to be ostracized and dehumanized. Witch-craft accusations, in fact, are the ultimate mechanism of alienation and estrangement as they turn the accused - still primarily women - into monstrous beings, dedicated to the destruction of their communities therefore making them undeserving of any compassion and solidarity” - Silvia Federici Witch-Hunting, Globalization, and Feminist Solidarity in Africa Today (2008)

“The cognitive needs of capitalism and the naturalizing of the identities and relations of coloniality and of the geocultural distribution ofworld capitalist power have guided the production of this way of knowing. The cognitive needs of capitalism include “measurement, quantification, externalization (or objectification) of what is knowable with respect to the knower so as to control the relations among people and nature and among them with respect to it, in particular the property in means of production.” This way of knowing was imposed on the whole of the capitalist world as the only valid rationality and as emblematic of modernity.”

- Maria Lugones The Coloniality of Gender (2008)

“The very process by which females were categorized and reduced to “women” made them ineligible for leadership roles. …The emergence of women as an identifiable category, defined by their anatomy and subordinated to men in all situations, resulted, in part, from the imposition of a patriarchal colonial state. For females, colonization was a twofold process of racial inferiorization and gender subordination. The creation of “women” as a category was one the very first accomplishments of the colonial state” - Maria Lugones The Coloniality of Gender (2008)

“Feminists of our time have been leaders in unraveling the supposed natural necessity of ties between sex and gender, race and sex, race and nation, class and race, gender and morphology, sex and reproduction, and reproduction and composing persons” - Donna Haraway Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin (2015)

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03 / TAXONOMY We begin with a taxonomy. Selecting objects that depict these neverending acts of sequestration and visualizing the criminality performed to acquire them. The ultimate act of appropriation is configured within a process of extraction, classification, grouping and labelling.

Violence is performed, masked as educational and cultural hoarding. Society is built with the purpose of positioning objects and people in a specific box. Physical, cultural and social restraint serves the task of maintaining control.

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03A / COLONIZED UNNAMED The selection of art figures with no author is an act of crediting the imaginaries of creators in the “pre-colonial” era, understanding that these cultures are still latent and palpable, and need a space of recognition, respect and repatriation.

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03B / SUPERPOSITION

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INDIGENOUS

The Met museum sits on appropriated territory. Objectifying the peoples that resided before is a violent claim of authorship. Not only violating the human and non-human occupiers, but placing them inside a glass box, and presenting them as private property is a depiction of the entitlement colonizers have when approaching indigenous land.

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03C / DECONSTRUCTING DOMESTICITY

Still life is a mirror of the immobility of women’s place regarding the art scene between 1600 and 1900. Subversion of Gender socially constructed expectations of the white western world of the housewife role. This cluster of vases and florals represents the few women who are showcased in the permanent collection.

We selected these women because their race and social position allowed them to be showcased in the museum. We encourage those who are privileged to have a retrospective realization and become part of the movement to refuse patriarchal systems from within.

Togetherness and companionship are part of the awakening.

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03D / PATRIARCHAL PLACEMENTS

The first female solo exhibition in the Metropolitan Museum renders children’s books illustrations. Exhibited as a favor from the artist’s husband, a curator at the time, and showcased in the Education Department - not even a gallery. A mockery to appear inclusive.

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03E / LIBERATION

Broken vases and female painters escape their allowed frame. Adventuring in dangerous and forbidden territory, branches invade the walls and flowers grow in the cracks.

04 / POST-COLONIAL LANDSCAPE

We are transported to a world of a post/colonial landscape, where sculptures become trojan horses for an event of liberation. We see THREE devices of Loudreading, each containing a particular method of peaceful rebellion. We reclaim symbolic objects from colonial paintings and turn them into machines of loudreading.

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05 / CATALOGUE OF SUBVERSIVE SCULPTURES These objects are mobile, they are meant to spark curiosity and invite visitors to observe the museum’s collection with a critical eye. The revolution starts from education and an invitation to collaborate.

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05A / The Screen

Abstracted from the Evangelization cross in most colonial processes, this Loudreader conforms a screen that will broadcast these images to call for action. It can be unrolled and used as a barricade in case of institutional repression to the Loudreaders.

05B / The Stickers

To represent the productivity regimes imposed by settler colonialists, this Cone resembles the hay mountains represented in paintings.

Inside the Loudreading tribune there are pockets that host stickers of subversion, to be placed over the existing labels in the museum.

They become stamps of thought-provoking rebellion.

05C / The Speaker

The Goblet is reclaimed, inverted and stretched to form this Tribune. With a speaker on top, and steps on the side, Loudreaders can climb to speak from a higher position towards the crowd.

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06 / THE EVENT The event begins with a device walking through the space, a movable sculpture that engages with the people. One of us accompanies it first, so that the act of peaceful revolution can be observed and learned by the museum’s visitors. We paste messages of subversion in every label. A bright yellow stamp proliferates over all the classifications of stolen objects, and the people observe closely these marks of problematics. Each tag warns about a sort of extraction, building over the existing labels. They read attentively the terms that would seem regular and unproblematic to a naive eye. “Female Vase”, “Girl Figure” are classifications of objects that were not created as art nor are meant to be exposed. “Understanding the place of gender in pre-colonial societies is also pivotal in understanding the extent and importance of the gender system in disintegrating communal relations, egalitarian relations, ritual thinking, collective decision making , collective authority, and economies.”

Colonialism emerges from dismantling social structures and imposing a patriarchal state, where european white men have the right to define people’s worth. These stamps bring attention to wrong classifications. Suddenly, some paintings find themselves surrounded by dozens of yellow marks. Visitors start gathering.

They question the reasoning behind these marks, and re-read the colonial labels.

Why is this object defined as a female vase?

Who painted this still life?

Why does nature look so pristine?

They start to comment and ask around. Now there are two friends pasting labels, and giving to the visitors a catalogue. They invite visitors to perform reappropriations with them. As pollen floats and spreads, yellow labels are passed on, explained and planted around the art.

07 / TRANSFORMATION A collective action begins. Where bland whitewashed and patriarchal descriptions laid, now stamps of warning multiply. Taking the image of florals with messages of subversion, these stamps grow over each other, as if nature itself would be swallowing the art pieces in order to return them, or to bring attention to the underlying conflicts in our surroundings.

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Acknowledgements: Professors:

Andrés Jaque Mimi Hoang Nathalie Frankowski Cruz García Juan Herreros Laura Kurgan Josh Jordan

Collaborators:

Pabla Amigo Farah Alkhoury Konstantina Marinaki Florencia Yalale Johane Clermont Juan Sebastián Moreno Keneilwe Ramaphosa Zeineb Sellami

Thanks for Watching.

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Collected Works Magdalena Valdevenito B. Ms.AAD | GSAPP 2021

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