Monday, October 29, 2007
From article in Residential Architect Online
After decades of absence from the main spheres of architectural discourse, the phenomenon of the metropolis as a site for research and experimentation is beginning to recapture the imagination of architects. This renewed attention our profession is giving to the socio-cultural, political, and economic forces at stake in the city could redefine the operational processes of architecture itself, as well as the role of architects in the context of city development. Certain practices in contemporary architecture and urbanism are generating the re-evaluation of notions we have perpetuated as immutable in describing certain typologies and concepts in our field.
In the context of this paradigm shift, it is clear that one of the most important issues we need to question is housing and its relationship to the urbanism it occupies. Conventional ideas of housing—in government, financial, and academic institutions, for example—generally define it as an equation, a number. In the same way, density has been understood solely in terms of building size and mass. Both concepts need to be redefined as sets of relationships within a broader framework to promote new types of density and land uses. Housing and density need to be seen not as an amount of units but as dwelling in relationship to the larger infrastructure of the city, which includes transportation, ecological networks, the politics and economics of land use, and particular cultural idiosyncrasies of place.
new view
In fact, the political and cultural dimensions of urban housing and density as tools for social integration have been the central inspiration for our work in San Diego. We're proposing that fragments, voids, and leftover urban spaces be transformed to support hybrid and layered programs for flexible, affordable housing, civic and commercial uses, and public spaces. These are the ideas fueling the social housing projects we are designing on both sides of the San Diego-Tijuana border. The goal has been to achieve maximum effect with minimal gestures, to take existing patterns of use as a point of departure, and to develop urban solutions with enough persuasive force to change obsolete planning policy and zoning regulations.
“Living Rooms at the Border” is a small project that anticipates San Diego's needed densities and mixed uses. It has also become a political instrument for its nonprofit developer, Casa Familiar, to transform zoning regulations for the border community of San Ysidro, Calif. Casa Familiar's role as choreographer of a triangulation between community, architectural practice, and government agencies suggests that the most experimental work in housing in the United States lies in the hands of progressive, community-based nonprofit organizations, and within small communities such as San Ysidro. The agencies that engage the social dynamics of these unique neighborhoods daily can mediate between their histories and identities and the planning policies that shape their destiny. Also, these nonprofits' socio-cultural agendas translate into unique organizational strategies, inclusive of the specificity of individual communities and places.
The objective of “Living Rooms at the Border” has been to distill the essence of this community's patterns of use, and to let these patterns become the basis for incremental design solutions with a catalytic effect on the urban fabric. Such a tactical approach generates prototypical solutions, and perhaps paradigms for densification in other cities. In a parcel where existing zoning allows only three units of housing, the project proposes (through negotiated density bonuses and by sharing kitchens) 12 affordable housing units, a community center resulting from the adaptive reuse of an existing 1927 church, offices for Casa Familiar in the church's new attic, and a garden underpinning the community's nonconforming micro-economies, such as street markets and kiosks. In a place where current regulation allows only one use, we propose five different uses that support each other. This suggests a model of social sustainability for San Diego, one that conveys density not as bulk but as social choreography.
living framework
Our “Manufactured Site” project in Tijuana, Mexico, is a very different investigation of the same issue, the notion of housing emerging out of community interaction. It explores how the area's informal settlements grow faster than the urban cores they surround, creating a different set of rules for development and blurring the distinctions between urban, suburban, and rural. These startup communities gradually evolve, or violently explode out of conditions of social emergency, and are defined by the negotiation of territorial boundaries, the ingenious recycling of materials, and human resourcefulness. For the “Manufactured Site,” we are proposing a prefabricated building frame that can act as a hinge mechanism to support the multiplicity of recycled materials and systems that residents bring from San Diego and reassemble in Tijuana to create makeshift dwellings. These structures are fragile, as is the topography of the land they occupy. The frame could be the first step in the construction of a larger scaffolding that would help strengthen the otherwise precarious terrain, without compromising the temporal dynamics of these self-made environments.
We want to give the layered complexities of these sites primacy over the singularity of the object. In our view, housing is less about a collection of objects and more about participatory community processes and the resourcefulness and organization of people. By bridging between the planned and the unplanned, the legal and the illegal, the object and the ground, as well as man-made and factory processes of construction, the “Manufactured Site” questions the meaning of manufacturing and of housing in the context of building community.
Together, these two projects represent the range of issues that define our work, allowing our practice to straddle both sides of the San Diego-Tijuana border. They have ignited real processes of intervention within the multiple forces that shape this divided territory. They have also challenged the incremental homogenization of architectural styles and exclusionary planning and zoning practices that oppose the forces arising out of the continually changing and expanding “border condition.” This situation has prompted our search for a participatory political process advocating, instead, an urbanism of juxtaposition, inclusive of socio-cultural patterns of use that can promote alternative housing prototypes.
Using the border zone as a laboratory has encouraged us to observe thriving conditions in existing neighborhoods, focusing on the dormant potentialities of under-utilized elements, spaces, and urban infrastructure. Many lessons can still be learned from the “great bi-national metropolis” stretching from San Diego to Tijuana, where radically different economic and cultural spheres clash and overlap as they embrace recurring waves of immigrants from around the world. A different notion of housing can emerge out of this geography, pregnant with the promise of generating an urbanism that admits the full spectrum of social and spatial possibility.
teddy cruz is principal of estudio teddy cruz in san diego, calif.
In the context of this paradigm shift, it is clear that one of the most important issues we need to question is housing and its relationship to the urbanism it occupies. Conventional ideas of housing—in government, financial, and academic institutions, for example—generally define it as an equation, a number. In the same way, density has been understood solely in terms of building size and mass. Both concepts need to be redefined as sets of relationships within a broader framework to promote new types of density and land uses. Housing and density need to be seen not as an amount of units but as dwelling in relationship to the larger infrastructure of the city, which includes transportation, ecological networks, the politics and economics of land use, and particular cultural idiosyncrasies of place.
new view
In fact, the political and cultural dimensions of urban housing and density as tools for social integration have been the central inspiration for our work in San Diego. We're proposing that fragments, voids, and leftover urban spaces be transformed to support hybrid and layered programs for flexible, affordable housing, civic and commercial uses, and public spaces. These are the ideas fueling the social housing projects we are designing on both sides of the San Diego-Tijuana border. The goal has been to achieve maximum effect with minimal gestures, to take existing patterns of use as a point of departure, and to develop urban solutions with enough persuasive force to change obsolete planning policy and zoning regulations.
“Living Rooms at the Border” is a small project that anticipates San Diego's needed densities and mixed uses. It has also become a political instrument for its nonprofit developer, Casa Familiar, to transform zoning regulations for the border community of San Ysidro, Calif. Casa Familiar's role as choreographer of a triangulation between community, architectural practice, and government agencies suggests that the most experimental work in housing in the United States lies in the hands of progressive, community-based nonprofit organizations, and within small communities such as San Ysidro. The agencies that engage the social dynamics of these unique neighborhoods daily can mediate between their histories and identities and the planning policies that shape their destiny. Also, these nonprofits' socio-cultural agendas translate into unique organizational strategies, inclusive of the specificity of individual communities and places.
The objective of “Living Rooms at the Border” has been to distill the essence of this community's patterns of use, and to let these patterns become the basis for incremental design solutions with a catalytic effect on the urban fabric. Such a tactical approach generates prototypical solutions, and perhaps paradigms for densification in other cities. In a parcel where existing zoning allows only three units of housing, the project proposes (through negotiated density bonuses and by sharing kitchens) 12 affordable housing units, a community center resulting from the adaptive reuse of an existing 1927 church, offices for Casa Familiar in the church's new attic, and a garden underpinning the community's nonconforming micro-economies, such as street markets and kiosks. In a place where current regulation allows only one use, we propose five different uses that support each other. This suggests a model of social sustainability for San Diego, one that conveys density not as bulk but as social choreography.
living framework
Our “Manufactured Site” project in Tijuana, Mexico, is a very different investigation of the same issue, the notion of housing emerging out of community interaction. It explores how the area's informal settlements grow faster than the urban cores they surround, creating a different set of rules for development and blurring the distinctions between urban, suburban, and rural. These startup communities gradually evolve, or violently explode out of conditions of social emergency, and are defined by the negotiation of territorial boundaries, the ingenious recycling of materials, and human resourcefulness. For the “Manufactured Site,” we are proposing a prefabricated building frame that can act as a hinge mechanism to support the multiplicity of recycled materials and systems that residents bring from San Diego and reassemble in Tijuana to create makeshift dwellings. These structures are fragile, as is the topography of the land they occupy. The frame could be the first step in the construction of a larger scaffolding that would help strengthen the otherwise precarious terrain, without compromising the temporal dynamics of these self-made environments.
We want to give the layered complexities of these sites primacy over the singularity of the object. In our view, housing is less about a collection of objects and more about participatory community processes and the resourcefulness and organization of people. By bridging between the planned and the unplanned, the legal and the illegal, the object and the ground, as well as man-made and factory processes of construction, the “Manufactured Site” questions the meaning of manufacturing and of housing in the context of building community.
Together, these two projects represent the range of issues that define our work, allowing our practice to straddle both sides of the San Diego-Tijuana border. They have ignited real processes of intervention within the multiple forces that shape this divided territory. They have also challenged the incremental homogenization of architectural styles and exclusionary planning and zoning practices that oppose the forces arising out of the continually changing and expanding “border condition.” This situation has prompted our search for a participatory political process advocating, instead, an urbanism of juxtaposition, inclusive of socio-cultural patterns of use that can promote alternative housing prototypes.
Using the border zone as a laboratory has encouraged us to observe thriving conditions in existing neighborhoods, focusing on the dormant potentialities of under-utilized elements, spaces, and urban infrastructure. Many lessons can still be learned from the “great bi-national metropolis” stretching from San Diego to Tijuana, where radically different economic and cultural spheres clash and overlap as they embrace recurring waves of immigrants from around the world. A different notion of housing can emerge out of this geography, pregnant with the promise of generating an urbanism that admits the full spectrum of social and spatial possibility.
teddy cruz is principal of estudio teddy cruz in san diego, calif.
From article in New York Times 12/3/06
The fruits are visible in Mr. Cruz's peculiar architectural vision. For years now he has been refining a design for a 12-unit housing proposal in San Ysidro, an immigrant community in suburban San Diego, in cooperation with a local advocacy group known as Casa Familiar. The design is conceived as a frame for future development, with a block-long semipublic loggia as its centerpiece.
The loggia will function as a shared communal space for markets, festivals and other social events. Its concrete frame, partly inspired by Donald Judd's sculptural cubes, is intentionally purer and more formal than anything in Tijuana, but that rigorous framework houses an informal and flexible social organism.
A row of delicate wood housing units on top of the frame will heighten the contrast between private and public zones. Each unit is conceived as a series of interlocking rooms that can be broken down into two one-bedroom units or pieced together for large families. And the entire site will be bisected by a semipublic garden that connects West Hall Street to an alleyway that serves as a thoroughfare for immigrants on their way to work.
A second phase calls for parallel rows of housing for the elderly interspersed with semipublic gardens. The single-story blocks are covered by long uniform roofs that tip up at certain points to create space for what Mr. Cruz calls "prodigal apartments" — single units where extended family members can stay. A full-time day care center is also part of the elderly phase, since many immigrant children are being raised by their grandparents.
To proceed with the project, Mr. Cruz opened a full-scale campaign to change San Diego's zoning laws. Working with Casa Familiar, he has sought to open the way for the denser mixed-use communities that are so typical of Mexico — an urban fabric in which structures bleed freely into one another, allowing for the shifting realities of immigrant families. The group's offices will serve as a makeshift city hall, arranging loans and reconfiguring the units.
Skip to next paragraph The San Diego City Council approved the development plan last year, and Mr. Cruz expects the zoning changes to go through this fall. Planners hope to begin construction next year.
The loggia will function as a shared communal space for markets, festivals and other social events. Its concrete frame, partly inspired by Donald Judd's sculptural cubes, is intentionally purer and more formal than anything in Tijuana, but that rigorous framework houses an informal and flexible social organism.
A row of delicate wood housing units on top of the frame will heighten the contrast between private and public zones. Each unit is conceived as a series of interlocking rooms that can be broken down into two one-bedroom units or pieced together for large families. And the entire site will be bisected by a semipublic garden that connects West Hall Street to an alleyway that serves as a thoroughfare for immigrants on their way to work.
A second phase calls for parallel rows of housing for the elderly interspersed with semipublic gardens. The single-story blocks are covered by long uniform roofs that tip up at certain points to create space for what Mr. Cruz calls "prodigal apartments" — single units where extended family members can stay. A full-time day care center is also part of the elderly phase, since many immigrant children are being raised by their grandparents.
To proceed with the project, Mr. Cruz opened a full-scale campaign to change San Diego's zoning laws. Working with Casa Familiar, he has sought to open the way for the denser mixed-use communities that are so typical of Mexico — an urban fabric in which structures bleed freely into one another, allowing for the shifting realities of immigrant families. The group's offices will serve as a makeshift city hall, arranging loans and reconfiguring the units.
Skip to next paragraph The San Diego City Council approved the development plan last year, and Mr. Cruz expects the zoning changes to go through this fall. Planners hope to begin construction next year.
From article in Herald Tribune 13/3/06
As Tijuana has expanded into the hilly terrain to the east, squatters have fashioned an elaborate system of retaining walls out of used tires packed with earth. The houses jostling on the incline are constructed out of concrete blocks, sheets of corrugated metal, used garage doors and discarded packing crates - much of it brought down by local contractors and wholesalers from across the border (slideshow in NY Times).Once such a settlement is completed, it is protected from demolition under Mexican law - and the government is eventually obliged to provide plumbing, electricity and roads to serve it. In Cruz’s view, the process is in some ways a far more flexible and democratic form of urban development than is the norm elsewhere.Yet he takes a special delight in places where free-spirited forms and conventional ones overlap. One of the strangest sights in Tijuana is a row of vintage California bungalows resting atop a hollow one-story steel frame. Once destined for demolition across the border, they were loaded on trucks and brought south by developers who have sold them to local residents.To squeeze them into tight lots, many homeowners mount them on frames so they can use the space underneath for shops, car repair and the like. On one site, a pretty pink bungalow straddles a narrow driveway between two existing houses, as if a child were casually stacking toy houses.Driving farther into the hills, we passed through the gates of a sprawling subdivision from the late 1990s that has become its own sort of hybrid. Originally it was conceived as a sprawl of identical beige houses, each no bigger than a two-car garage, arranged behind tidy little lawns in a grim version of the American dream.Only a few years later, the lawns are now cluttered with car repair shops, grocery stores and taco stands. New floors have been added, single-family homes have been joined together to house extended families, and many of the beige facades have been repainted in bright colors. Cruz sees the mix as a richer, more vibrant landscape - a spirited answer to the alienation that many of us associate with conventional American suburbs.It’s not that he romanticizes poverty; he recognizes the filth and clutter, the lack of light and air, that were the main targets of Modernism nearly a century ago. But by approaching Tijuana’s shantytowns with an open mind, he can extract a viable strategy for development that is rooted in local traditions.The fruits are visible in Cruz’s peculiar architectural vision. For years now he has been refining a design for a 12- unit housing proposal in San Ysidro, an immigrant community in suburban San Diego, in cooperation with a local advocacy group known as Casa Familiar. The design is conceived as a frame for future development, with a blocklong semipublic loggia as its centerpiece.The loggia will function as a shared communal space for markets, festivals and other social events. Its concrete frame, partly inspired by Donald Judd’s sculptural cubes, is intentionally purer and more formal than anything in Tijuana, but that rigorous framework houses an informal and flexible social organism.A row of delicate wood housing units on top of the frame will heighten the contrast between private and public zones. Each unit is conceived as a series of interlocking rooms that can be broken down into two one-bedroom units or pieced together for large families. And the entire site will be bisected by a semipublic garden that connects West Hall Street to an alley that serves as a thoroughfare for immigrants on their way to work.A second phase calls for parallel rows of housing for the elderly interspersed with semipublic gardens. The single-story blocks are covered by long uniform roofs that tip up at certain points to create space for what Cruz calls “prodigal apartments” - single units where extended family members can stay. A full-time day care center is also part of the elderly phase, since many immigrant children are being raised by their grandparents.To proceed with the project, Cruz opened a full-scale campaign to change San Diego’s zoning laws. Working with Casa Familiar, he has sought to open the way for the denser mixed-use communities that are so typical of Mexico - an urban fabric in which structures bleed freely into one another, allowing for the shifting realities of immigrant families. The group’s offices will serve as a makeshift city hall, arranging loans and reconfiguring the units.The San Diego City Council approved the development plan last year, and Cruz expects the zoning changes to go through this autumn. Planners hope to begin construction next year.
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