After the fire
© Alberto Miranda, Chile Fire, View of houses in flame during a fire in Valparaiso,12 aprile, 2014.
- Date: July 2016.
- Typology: M.Arch Research project, Thesis wort of Mention and Publication by Politecnico of Torino
- Dimension: 24.000 m².
- Location: Valparaiso, Chile.
The thesis studies the Quebrada Jaime, Valparaíso starting from the fire that affected it in April 2014. The quebrada is today an informal outpost close to the city center, an intern periphery. The life in these spaces is influenced and distinguished by their vulnerability and by the problematic social condition of the people who live in it. Place that we have to evaluate as marginal and subjected to an evident segregation phenomenon, but on the other hand we have to capture its central position in the city.
The fire opened new debates, new conflicts as well as new equilibriums and new divergent prospects for the transformation.On one side the administration’s policies aimed at the delocalization of the settlements that today occupy the quebrada and are an obstacle to the city expansion’s project, on the other side the citizens wish to maintain their own relationship with the territory. In the first part the study investigates which are the actors, trying to find their necessities and desires. Starting from the analysis of the geographic and urban space to the deep study of the policy, of the role of the quebrada in the city and of the future projects. In the second part we do an analysis of the living expressions in the Quebrada Jaime, pointing out the autonomy of the community, which learnt by itself how to build a new barrio, when it should be done by the State.
The goal of the thesis is to find a compromise, a project that could be developed within administration and quebradeños’ scenarios. A third scenario that will not leave the territory under the estate speculation, that can produce new poverty and segregation. A project that cannot leave the quebrada in the present situation either, a deteriorated, insicure and stigmatized place. Thus a transformation that offers a new image of the territory, that can lead to a debate about its role in the policy and in the urban pattern.
The project follow an incremental process, starting from the emergency situation due to the gran incendio to the definition of a new urban profile that maintains the character of the transformation proposed by the municipality, a park, a street and a metro cable line. The architecture is the result of several considerations about the incremental construction, where the process is defined by a continuous evolution of the house and of the urban space by referring to what is happening today in the quebrada.