Simultaneously a well and a dumpster, GroundTower combines water drawing and waste incineration in small nodes that spread throughout the barrio.At each GroundTower a path or stairway provides a gathering area.As a landmark, GroundTower gives a street an address.The foundation of each tower is an array of compaction piles that by adding material to loose and sedimentary soil stabilises larger areas around them. This intervention works not as a continuous infrastructure but through accumulation. Each tower can be adapted to fit a particular pathway or stair and because of its size and domestic nature, the intervention works as a framework that accepts changes in its use, size and form.
action and necessity – infrastructure and proximity
action and politics – infrastructure and visibility
According to Hannah Arendt, necessity is confined to the private realm, and therefore by definition it is foreign to action. But shared necessities generate action. Arendt’s definition of action is that of a generative force, distinct from labour and work, created directly between people without the mediation of objects. When considered within the context of the barrios, action creates the built environment by means of constant negotiation. Building in the barrio is done out of necessity, but the process is so essential that it cannot be framed inside the infertile nature of labour or the predictable consequences of work. In their shared search for land, shelter and services, people living in barrios have proven that necessity transcends social and political affiliations, and that strong community networks can form around shared needs. If rendered accessible and intimate, infrastructure can fulfil basic needs while cultivating the extraordinary power of action.
For Arendt, not all action is political. Action is only political when it originates in freedom. Politics—in its ideal form—exists in the relationships between people and is derived from plurality, not in the modern sense of representative democracy, but simply from individuals acting together. Plurality, for Arendt, is the ‘equality and distinction’ inherent in people, realised only in public. It is the necessary presence of others that makes politics, and action, essentially public. Shared, visible infrastructure can make action manifest, and consequently, political. Barrios often benefit from the infrastructure of the formal city but reject the official systems that govern it. Barrios’ economic, social and physical networks are never isolated from the predominant culture of the city, yet their placement outside all regulatory systems limits their complete integration with it. Beyond any bureaucratic mechanisms to regularise barrios, infrastructure can legitimise the informal through the provision of legal services. These services can challenge barrios’ precarious condition and their prevailing image as temporary settlements.
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