etc. The building has nine floors and only one elevator. We made a spiral staircase and everyone uses it to move around, walking up and down. It was made by a shipyard on the Magdalena River, in the Caribbean. The building has a constructed central part and outwardly it is prac- tically an infinite space. It does not have a concentrated facade, you can walk in it between elements of shade and protection from the rain. It is called Fábrica de Cultura de Barranquilla, it has seven thousand square meters, and it is a carnival school. It is another testimony of how our observations have become architectural spaces that contribute to the trends and trajectories we are identifying. EDUCATION FIRST, THEN PRODUCTION Sebastián Rozas R This is interesting for AOA, it is another way of pro- ducing and consuming land. Now, we could address the projects that Pablo has been developing in Chile, with biogas and garbage treatment. It can be a very concrete example to understand the vision that Hubert has been mentioning. Pablo Levine R The project in Chile started in 2022 with an invitation from the then-mayor of Santiago to support the new waste removal model of the municipality with an academic platform from Universidad ETH and Univer- sidad de Chile. We did a study in the Franklin-Sierra Bella neighborhood, with students from both universities, and the idea was to think about how a neighborhood would function circularly. We realized that around 58% of the waste in Santiago is organic and that's when we came up with the idea of regeneration, but through energy production, because vermiculture is not sufficient enough for the volumes involved. The key is to transform this waste into biogas, a technology that already exists in Chile in the agri-food industry. How can this be done, with the community's participation on a neighborhood scale? There have to be direct and attractive incentives to encourage people to recycle and separate their waste, to form a new habit. Like when in the 1980s there were campaigns to use seat belts in vehicles or wash lettuce to avoid cholera..., both of which we do automatically today. We are working on it and we are starting to create a prototype, a biodigester educational pavillion in collaboration with the Chilean gt2P office and academics from the chemistry department of the FCFM for the neighbors to participate in recycling. We have to educate first and then produce. Based on education, we came up with the idea of making pavilions where people could have the empirical experience that garbage is transformed into energy. In addition, in the process, natural fertilizers are produced in quantities to help transform brown areas into green ones. The gas is stored in inflatables, there would be community kitchens or it can even be used for lighting public spaces. Thus, after the last Architecture Biennial in Santiago, where we present- ed this together with the mayors, we started to work with the municipality of La Pintana, which is in the lead in terms of the organic issue, and we also want to show it in Puerto Varas, because it wasn't registered in the community of Santiago. Only, this time, we are looking for a real production of energy through biogas obtained from the bio-digestion of household organic waste. They are prototypes of a larger scale where through prefabricated and independent units, a mayor can start a biogas plant and make it grow over time as the habit (of recycling) of the community changes. For example, a unit with ten biodigesters with the capacity to process six tons each would produce the energy of 78 houses for a year, equivalent to a 100mt2 solar plant. That is a reduction of 68% of GHG emissions, but it also creates a tremendous impact for the community because the system in Chile does not allow you to return that energy to the grid, we must think of consuming it in that same place, so we call them “social infrastructure, from waste to energy” because we imagine a series of new types of self-energized buildings open to the community. Self-regenerating cores.
showed interest in participating in this project. Basically, it is to activate a public space using the capacity and interest of the community to create plazas that provide an educational approach to the use of waste and its relationship with energy. José Rosas R What I find most empowering is to present to an audience of top-level offices other ways of understanding projects and the role of the architect. Hubert and Pablo are giving hope to young architects. One can even be happy that the projects of architecture are unfinished, that maybe they are not so beautiful, but they contribute to the city, to society, and to the people who dance in the carnival. This is like resuming one of the most beautiful points of the Modern Movement, which today it is corny to say: we want people to be happy. Pablo Levine R One can speak of a positive vision of the future in the face of so much crisis. In Europe, the natural response of students to the environmental crises is not to do anything, not to intervene. There is a paralysis, a kind of self-flagellation, a fear that, in the end, perhaps plays on a certain bad reputation of architects, the idea that our intervention in cities is more damaging than beneficial. Hubert Klumpner R Our urban planning course has more than 350 students enrolled; and in our design workshops, where there are nor- mally 18 students, today we have 37. We are forming a new generation of architects; although not all of them stay in that model. Many enter the digital world, to other areas where the talent and the architectural argument are equipped with the ability to act. We are going into other areas of practice as well, but always with one foot in the project of building architecture. Architectural education and architectural thinking today have a big impact on all issues. I think a lot is going on and we're going to see it manifesting, settling, right now. This is the narrative of architecture. ! Hubert Klumpner An architect and co-founder of the interdisciplinary design practice, U-TT. As Design Prin- cipal and CEO of Zurich based Urbanthinktank_next, he is counted among the originators of the turn to socio-environmental design. Klumpner is full Professor at the Swiss Institute of Technology in Zurich, ETHZ, where he holds the Chair of Architecture and Urban Design, directs the Center for Housing (Wohnforum), and the Network City Landscape (NSL), and serves as the UN-Habitat University Hub for Informal Housing. Klumpner received, as partner in U-TT, numerous awards including the Golden Lion of the International Architecture Biennale Venice, the Golden Holcim Award, the Chicago Museum of Architecture and Design Award, Cury Stone Award, Ralph Erskine Award of the Royal Swedish Academy of Architects, and Rudolph Schindler Award. Pablo Levine Graduated in Architecture from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. He completed a “Master's in Urban Design” at ETH, and since 2019, he has been part of the research team under the chair of Professor Klumpner. He is a coordinator for the urban transformation project in Colombia and a collaborator for the urban transformation project in Sarajevo. In 2021, he won the research partnership funds from the Latin American Institute of the Uni. St Gallen. “Social infrastructures, from waste to energy”, has been presented at the biennial of Chile 2023 and several 'STEM' sessions at universities in Switzerland.
Sebastián Rozas R The biodigester plazas occupy places where Metro stations were not built, and the neighborhood association of Yungay
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