Team
Anne Duquennois, Luis Macias & Ron Morrison.
Partners:
Parsons School of Design, Corporation Cultural Nuestra Gente & Universidad EAFIT
About the Project:
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Parsons Design and Urban Ecologies class joined was Corporation Cultural Nuestra Gente (CCNG), a local arts organization in the Comuna 2 neighborhood of Medellin, Colombia. My team came together around a common interest of the roles the creeks played in the physical, social and economic dimensions of the neighborhood. After our initial encounter with the neighborhood, CCNG expressed an interest in creating youth programs around the La Rosa creek.
Our study aims to rethink creeks, not only as a ecological feature, but also as an economic, social and cultural body with different types and scales of complexity. Typically, creeks are seen as a natural system that transects the urban fabric where a negotiation between the natural and the built takes place. In Medellin this is particularly true because of their role as natural and social barriers that create systemic precarity. Naturally the land surrounding the creeks in the Aburra valley is unstable due to the monsoon rains and soil conditions. Development adjacent to the creeks occurred organically as people fled the violent rural areas of Columbia for the city. As the urban area expanded, the creeks became natural barriers between neighborhoods and therefore gang territories. Although the incidence of gang violence has recently decreased, the creeks are, to this day, sites of concentrated violence and are perceived negatively by local residents. As a team we considered how a local organization like CCNG can begin to shift this perception from barriers to unifying features and encourage environmental stewardship of the creeks.
We bolstered our background research with a variety of field research methods to better select and understand the sites along La Rosa best suited for initial interventions. With the help of CCNG we:
- Interviewed local community leaders from Sinai, an informal section of Comuna 2 under threat of displacement by the city.
- Led workshops with Sinai youth about their perception of the surrounding water systems using drawing exercises and disposable cameras.
- Surveyed the La Rosa creek using defined methods, sketching and photographing the space.
We created a variety of programmatic and built proposals for CCNG and identified responsible municipal institutions and potential local partner organizations. We also proposed time-lines and rough budget estimates for each proposal in hopes of facilitating the process if CCNG decided to move forward with these proposals.
