Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brown University, 2005. / Vita. Thesis advisor: Julio Ortega. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 158-181). Also available online.

Texte remanié de: Doct. diss.--Harvard university, 1930. / Bibliogr. p. 325-346. Index.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Not available / text

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

Striving for subsistence, the growing population of Caracas has radically transformed the city in the course of the past fifty years. The inability of the city to respond to the accelerated growth that resulted from mass rural migrations left millions to provide land, shelter and basic services for themselves. The barrios, once thought to be a provisional solution to the housing shortage, are now home to more than half the population of the city. The urban poor now live—out of necessity and through improvisation—on steep slopes, unstable soil and in flood plains. Overcrowded and remote, this very dense urban fabric receives sporadic or no basic services. Without land titles or addresses, and until recently omitted from most census data and official maps, the barrio’s population is excluded from the civic life of Caracas. Sitting between remediation and anticipation, three asynchronous projects elaborate pragmatic responses to the prevailing scarcity of resources while concurrently attempting to reduce the current cycle of poverty, violence and exclusion. In their ability to be informally adapted, the schemes test the capacity of popular manifestations of civic life to transform basic infrastructure into collective space. To overcome the precariousness that characterizes the barrios and incorporate them into the existing political mechanisms of the city, the projects are conceived as incremental frameworks that contribute to the physical integration of the ‘informal’ barrios to the ‘formal’ city. Working with water and waste infrastructure, I argue through these projects that architecture can build on the universal nature of necessity to frame a model of civic space­ generated out of the complexity of the barrios and on the auspice of promises.

La Plaza Cubierta, obra del arquitecto venezolano Carlos Raúl Villanueva, es el espacio que articula los edificios de Biblioteca, Rectorado y Aula Magna de la Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas. Alberga una particular propuesta de interacción entre diferentes expresiones artísticas que, junto a la desconcertante ausencia de discurso por parte del proyectista, ha llevado a su adscripción a la poética general de la Síntesis de las Artes, pretendiendo comprender así la obra sin desglosar la riqueza de sus matices. El conjunto que surgió indirectamente de las torsiones experimentadas por el proyecto durante su concepción, se inscribe en el campo de clausuras e indeterminaciones en el que se estructuraron las construcciones del arte de vanguardia. No obstante, su vivencia trasciende las trasmisiones unívocas, herederas del programa romántico y latentes aún en las manifestaciones de comienzos del siglo XX, por una difusa definición como plaza, por la condición de cubierta, por su paradójica designación, así como por la presencia de una arquitectura que propicia inusitadas conexiones mediante la dramatización de las emociones plásticas desde la desnudez de sus componentes. La riqueza de significados emanada de los juegos de luces y sombras que se suceden y de la dilatada confrontación de sus sistemas espaciales sugieren un espectro infinito de interpretaciones que apelan al substrato de indeterminación propio del arte mas actual. Estas características constituyen una vertiente del arte de la segunda mitad del siglo XX que, eludiendo la luz, elogió el umbral y habitó los resquicios y pliegues de una obra abierta. Armar la topología que urde el observador al experimentar la construcción espacial generada por Villanueva y descubrir los fundamentos constitutivos de su poética particular a partir de los documentos no textuales que estuvieron presentes en su concepción, es la ambiciosa proposición de esta Tesis. La metodología asumida parte de cuestionar la operatividad del programa contenido en los planteamientos estéticos de la Síntesis de las Artes, desarrollados en torno a una difusa teoría de la Obra Total (Gesamtkunstwerk), para abordar un ejercicio de acondicionamiento de la mirada. Desde este intento por saber ver, como lo definiera Berger, se rearma el discurso espacial del arte de vanguardia elaborado por aquellos autores que asumieron la diseminación y la percepción dilatada subyacente en las múltiples derivaciones de la interpretación. El análisis fenomenológico de La Plaza Cubierta surge de cotejar las consideraciones dimanadas de este enfoque con el desglose de los factores y elementos que la estructuran. Este método evidencia que el objeto concebido por Villanueva no busca entregarse en un contexto ya dispuesto para el consumo, sino presentarse como un lugar de conexiones en el que la obra emerge de la participación del intérprete, quien en sus desplazamientos completa su armazón. Se descubrirá entonces que los esquemas de los flujos establecidos por el arquitecto constituyen la base operativa de esta obra. El carácter plástico que Villanueva imprimió al dibujo de los Movimientos, como el propio autor los llama, reconoce los límites de los sistemas de representación de la Arquitectura, al mismo tiempo que expande los márgenes de expresividad del hecho espacial. Esos trazos sinuosos que celebran el devenir y desestiman la entidad del contenedor, ensamblan un auténtico Manifiesto gráfico y esbozan la poética suspendida de un proyecto transtextual entre distintos soportes expresivos. Una topología construida a partir de una arquitectura liminar que apeló a lo más esencial de su gramática. / The Plaza Cubierta, a masterpiece of the Venezuelan architect Carlos Raul Villanueva is the space in which the main buildings of the University City of Caracas are articulated: the Library, the Rectorate, and the Aula Magna. It houses a particular proposal of interaction among different artistic expressions and along the disconcerting absence of discourse from the architect. It has been attributed to the general poetics of the Synthesis of the Arts, by trying to understand in this way the work without detaching the richness of its shade.The space, emerged indirectly from the torsion experimented in the project during its conception, is registered in the field of closures and indeterminations in which are conceived the proposals of the Avant Garde. However, its experience transcends the univocal transmissions, heiress of the romantic program which even were latency in the plastic manifestations of the beginnings of the XXth. Century, due to a diffuse definition as square, the condition of being covered, its paradoxical designation and also for the presence of an architecture which supports unusual connections through the dramatization of the plastic emotions from the bareness of its components.The richness in meanings that emanates from the games of lights and shadows, which follow one another, and the extended confrontation of its spatial systems suggest an Infinite spectrum of interpretations that appeals to the indetermination substrate that is characteristic of the up to date art. These particularities constitute a trend in the art of the second half of the XX century that, by avoiding light, praises the threshold and inhabited the corners and folds of an Open piece of work. The ambitious purpose of this thesis is to decipher the topology articulated by the observant when experimenting the spatial construction generated by Villanueva and to discover the constituent foundation of its particular poetics beginning with non-textual documents, which were present in his conception.The methodology used starts by questioning the capacity to operate of the program restrained in the aesthetics statements of the Synthesis of the Arts (developed around a diffuse theory of the Gesamtkunstwerk) to approach an exercise of conditioning of the vision. From this intention of knowing how to look, as its defined by Berger, it is rebuild the spatial discourse of the Avant Garde given by those authors who assumed the dissemination with the underlying extended perception in the multiple derivations of the interpretation.The phenomenological analysis of the Plaza Cubierta comes from comparing the consideration arisen from this approach with the separation of the factors and elements, which organize it. This method makes evident that the object conceived by Villanueva does not look to fit in a context already prepared for the consumption, but to present itself as a place of connections in where the work emerges from the participation of the observer who, through his movements, completes the Frame. It will be discovered that the flow diagrams established by the architect constitute the operative base of this work. The plastic character that Villanueva imprinted to the movements drawing, "Movimientos" as he calls it, acknowledges the limits in the system of representation in architecture and, at the same time, expands the margins of expressiveness of the spatial fact.These sinuous traces, which celebrate the becoming and disesteem the entity of the spatial container, assemble an authentic graphic manifestation and outlines the poetics suspended of a trans-textual project among different expressive supports. A topology built beginning with a borderline architecture that appealed to the most essential of its grammar.

<p>This dissertation, Inhabiting the City: Citizenship and Democracy in Caracas, asks how multiple modalities of citizenship arise in order to facilitate working-class and middle-class strategies to negotiate formal and informal structures of rights and obligations among individuals, local communities, and the nation-state. By examining mobile and locally fixed practices in multiple sites of Caracas, Venezuela, this work explores the ways that individuals assert claims to political and social rights that are bound to particular spaces of the city. </p> <p>Based on a year of ethnographic fieldwork in one middle-class and two working class communities, this dissertation explores the discursive formation of citizenships that are based on divergent conceptions of democracy. Although the notions of this mode of political organization are based on understandings of equality in the capital's working-class communities, many middle-class ideas are quite different. In more affluent communities, democratic ideals grounded in equality do not take into account popular notions of meritocracy that reinforce class hierarchy. Although many individuals in Caracas work to produce democratic spaces throughout the city, exclusions persist--and some go largely unnoticed. </p> <p>Finally, I argue that the modes of belonging that many residents employ to negotiate spaces of citizenship vary according to factors such as race, class, gender, age, and geographic location. By analyzing citizenship in a city space that is as divided as Caracas--especially along class lines--I argue that studies of citizenship require attention to cultural transformations that are tied to social, geographic, and political relationships in local spaces. To conceive of the citizen as an individual with ties to the nation-state is too broad a scope to begin understanding the nuances of social and political belonging that ensure active participation within contemporary societies.</p> / Dissertation

Striving for subsistence, the growing population of Caracas has radically transformed the city in the course of the past fifty years. The inability of the city to respond to the accelerated growth that resulted from mass rural migrations left millions to provide land, shelter and basic services for themselves. The barrios, once thought to be a provisional solution to the housing shortage, are now home to more than half the population of the city. The urban poor now live—out of necessity and through improvisation—on steep slopes, unstable soil and in flood plains. Overcrowded and remote, this very dense urban fabric receives sporadic or no basic services. Without land titles or addresses, and until recently omitted from most census data and official maps, the barrio’s population is excluded from the civic life of Caracas. Sitting between remediation and anticipation, three asynchronous projects elaborate pragmatic responses to the prevailing scarcity of resources while concurrently attempting to reduce the current cycle of poverty, violence and exclusion. In their ability to be informally adapted, the schemes test the capacity of popular manifestations of civic life to transform basic infrastructure into collective space. To overcome the precariousness that characterizes the barrios and incorporate them into the existing political mechanisms of the city, the projects are conceived as incremental frameworks that contribute to the physical integration of the ‘informal’ barrios to the ‘formal’ city. Working with water and waste infrastructure, I argue through these projects that architecture can build on the universal nature of necessity to frame a model of civic space­ generated out of the complexity of the barrios and on the auspice of promises.

Texte remanié de: Tesis doct.--Historia--Universidad de Barcelona, 1985.