While architectural discourse has been preoccupied with varied strains of postmodern and poststructuralist theory, approximately 75 percent of development in - for example - the U.S. over the last thirty years has occurred in the ever-expanding urban-suburban peripheries that Americans call "Urban Sprawl".
While "Bigness" (according to Rem Koolhaas) invites us to perceive these landscapes in terms of dynamic fluidity, change – and freedom; new urbanists emerged with a highly critical position towards the social and environmental consequences of sprawl and have promoted a return to more traditional, compact, town-planning strategies intended to slow down people (and cars), connect to existing conditions and emphasize enduring building types and place-based characteristics.
Central America has one of the highest urbanization growth rates in the world and a large portion of this urbanization process is happening in a seemingly autonomous way creating its own laws and logics. How could small scale projects render the city in a more comprehensible way and how could micro organized activities help organizing the urban carpet? How do you define a place in an informal urban environment that is fragmented through both natural and human intervention?
Small scale projects in a small scale economy are being proposed and contextualized; different historic city development models are being evaluated. The idea of "smallness" is looked upon from different angles, domains and disciplines like micro financing and product design. It is compared to other parts of the world that provide different economic possibilities and scale. What is small in relationship to its environment? How could spontaneous city development and the informal city be supported through urban acupuncture?
Different projects are proposed, such as the Amon Collective, the Parque Metropolitana La Libertad or the Los Hatillos redevelopment in San Jose, Costa Rica.
Credit
The research program is developed together with Lineas / Luis Diego Barahona; a work group with the goal to apply the outcome of the research was founded with Costa Rican architects Jaime Rouillon, Victor Canas and Rolando Barahona Sotela.
San Jose, Costa Rica, 2006 – ongoing.