Vertical Gymnasium

Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner are two key members in the Caracas Urban Think Tank. They work primarily through field research in the informal settlements of Caracas. The Vertical Gymnasium is a project that was developed for the Municipality of Chacao in Caracas. In the film, Caracas: The Informal City, Leopoldo Lopez, the mayor of the Municipality of Chacao says: "Why do I make the link between sports facilities and security? Because the main population that is being affected by crime, is this population (pointing to children playing soccer in the Vertical Gymansium).... This building is a way of bringing the city together, of bringing the barrio, connected with the city, through sports facilities."

See the Vertical Gymnasium project on the Urban Think Tank web site.

The Vertical Gymnasium will be one of the case study projects in my thesis. My thesis however, adds an extra layer to the sports facility and makes it a proper club. The idea of the club organization is to become a powerful communal tool, where club members (presumably composed mostly of residents of the informal neighbourhood) are provided with a form of representation in the arena of urban life. In addition, the club's installment in the existing network of clubs around the city provides its members with a new frame for networking, opening up new roads of communication between different sectors of the city that would have otherwise been difficult to realize.

(image: snapshot of the Vertical Gymnasium as shown in the film 'Caracas: The Informal City')

Table of contents outline

1.0 INTRODUCTION

1.1 SQUATTERS: A GLOBAL URBAN PHENOMENON (2-3 PAGES)
This section will introduce the third world metropolis, using excerpts from the UN-HABITAT The Challenge of Slums, Mike Davis’ Planet of Slums, and Hernando De Soto’s Mystery of Capital. The section will emphasize the importance of squatters to informal and formal economies, real estate patterns, urban development, etc. It will also describe past relocation efforts and policies specifically directed at discouraging the formation of informal communities. The prevailing question will be: Why should we consider the informal population as an integral part of the city?

1.2 NINE CONSIDERATIONS OF INFORMALITY (2 PAGES)
This section will acknowledge and outline the nine major considerations of informal urban life:
(1) security of land tenure – consequently shelter
(2) waste water/solid waste management
(3) food/urban agriculture
(4) fresh water provisions
(5) personal security
(6) physical/mental health
(7) roads and addresses (emergency services)
(8) transit
(9) systems of exchange (markets)/information exchange (schools)
Which aspect will my thesis focus on and why?

1.3 THE SLUMS OF BUENOS AIRES (3-4 PAGES)
This section will introduce Buenos Aires as the major case study site. It will speak about the formation of slums in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area, how they have been treated over the years, the post-2001 situation, and existing bottom-up and top-down initiatives to create jobs and improve living standards (including existing newspapers/magazines and market/feria opportunities).

1.4 UNITY THROUGH SPORT (3 PAGES)
This section will introduce the idea of sport as unifier. It will emphasize the importance of soccer in Argentinean society, and will speak of the power of sport, including examples where sport has been a vehicle for strengthening or weakening the relationship between societies (Olympic games, Invictus, France-Ireland, Red Star Belgrade’s involvement in the Balkan Wars…).

1.5 LEARNING FROM LAS VILLAS (2-3 PAGES)
This section will speak about the research methods used later in the thesis; the two case studies and third chapter based on field work. It will include stories collected from newspapers/online sources and will serve as a segue into the remaining research component of the thesis.

TOTAL: 12-15 PAGES


2.0 CASE STUDY CARACAS

2.1 THE URBAN LANDSCAPE (2-3 PAGES)
As an introduction to the case study analyses that comprise half of the research component of the thesis, this section will include a general overview of the case study site in question. The overview will include a brief history of the urban area, a demographic picture, an economic picture, and any other extenuating circumstances that are pertinent to the study in question.

2.2 PROJECT ANALYSIS (3-4 PAGES EACH)
The project analysis section will be the case study itself. The case study projects may be architectural or policy-based, but must portray real urban consequences that may be applicable to the final design component of the thesis. Each case study chapter will contain about 3 or 4 case study projects. TOTAL 9-12 PAGES.

2.3 DESIGN GUIDELINE SUMMARY (2 PAGES)
This section will summarize the lessons learned from each case study project. It will create a set of guidelines to be later used in the final design component of the thesis.

TOTAL: 13-17 PAGES


3.0 CASE STUDY RIO DE JANEIRO

3.1 THE URBAN LANDSCAPE (2-3 PAGES)
See above.

3.2 PROJECT ANALYSIS (3-4 PAGES EACH)
See above.

3.3 DESIGN GUIDELINE SUMMARY (2 PAGES)
See above.

TOTAL: 13-17 PAGES


4.0 CASE STUDY BUENOS AIRES

4.1 THE URBAN LANDSCAPE (4 PAGES)
This section will speak about my own field work conducted in Buenos Aires. It will expand on the introductory chapter The Slums of Buenos Aires, going into describing my personal experiences in the city, focusing on the visibility of informal activities in everyday life.

4.2 THE FOOTBALL CLUB AS CATALYST (6-7 PAGES)
This section will thoroughly explain the idea behind the football club as incubator for social change, in the context of Argentinean society. A series of design principles will emerge, both of the physical club and of its administrative/social organization. The emerging design principles will also reflect the design guidelines established through the two case study chapters.

4.3 DESIGN GUIDELINE SUMMARY (2 PAGES)
This section will work towards an overall design principle, on which the final design component will be based.

TOTAL: 12-13 PAGES


5.0 FORMAT – CONTENT – DISTRIBUTION

5.1 FORMAT (2-3 PAGES)
This section will explain the format that will be used for the final design component. It will not be composed of traditional architectural drawings, but rather a set of short graphic stories. This format will allow for the widespread and quick dissemination of information to a wide audience; primarily comprised of the inhabitants of informal communities in Buenos Aires.

5.2 CONTENT (10 PAGES)
This section will contain the content that will be used to produce the final design component, and will explain the process by which the content came about, making use of the design guidelines from chapters two to four.

5.3 DISTRIBUTION (2 PAGES)
This section will describe the distribution methods that will be used to broadcast the design idea. It will speak about the importance and potential of current media outlets and how they can be used in conjunction with web sites to distribute design ideas to a wide audience.

TOTAL: 14-15 PAGES


6.0 FINAL DESIGN COMPONENT

6.1 GRAPHIC MINI-BOOKS
This section will contain the final design in its ready-to-distribute state.

New Abstract

This thesis focuses on the global phenomenon of informal urban settlements set to define the urban landscape of the 21st century. Through the design of a football club as a catalyst for social change, it attempts to create cohesion between two seemingly distinct, yet increasingly intertwined, social classes; the inhabitants of the informal, and those of the more traditional formal city.

The massive influx of migrants to cities over the last century has placed tremendous strain on all levels of urban development. Nowhere has the vast urban migration been felt more than in the cities of developing nations, where administrations have simply been unable to keep up with the demands of new populations. Arriving in search of new opportunities, the new urbanites are often met with extremely difficult circumstances, preventing them from obtaining any kind of suitable housing. Informal urban and peri-urban development has become a common sight in nearly every third world city. Impoverished areas are formed throughout the urban realm, met with great resentment by members of the ‘formal city’. Consequently, social inequality has become the norm.

Through a series of case studies, together with field work conducted in Buenos Aires in the fall of 2009, the thesis argues for the power of sport as a unifier. The final design project takes the form of a football club, located on a fictional site based on Villa 31 in central Buenos Aires. Case studies on ‘social infrastructure’ projects in Caracas and Rio de Janeiro provide a series of design guidelines, both for the physical space and organizational aspects of the football club. The final design, based on the guidelines produced through case studies and field research, is presented as a series of short graphic stories, each describing a separate aspect of the architectural intervention while simultaneously adding an element of time to the traditional drawn representation of an architectural project. The short graphic stories are formatted to be published widely and distributed easily through existing media outlets. Conceived of as just one example of many, the football club project will itself become an incubator for the growth of ideas concerning the future urban sphere.