PROTOTYPING
REAL-TIME
June - Dec 2023
SECOND STAGE
EXPERIMENT IN-PERSON LAB
IMPLEMENT THE PROJECT
Lab/
Paris
France
Dis_Local's experimental laboratory proposes a space for in-situ reflection. This is when we first meet in a physical setting in Paris, France.
In this period we construct through the applied research exercises that are planned ex-ante. Our module of conceptual courses becomes enlivened through our physical approach to observing tangible live work. Sensitive projects are exposed within fertile communities and territories that integrate solid frameworks for energy efficiency while applying appropriate technologies and tools that are in harmony with the environment.
Developers will share first-hand details concerning the foundation and process for each project while enabling and fostering a prolific exchange between Dislocal's network, hand-in-hand with local communities. Key players, stakeholders from across society, and resident users will exchange their differing perspectives. Debates and dialogue will emerge, organically feeding into our repertoire new concepts, theories, process thinking, and systems that are archived, making the student an author to future urban research.
We will hold a scientific seminar to contrast the group's views, as well as a practical workshop that will involve the evaluation and maturation of the designs emanating from the virtual community, and move forward towards the final project incubation stage.
The final result of the Experimental Laboratory will produce a pedagogical publication and a graphic video documentary of the entire process recorded during a fifteen-day educational trip.
Caracas Project /
Venezuela - El Calvario
Drawings and scale models are fantastic exploratory instruments that expose representations, oftentimes immersing students in visual and conceptual ideas that test their skills as project designers.
However, this sort of elucubration for a "project mirage" has separated knowledge from reality, while living in the city passes.
Yet Dis_Local acknowledges that all the human talent and technical tools must somehow find utility in being a service to society and enmeshed in the territorial, cultural, environmental, and economic problems for all physical spaces at a global scale, but especially for the work in the peripheral cities of the emerging world.
That is why the challenge of Dis_Local consists in applying knowledge at full force while enacting real concrete yet changing actions that may have a tangible effect on the communities they wish to serve.
During the nine months that involve the final stage of the program, we will develop a real construction project in a Barrio [favela] from Caracas - Venezuela. Dislocal will execute, together with our students, instructors, local community, civil society organizations, and government entities, Development Cooperation funds, previously allocated by our partners. The process forms on the embodiment of social empowerment offered when physical and built works give communities hope, which translates into improved development outcomes (education, employment, self-esteem, and psycho-social effects). Dis_Local implements versatile structures in well-formed bonds within community spaces, using local materials and technologies, resource efficiency, low carbon emissions, and scalable, intelligible processes, which have previously been conceived at the prototyping stage (stage 1) from the virtual community.
Students will have the opportunity to settle for a part-time or for the entire time of the project implementation, to lead each of the stages that involve the initial management of the work, as well as involve themselves as architectural entrepreneurs within the start-up, execution, and integral activation of our university, network, publisher. We build economic, anthropologically, self-sufficient, and ecologically minded tech-savvy architecture.
OUR
METHOD
Stage 1
We think, ruminate, offer ourselves a chance to discovery our limits.
This stage is conceptual, theoretical and virtual.
Weekly desk crits, climate change knowledge enmeshed into the choices we make for project designs and systems approaches.
Stage 2
Conceptualize in the field.
Year 1 we go to Costa Rica to learn net zero engineering and architectural references from firms across the globe.
We meet in-person and work out conceptual ideas, final critiques on projects in-person.
We create a community, mold into a network, and pivot into a profession.
We build capacity for the technical development of skills needed to build the city of the future.
Stage 3
We construct our project together. We get our sleeves up, and build. We build in Caracas, Venezuela. We test our limits on analyzing socio-economic and political obstacles. We learn to manage them within the built prospect of our projects.
Year 2: Mexico - we learn about how sustainable policy developed from MDBs into country national plans that offer a stream way to development pathways.
Year 3: Uruguay: We test our ideas in fertile ground.
We archive our experience and write our book and offer our movie in small documentary pieces of 13 minutes. We play.