The Urban Miracle in the Andes

It is not often that designers get to hear that our field matters. Sometimes, however, you run into a headline like this: How Architecture Transformed a Violent City by Danielle Maestretti on Medellin, Colombia.

In a very short period Medellin went from being one of the most notoriously dangerous cities in Colombia to a worldwide case study on a new type of tactical urbanism. The changes happened mostly under the administration of mayor Sergio Fajardo, who is now running for president of Colombia. BOMB magazine, an arts journal, recently published a conversation between Fajardo and Giancarlo Mazzanti, one of the high-profile architects chosen to design for Medellin's troubled comunas (partial english translation).

Sergio Fajardo, image from BOMB Magazine

During the interview the two men touched on two of the issues central to DSGN AGNC's research. First, Fajardo and Mazzanti discuss how architecture can be a tool of political change, but in order to do so effectively the architect has to become part of the political process listening to and working directly with communities and decision makers. Then Fajardo launches a critique of typical development work, cautioning against viewing anything that is done in a poor neighborhood as an automatic gain.

Continuing his critique, Fajardo argues that poor communities should not receive infrastructural 'crumbs' wrapped around claims of meeting basic needs. In short, these communities deserve the best from the professions that are serving them. In architecture that means, for Fajardo and Mazzanti, to be able to bring high aesthetic values to the comunas. The larger point, I think, is that architects are at their best when they work by closely looking at historical precedent and discourse, even in a context like Medellin. The challenge is finding ways that the constraints and challenges found in the comunas can become opportunities to further design ideas and the profession itself.

More on Medellin:
Lessons from Medellin (fruitful contradictions)
Medellin - Infrastructure as Change (archinect)