ARCHITECTURAL ZOMBIES (long exercise)

UCJC Arquitectura 2012-2013

Asignatura: Unidad V&F PROYECTOS ARQUITECTÓNICOS

Profesores: Diego Fullaondo Buigas de Dalmau

            Joaquín López Vaamonde

“Reloading m³”

Long EXERCISE:

Reviving strategy for an Architectural-Zombie (Seseña/Castellón/Aviles)

ZOMBIE is defined as a corpse said to be revived by witchcraft. In a more informal way, a zombie is also a person who is or appears lifeless, apathetic, or completely unresponsive to their surroundings. In this sense, we call ARCHITECTURAL-ZOMBIES all those built-corpses that appear lifeless, apathetic and unresponsive its surroundings; all those constructions, built infrastructures and urban spaces that do not contain life, activity, use and people as they were supposed to do.

It is absolutely normal that a particular built-environment becomes obsolete, normally after a long and healthy life. Due to the most various reasons, from natural disasters to activity disappearance or even simple erosion produced by time passing, human built-environment has always had an expiration date. When that time arrived, witch-architects have had the capacity to decide whether to revive these built corpses, recovering and/or transforming some/all of their basic characteristics; or, otherwise, abandon them to their zombie like life, which ends with what is colloquially known as a ruin. There are many types of architecture-spells to achieve these revivals: reconfiguration, restoration, use or activity change, reconstruction, programmatic redefinition, etc… Normally it is necessary use a smart combination of all these type of spells to complete a successful operation: that is, to revive the architectural-zombie and transform it into a new life full built environment. Of course, it will have a new expiration date...

What is most surprising and characteristic about architecture built along last decades, especially in Spain, is that a large part of it has become a zombie, immediately after its completion. It almost seems as if architects had designed a zombie instead of a building from the beginning. For whatever reason, some of them might be achieved to architects designs and others might respond to other causes, we have now a great amount of just born architectural zombies that have never contained nearly any activity at all.

Unit V&F proposes to study these phenomena of ARCHITECTURAL-ZOMBIES. We have divided our research in two separate parts:

-        First one (Phase 1) will be dedicated to precisely define a concept we’ve: ZOMBIE-FICATION RATE of a particular built environment. This means to establish which parameters are to be studied to determinate it’s proximity to a zombie like state. Students will be asked to analyze a particular site (Seseña, Castellón or Avilés) from this point of view: detect measurable and objective parameters which define it’s actual state, and extract a strong conclusion that clearly establishes the zombie percentage of it’s material configuration nowadays. The basic aim of this part of the exercise is to locate, develop and generalize a universal methodology of analysis able to determine the rate of danger of zombie-fication of built environments.

-        Second one (Phase 2) will be the proposal of different strategies to reverse this zombie-fication process: strategies to revive ARCHITECTURAL ZOMBIES. Taking the previous analysis as a starting point, each student will have to develop a strategy to stop and reverse the degenerative process his/her selected site is suffering. The basic aim of this part of our research is to elaborate a catalog of Architectural Strategies to Recover Zombie-like built environments.

To achieve all these goals, Unit V&F will study some case study situations which have already occurred and can be understood under this new point of view. Perhaps the most recent and paradigmatic one is the way twentieth century cities have been able to reabsorb and revive industrial infrastructures belonging to nineteenth century necessities that were no longer demanded. Industrial buildings, infrastructures and even complete urban developments, have reconfigured it’s presence within cities, in different degrees, allowing life and activity to continue inside them. We feel that this process, successfully achieved in many cases for industrial sites along past decades, will be necessary in the future for a huge amount of other urban environments. And architects have the opportunity to invent, develop, lead and manage these urgent changes. Instead of absurdly building more and more of all those architectural zombies that don´t even have the opportunity to live a single second of their lifes: they are surprisingly designed as zombies from the beginning. But explaining that might be a different matter…

Presentation Format:

PHASE 1: ZOMBIE-FICATION RATE

-        DIAGNOSIS of selected built environment selected. Set of maps and analysis done on the site: general definition of analytical methodology; selection of studied relevant parameters; measurement of presence or absence of relevant parameters in different areas of selected site; conclusions: Zombie-fication Rate.

   Scales: left up to student’s choice.

Format: Spiral-bound book DIN A-3, including maps, methodology and results of all research.

-        3D PHYSHICAL MAP (MODEL+MAP), showing results of analytical methodology and conclusions, over physical appearance of the selected built environment.

      Scale: left up to student’s choice.

-        CONCLUSION PRESENTATION: 3 minute .PPT conclusion presentation in front of the whole Unit, clearly and briefly stating generalized methodology used for the analysis and particular results of studied site.

PHASE 2: UN-ZOMBIE-FICATION STRATEGY

-        CONCEPT PANEL: DIN A-1 panel, showing links between zombie- fication’s rate and conclusions, and proposed actions to achieve it’s reversal

   Scale: Left up to student’s choice

   Format: Left up to student’s choice. We suggest collage, diagrams, sketches, etc…

-        LARGE SCALE STRATEGY: Urban and large scale re-configuration of the site.

   Scales: Left up to student’s choice.

      Format: Left up to student’s choice. Minimum compulsory documentation: MODEL, PLANS, ELEVATION and GLOBAL IMAGE of final general state. We also suggest, catalogue of actions, intermediates status, means, programmatic implantation, etc…

-        SMALL SCALE STRAGEGY: Technological development of a selected example of small scale actions and consequences in built infrastructure.

      Scale: Left up to student’s choice

Format: Left up to student’s choice. Minimum compulsory documentation: MODEL, PLANS, ELEVATIONS, CONSTRUCTIVE AXONOMETRIC and GLOBAL IMAGE of modified appearance of selected example. We also suggest, catalogue of actions, intermediates status, means, programmatic implantation, etc…

-        PROPOSAL FINAL PRESENTATION: 5 minute .PPT presentation of each global strategy in front of the whole Unit.

Schedule:

-        Monday 17 September: Semester Presentation.

-        Thursday 20 September: Three Sites Students Presentation

-        Monday 15 October: Architectural Zombies Presentation

-        Monday 5 November: End of Phase 1, Zombiefication Rate

-        Thursday 17 January: End of Phase 2, Un-Zombiefication Strategy

As there exercise is very long, it is likely the Unit establishes some Partial Presentations of some of the documents asked to be developed in both phases. Students will be advised to attend all those partial presentations, so they can finally succeed in final ones.

Assessment Criteria:

The following aspects of student’s proposals in both phases will be assessed:

-        Rigor and precision through out all proposal’s development.

-        Proposal’s creativity and innovation.

-        Proposal’s adaptability to different situations.

-        Technological viability and development.

-        Comunication and graphic general quality of proposal’s presentation.