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110 Imposed rationalities have guided transformations of cities such as Bogotá, producing a lack of coherence among the 'systems implemented' and the 'receivers'. Th e 'postmodern condition' currently being experienced in Bogotá is refl ected, among other ways, by the situation of metropolitan-scaled facilities – while once they existed within 'peripheral' conditions, they are now immersed within complex urban fabrics.
Th ese co-existing 'alternative realities' create a clash of urban structures that provide rich, dynamic and complex situations composed of antagonistic features, such as housing and industry. Th e common response, until now, has been very direct: the removal of 'high impact' structures to the periphery. Th is intervention tries to instead develop disjunctions into diff erences, supporting spontaneously formed relationships in the area.
Th is study tries to deal with such current 'infra-structure' conditions, by confronting traditional types of intervention through the specifi cities presented by the case of Corabastos, the market supplying facility of Bogotá. Th e research poses the initial question of how to update and revitalize this facility and its surroundings.
Corabastos, a wholesale market supply facility, with an area of 40 hectares, consists of a warehouse complex in which the exchange of goods takes place. Th is facility displays metropolitan-scaled characteristics in its shape, size and the infrastructural networks to which it is tied. It lies within a poorly consolidated urban fabric, and this formerly strategic peripheral location is aff ected now by informal urban sprawl.
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Th e market facility is enclosed by a wall that gives it the quality of a medieval citadel. Th e infl uence 111
of the 'interior' on the outside is refl ected in the overlapping of metropolitan-scaled elements onto local character and functions. Corabastos generates a unique 24 hour dynamic – generating fl ows of goods through the night and providing for trading activities during the day. Th ese fl ows promote complementary, and sometimes confl icting uses such as storage, parking, and prostitution.
Th e facility's function provides a regional center off ering connection and identity to the peripheral area in which it lies, but the absorption of the facility into the informal housing structures produces a lack of metropolitan image. Th e site is an 'infra-urban' structure that refers to a local-regional dependency between the facility and its surroundings.
Th ese existing realities provide the triggers with which to deal with the alternative condition of the market and its surroundings. Th is exploration undertakes the task of developing realities waiting to be actualized, and to re-visualize the dynamics and potential of spontaneous changes.
Th e existing scales indicate the basic scheme for the re-vision, consisting of elements representative of each scale: a warehouse, a housing project, and a settlement fragment. Th e infi ltrations concept depends on responses, or the development of potential relationships, between the existing realities channeled through three types of interventions:
Hubs: which refer to the improvement of public spaces that produce the necessary transition between public and controlled space;
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Wall Transitions: understood as transformations of the 'medieval' walled enclosure. Th ese are spaces that respond directly to the existing and future context;
Extensions: these are decentralized elements of the facility – they appear in neighboring surroundings and emerge through local spatial and economic dynamics.
Th e site response to the projects forms simultaneous and unplanned 'tenses' that go from existing conditions, through expansion, contraction, and dispersion, to extension.
To relate the levels of scale, the interventions, and the 'tenses', the design relies on the intensifi cation of existing fl ows and the actualization of others. Th e concentration, overlapping, and types of fl ows determine the location of projects and their capacity. Th e layout of projects applied on site results in a platform that contemplates probable situations: 2 wall transitions, 7 extensions, and 6 hubs are utilized as key factors for research explorations.
Th e derived probable situations result from within the dynamics of the design process, which (as parallel research-design actions) establish priorities and defi ne a set of probabilities. Th ey then select an ideal probability from which to work further. To promote a spontaneous form of growth for the derived situations a corresponding 'acupuncture' form of development was conceived. Its nature is to
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continue dynamics through the actualization of key situations, which in an independent but related manner generate other interventions.
Th e hubs replace the existing gates as places of transition. Th eir eventual role is that of a fi lter between the facility and the surrounding environment, and between today and tomorrow. Each hub has the capacity to merge with the facility enclosure in order to complement processes of expansion and contraction. Th e hubs host uses that vary in range, but are mainly confi gured to serve public purposes. Th ey can behave as independent structures to later supply the existing surroundings with a landmark.
Th e spaces produced by the wall transitions dissolve the radical limit between the facility and its surroundings in a controlled way. Th e wall transforms gradually, from a barrier into a space that contains activity. Th is space relieves pressure on the wall and allows the facility structure to contract through eventual change. Th e interior building structures and exterior spaces combine and permit places of local appropriation.
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Extensions are localized centers of overlapping activities. Th ey allow a reinterpretation of the existing dependencies towards the facility, the way of life, and the typology of the surroundings. Th ey extend complementary market activities into the surroundings with the intention of actualizing local relationships in a spatial way. Th e specifi c location of extensions works off three scaled connective elements, an urban-regional connector, a local main street, and a local back street. Th e urban-regional connector responds to urban-regional infl uences, the local main street is one of transition between the high impact and local back street off ering the community spaces a place to develop a relation to metropolitan functions, and the local back streets consolidate processes for housing.
Th is type of research-design proposal is intended to update places of 'infra-structure', local dependency, and regional infl uence. A re-vision can be applied in environments under pressure – from a specialized electronic shopping center in Seoul to the Sambodromo in Rio de Janeiro – where
resources may be limited, but where change can be linked to the actualizations of already existing virtualities in a natural process of spontaneous change. Th e project rethinks a given structure without its necessary removal and proves how realities not yet actualized may be exploited to produce particular realized localities consolidated within metropolitan and global forces.
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