South America Project Symposium and Network Launch at GSD [Videos]

Photo by: Paola Aguirre

“The South America Project (SAP): Hinterland Urbanisms” symposium took place at Harvard’s GSD on October 7th and 8th. The event marked the launch of an applied research and design network that examines the space of design within recent resource Extraction and continental Integration policies in South America.

Directed and curated by Felipe Correa, Assistant Professor of Urban Design at Harvard University and co-founder of Somatic Collaborative, along with Ana Maria Durán Calisto (Loeb Fellow ’11 and co-founder of Estudio A0), the symposium framed the Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America (IIRSA) as a point of departure for an ample discussion regarding the diverse models of urbanism that emerge at the intersection of resource extraction and continental integration (primarily through mobility corridors). The symposium brought together a large number if architects, landscape architects, urbanists and urban historians in order to instigate a discussion regarding these nascent spaces of urbanization, with the objective to shed light on alternative physical, operative and experiential identities for the South American hinterland and search for models of urbanization that go beyond purely utilitarian resource extraction and the deployment of mono-functional infrastructure.

Photo by: Justin Knight

The symposium also marked the launch of the SAP research network; a two-year trans-national platform that through specific case studies and project proposals will examine how a spatial synthesis best afforded by design can provide alternative physical and experiential parameters to the current spatial transformations reshaping the South American Hinterland.


Below are links to the Symposium and Network Launch Videos:

Introduction by Felipe Correa and Panel 1: Hinterland. South American landscapes beyond national borders
Graciela Silvestri, Otavio Leonidio, Graciela Schneier.
Moderated by Jorge Silvetti

Keynote Presentation: Landscapes by Design / Landscapes by Default
Rodrigo Perez de Arce

Panel 2: Extraction. Resource extraction processes, their affiliated territorial networks, and the diverse models of urbanization these processes have engendered
Eugenio Garcés, Martín Cobas, Angelo Bucci & Alexander Delijaicov.
Moderated by Anita Berrizbeitia

Panel 3: Connectivity. Past, present and future scenarios of transcontinental mobility infrastructure and their effect on patterns of urbanization
Marcelo Danza, Gabriel Duarte, Santiago del Hierro.
Moderated by Michael Hooper

Panel 4: Projection. How the agency of design can better engage the national and international bureaucracies that direct these initiatives beyond the purely anecdotal and piecemeal structure permeating such vast undertakings
Camilo Restrepo, Solano Benítez, Luis Callejas & Mason White
Moderated by Eve Blau

Round Table Discussion
Marcelo Danza, Flavio Janches, Otavio Leonidio, Felipe Mesa, Rodrigo Pérez de Arce & Graciela Silvestri
Moderated by Ana María Durán Calisto

Closing Remarks
Rahul Mehrotra

We will soon update the blog with research topics and schedules by SAP members.