Strategic Architecture: Appropriation and mediation processes for social infrastructures: Torre David and Casa Familiar cases

Abstract

The history of modern urban planning has revealed consequences of segregation, inequality, destr uction of the public realm, social exclusion and which have drawn new urban borders and have fostered the proliferation of so -called “fourth worlds”, especially in Latin America. These informal settlements that coexist spatially with the first worlds of de veloping countries apply increasing pressure inside cities themselves and constantly redefine complex, contested territories. The paper introduces two cases denominated “Collectors”, not to compare them, but to explore transferable and valuable urban condi tions due to their interest of being between a formal / informal status. Firstly, the Teddy Cruz’s project Casa Familiar in San Ysidro, San Diego, where a complex mediation process is proposed to generate diversity and social sustainability in a marginaliz ed neighborhood. Secondly, the Centro Financiero Cofinanzas in Caracas, a 45 -story complex of 111,000 m 2 known as the Torre David; Before the forcible eviction in July 2014, this unfinished symbol of financial monopolies was appropriated and reconverted by its dwellers into a complex, alternative piece of the city in just seven years. In both cases, the concepts of infrastructure and architecture were intelligently blurred, leading to the transformation of an urban, social millstone. Are there real values on them that could be incorporated into the urban design process? The purpose of this paper is to uncover useful clues, to redefine social infrastructure as an open -ended system, to respond to the speed, complexity and diversity of the contemporary city’s local urban processes