Teacher Assistant
As a teacher at Fadu-UdelaR, Uy. I have worked in the project area, in the Historical, Theoretical and Critical area, and in the technological area of the architecture career.
TEACHER ASSISTANT
Introduction to Architecture
Mvd. Uy.
The study on the Sesc Pompeia, allowed to investigate the context and the intrinsic connections behind the character of Lina, a universe of meanings behind the architect involved in Italian publications between the wars and a postwar period of political challenges.
In achieving materialize, more than an architecture, a political project, that of SESC as an institution. Lina, woman, immigrant, communist, and a story to review.
TEACHER ASSISTANT
integrated technology
Mvd. Uy.
A class on technological discourse, the module, and the structure.
(maximize pdf to read)
REVIEW OF A LATIN AMERICAN CONDITION
Sixty years after the exhibition held by H. Hitchcock and A. Drexler in 1955 called “Latin American Architecture since 1945”, the MoMA in New York decided to hold a new exhibition that revisits the region and its production. “Latin America in Construction: Architecture 1955-1980” emerges, an exhibition curated by Barry Bergdoll, Jorge Francisco Liernur, and Carlos Eduardo Comas, Patricio del Real as a curatorial assistant, and an advisory committee from all over Latin America.
This temporal spectrum begins in the mid-50s, after the Second World War, amid the Cold War, and during development policies that allowed architectural and urban exploration in a formal, technological, and programmatic way. It ended in the 1980s with the evolution of authoritarian regimes and neoliberal policies, which redirected and transformed the progressive intentions of previous decades.
According to Bergdoll, the exhibition seeks to recalibrate the discussion on the originality of modern Latin American architecture and the different urban cultures of this period associated with the Latin American condition of “underdevelopment.” So, how are these intentions of the exhibition translated into the historiographical text of the catalog? This essay intends, firstly, to carry out a historiographical analysis of the exhibition catalog, secondly, to review the three main curatorial articles in the said catalog, and finally, to make a critical reflection regarding the construction of the story about “the Latin American condition” present in the catalog and the exhibition.
(maximize pdf to read)
CURATORSHIP without CURATORS
Uruguay acquired the pavilion in 1960. However, different socio-political and economic situations led the country to pay attention to the architecture biennale just in the 2000s (see the chart below). During these last 20 years, different institutional entities and the academic community have tried different formats to define participation in the Architectural Biennale, such as direct commissions and, closed and open contests. At the same time, the competition terms have varied in aspects of evaluation and the selection of the juries. Often, juries range from those who have not been to Venice to those who have never had a curatorial practice but are “good architects.”
Over the years, the curatorial proposals have varied in type and shape, some approaching artistic issues, others more of a historical or archival nature, and the most recent have had the virtue of linking local production to problems of international relevance. However, in this genealogy of facts, it has yet to be possible to consolidate either continuity of the curatorial exercise or a strong curatorial production capable of having academic and social repercussions. Therefore, participation in the Venice Biennale happens as an isolated event, revisited every two years. The analogy to Rudofsky in his 1964 MoMA exhibition allows us to associate the hegemonic disciplinary lack of the national curatorial practice.
The essay seeks, without falling into a formal simplification, to investigate beyond photography through the study of exhibition catalogs and a series of interviews and analyze the panel discussion held in 2017 to bring to light the successes, failures, and continuities between the projects. Although, even with making visible the fact that our local curatorial production is based on the instinct about what curatorial architectural practice is, like Architecture made without architects.
REca
REVISTA EN COMUNICACIÓN ARQUITECTÓNICA
It is an architectural communication magazine, an open and collaborative editorial project, based on the game of "action and reaction + conversation". More than a magazine, it is proposed as a space for redefining, reprogramming and revaluing architectural communication. A platform for conversation around the different ecosystems that orbit architecture, a place to reflect on new ways of approaching architectural work.
REca arises as a reaction to the simplification, categorization and pornification carried out by the different media that disseminate architecture as a mere visual impulse. At the same time, as a questioning of the predominance of unidirectional discourses and the lack of narratives that integrate other disciplines in the conversation with architecture in order to define new approaches to critical thinking.
REca, proposes to talk about architecture, and do it from another side. To find different answers, it is necessary to ask different questions. Approach architectural theory from otherness, specifically from those agents that orbit it. Agents, who seen from the hegemonic discourses, seem external to the discipline but who participate in the assemblages that constitute it. We are interested in reflecting on their relationship and making their consequent traces visible.
An initiative of Virginia Branda, Alejandro Varela and Carolina Zuluaga. An interdisciplinary team with bases in politics, research, design and architecture. The proposal is given within the framework of the Master in Architectural Communication, of the ETSAM-UPM, within the Editorial Project course with the advice and teaching guide of César Ávila, Diego Morera and Antonio Giraldez.