from 27/09 to 02/10/2021
CITY UPGRADE
Research and Design online workshop
QUITO AND THE RAVINE SYSTEM
BETWEEN MEMORY AND OBLIVION

DIRECTION
Dario Giordanelli, UTE
Miguel Ángel Vitale, FADU-UNL
COORDINATION
Paola Bracchi, UTE
UTE BOARD
Daniele Rocchio FAU Dean
Riccardo Porreca FAU Research Coordinator
Daniela Jácome FAU Career Coordinator
UNL BOARD
Sergio Cosentino FADU Dean
Margarita Trlin Investigation Secretary
Marcelo Molina Academic Secretary
The Academic network
Main Research Topic and Context
San Francisco de Quito is one of the oldest cities in Latin America. It is the capital and the political, cultural and financial centre of the Republic of Ecuador. It is located at an average height of 2850 m.a.s.l. in the Andes range, more accurately within the Guayllabamba valley, in the Inter-Andean Alley plateau which separates the eastern and western sides of the Andean range. The city’s western end is defined by the eastern slopes of the active Pichincha volcano, which dominates the urban extension in such way that its hillsides are visible from any angle, shaping the city’s sectors. This geographical condition gives the city its peculiar elongated pattern, with 50 km in length and averaging 3 to 7 km in width, traversed by more than 100 ravines from east to west. The city, located about 25 km north of Quito’s old town, is crossed by the equator, which produces significant landscape diversity. The geo-morphological and geological conformation comes from the presence of the Pichincha volcano. The soil is composed of deep layers of lava and ash which have little resistance to river erosion and harden in contact with air. This has allowed the preservation until recent times of the engravings generated by the last ice melting: a system of seasonal watercourses, “quebradas”. It is a system of intermittently-formed rivers that rhythmically go through the city’s plain from east to west (Peltre 1989)
Research and Design
General strategy for rethinking and redesign the 24 de Mayo Boulevard.
The actual fragmented system will be considered as a palimpsesto of a new urban transformation in which experiment innovative ways tof apply the concept of active memory as a possible project tool, rediscovering the ravine system traces.
Local architectural design concept and strategy. Using the general strategy as new urban narration background, design groups will apply the global vision on a new space of memory definition, multifunctional and both public and private.
How can it be a contemporary space of memory?
A new museum concept involving public spaces and landscape elements?
Get In Touch
cupcityupgrade@gmail.com
