BOOK by Ana María Duran Calisto
Amazon Assessment Report 2021, 2021
This chapter reviews the often-invisible, powerful processes that drive social and ecological cha... more This chapter reviews the often-invisible, powerful processes that drive social and ecological change in the Amazon, and the diverse peoples who inhabit its landscapes. It explores the large-scale development ide- ologies of modernization, and the policy tools that were deployed to carry them out. Outlining general pe- riods of macro policy shifts, it shows the evolution of the framework for today’s complex interactions be- tween large-scale agroindustry, mining, and hydrocarbons; diverse small-scale livelihoods; the clandes- tine and illicit economies of land grabbing, gold, coca and timber; and their operation in globalized and regional economies. While Pan-Amazonian governments have oscillated between authoritarian and more or less democratic forms of governance since the mid-20th century, more democratic transformations and trade have led to interactions among a wide array of new civil society actors; including non-governmental organizations (NGOs), social movements, rural syndicates, and urban social movements; and powerful actors such as national and international technical, financial, and corporate groups and international con- servation organizations. New international sources of funding expanded well beyond multilateral or tra- ditional bilateral aid; this includes financing from China and hedge funds, and new forms of both informal and corporate production lending. Integration into numerous globalized markets and finance have had enormous effects on Amazonian politics and economies at all scales. These dynamics have generated new kinds of policies, political framings, institutions, and economies, and restructured old ones; reshaped forms of urbanization, settlements, and land regimes; and stimulated extensive and controversial infra- structure development. On the ground, diverse Amazonian peoples have largely suffered the impacts of these processes, and have continued to adapt to changing circumstances while fighting to advance their own proposals for alternative forms of Amazon conservation and development.
Keywords: Development policy, globalization, urbanization, settlement, clandestine economy, deforestation, roads, dams, social movements
Urbanismo ecológico en América Latina , 2019
Urbanismo Ecológico en América Latina se encuadra dentro de la línea de investigación establecida... more Urbanismo Ecológico en América Latina se encuadra dentro de la línea de investigación establecida por su precedente Urbanismo Ecológico, publicado por Mohsen Mostafavi y Gareth Doherty en 2014 en portugués y español. El concepto de urbanismo ecológico resonó con fuerza en una región que cuenta con una de las tradiciones más potentes de diseño y construcción de ecologías urbanas que se remonta, si estudiamos la historia ambiental de América Latina, al período precolonial, como corolario inevitable del animismo que caracterizó a culturas indígenas cuya relación con la naturaleza se estableció desde una visión que no busca ni controlarla ni conquistarla, sino potenciarla y trabajar con ella. La cantidad de proyectos de ecología urbana que han sido y están siendo ejecutados en América Latina es digna de notarse. La presente recopilación tiene el mérito de ser una primera curaduría de escala regional que se enfoca en el diseño y apunta a la necesidad de profundizar en la investigación del desarrollo histórico y actual de la ciudad como ecología en la región.
Beyond Petropolis: Designing a Practical Utopia in Nueva Loja, 2014
BOOK, CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR by Ana María Duran Calisto
Deutsches Architectur Jahrbuch 2020, 2020
Critical review of the project Chamanga Cultural Center, located in San José de Chamanga, Ecuador... more Critical review of the project Chamanga Cultural Center, located in San José de Chamanga, Ecuador. This communal project was co-designed and constructed in the aftermath of a 7.8 Mw earthquake that hit the Ecuadorian coast in 2016, by Opción Más -a collective of musicians,- Atarraya Taller de Arquitectura, Chamanga community members, the German Embassy in Ecuador, and design-built studios in Portland State University and the Hochschule in Munich.
Apuntes sobre Decolonización, Arquitectura y Ciudad en las Américas, 2021
Prefacio del libro "Apuntes sobre Decolonización, Arquitectura y Ciudad en las Américas".
Why Yachay? Sorkin & Magdaleno (Et. al.), 2020
Yachay means “knowledge” in Kichwa, and its variation “Yachak” is used to refer to the shaman, be... more Yachay means “knowledge” in Kichwa, and its variation “Yachak” is used to refer to the shaman, bearer of healing and spiritual knowledge within the highly sophisticated animistic tradition of the pre-Columbian Andean and Upper Amazonian universe of what is today Ecuadorian territory. This Kichwa term, which celebrates the indigenous roots of Ecuador and the ancient vitality of local knowledge, is hybridized with “Tech” by the government, a signifier that points its needle to the developed world, scientific innovation, IT, and a technological future. Once again, as it has been for more than five centuries, colonizer and colonized, global metropolis and transnational hinterland, “future” and “past” are—at least symbolically—hybridized. The combination is revealing, and lies at the molecular scale of a territorial and ontological conflict that runs deep into history and has divided not just Ecuadorians, but Latin Americans in general, regarding how to develop, in which terms, and for whose benefit. As the South American continent is witness to the most widespread land grabbing process of its history (soil is the new oil) and to a rampant neo-extractivism that has opened up—in a renewed cycle—the bowels of its interior for sale in the global commodities market, Latin Americans wonder whether the legacy of enclosure, environmental destruction and favela explosion is all that is in store for them in exchange for development-a-la-political economy.
Placer en la disciplina, 2016
El arquitecto uruguayo nos planteó la pregunta: ¿Cuáles son los desafíos que encuentras para la a... more El arquitecto uruguayo nos planteó la pregunta: ¿Cuáles son los desafíos que encuentras para la arquitectura y su enseñanza en el futuro próximo? He aquí mi respuesta, escrita en el contexto del terremoto que sacudió violentamente la costa ecuatoriana en 2016.
A Line in the Andes, 2011
Quito: A Flatbed Site as an Agent for a New Centrality, 2006
INDEXED/PEER REVIEWED PAPERS by Ana María Duran Calisto
Revista Pangea, 2021
La arqueología postula, en síntesis, que las civilizaciones emergieron en siete polos del planeta... more La arqueología postula, en síntesis, que las civilizaciones emergieron en siete polos del planeta, dos de ellos en las Américas. Las civilizaciones de Mesopotamia-la más antigua-, Egipto, el Mediterráneo, China y el valle del Indo, surgieron en una de las dos principales masas geográficas del mundo, conformada por Eurasia y África. En el territorio inter-oceánico que hoy conocemos como América, eclosionaron dos polos de civilización: el Mesoamericano y el Andino. Otras regiones, como la amazónica, también estuvieron densamente pobladas por sociedades complejas. Se debate si alcanzaron un desarrollo que pueda denominarse "civilización" o no. Lo que está claro, y cada vez con mayor contundencia, conforme la arqueología acumula evidencia en el terreno y a través de la aplicación de tecnologías como Lidar (Light Detection and Ranging/Laser Imaging, Detection and Ranging) y GPR (Ground Penetrating Radar), es que el patrón de asentamiento, la forma que adquirió el urbanismo, en las Américas, es de otra naturaleza y sus principios, al parecer, se originan en la cuenca amazónica. Estos principios de planificación territorial subyacen, a diversas escalas y en diversas formas, las constelaciones agro-ecológicas de pequeñas villas fluviales, grandes complejos de señoríos interconectados en un territorio, e incluso la conformación de estados tributarios que consolidaban en diversos tiempos un dominio tejido con alianzas o por la fuerza para captar los tributos de diversas regiones y sustentar sus ciudades estado.
Rivista Territorio, 2021
Two different key urbanization logics have shaped the Americas. One refers to the 'Amerindian cul... more Two different key urbanization logics have shaped the Americas. One refers to the 'Amerindian culture of spatial production'. According to this logic, pre-Columbian urbanization is the result of processes of reshaping the environment as a cultural landscape, of an agro-ecological urbanism or agro-ecological urban constellation, supporting the emergence of centers of power or precluding it. The second logic is the one in which urbanization does not serve habitat production and reshaping, but extraction. The colonial urbanization system was linked to the extirpation of wealth and natural resources, and to their concentration in regional nodes and, eventually, in transoceanic metropolises. Even today, these two different ways of living are still evident in Latin America, either building up territories and people, or slashing and expelling them.
CONFERENCE PAPERS by Ana María Duran Calisto
LASA2019, 2019
In a tripartite narrative, I would like to argue that de-growth imaginaries for Amazonia urgently... more In a tripartite narrative, I would like to argue that de-growth imaginaries for Amazonia urgently need to draw their inspiration from its deep history, on the one hand, and its living ancestral history, on the other, to be recast as productive forest re-growth. Archaeological and ethnographic research demonstrate that indigenous communities -past and present- have succeeded in establishing sustainable settlement patterns in Amazonia. On the contrary, spatial models imported from temperate areas of the world have, for the most part, failed to deliver a socially and environmentally sustainable colonization of the region, as have Western ontologies of agriculture. The scope of this article does not allow for an analysis of every single spatial model that has been implanted in Amazonia since the Spanish conquest; therefore, the first section will focus on describing the process of the most recent globalization and modernization of the forest, conceived in the fifties and sixties, and implemented during the Cold War dictatorships of the Seventies (this section will focus on Brazil), whose paradigms have been renewed under the continental-scale planning program known as Initiative for the Integration of the Regional Infrastructure of South America (IIRSA, now Infrastructure and Planning Council, COSIPLAN). From the current issues being posed by urbanization, which is highly informal in character (circa 80%), we will pivot and travel back in time in order to review the radical leaps underway in Amazonian archaeology, whose research methods have largely benefited from remote sensing geophysical techniques, such as ground penetrating radar and Lidar, with its ability to penetrate clouds and forest in order to map groundworks and other variables indicative of human occupation and cultivation of the forest. The third part of this paper will present a case study from the perspective and using the methodologies of architecture and spatial ethnography. I will delve into the way in which the Añangu Kichwa community of the Ecuadorian Amazon has adapted its ancestral culture to face, and thrive in the midst of, immense pressures and challenges, such as the advancement of the oil frontier into the Yasuní National Park. An important component of this commune´s ability to prevail under such circumstances has been architectural design and spatial planning, in conjunction with an economic design that allows the community to renew and reproduce its millenary culture.
BOOK REVIEWS by Ana María Duran Calisto
Estado y Comunes: Revista de políticas y problemas públicos., 2017
Reseñas L as Vidas Sociales de los Bosques: pasa-do, presente y futuro del resurgimien-to del bos... more Reseñas L as Vidas Sociales de los Bosques: pasa-do, presente y futuro del resurgimien-to del bosque, editado por Susanna B. Hecht, Kathleen D. Morrison y Christine Padoch, es una colección de veintiocho ensayos dividida en cinco partes: marcos conceptuales, ecologías históricas, dinámicas de mercado, instituciones y la matriz urbana. Al unísono, este ensamblaje de reflexiones derivadas de una investigación rigurosa y multidisciplinar de los bosques sociales a lo largo del tiempo, en áreas tropicales y el subtropicales (en algunos casos, en zonas templadas), se decanta en una sorprendente variedad de argumentos que cuentan una historia muy diferente, y en algunos casos opuesta, a la narrativa predominante sobre la destrucción de los bosques tropicales. Los autores señalan varios de los desafíos conceptuales planteados por los bosques. La primera dificultad que identifican se relaciona con su propia definición. En el territorio que hemos heredado del segundo apogeo de lo que los geógrafos de la nueva economía denominan hiperglobalización, los bosques tropicales han venido a significar, más que nada, los santuarios de la biodiversidad que debe ser conservada de manera "natural" o "vacía" (carente de humanos o personas que cuentan como humanos) evitando que sean devastados, o como sumideros estratégicos de CO 2 frente al calentamiento global. Hecht, Morrison, Padoch, y el co-lectivo de autores incluido en este libro, exigen una revisión de las taxonomías que asignamos no solo a los bosques, sino también a lo que definimos como lo urbano y lo rural. Las y los autores argumentan que los conceptos, como los imaginamos, no corresponden a las realidades en el terreno. Nos invitan a penetrar en el ámbito de las zonas híbridas y complejas que han Recibido: 2-mayo-2017. Aceptado: 24-mayo-2017.
Plataforma Arquitectura, 2015
Book review of Carlos Garciavelez Alfaro's book "Form and Pedagogy. The Design of the University ... more Book review of Carlos Garciavelez Alfaro's book "Form and Pedagogy. The Design of the University City in Latin America."
MAGAZINE ARTICLES AND INTERVIEWS by Ana María Duran Calisto
Exhibition Water Wise River Breath: Reframing Design´s Role with Water, Art Gallery of Alberta, 2022
Indulge me, dear reader, if I discuss design in Upper Amazonia with a hybrid voice, poetic and pr... more Indulge me, dear reader, if I discuss design in Upper Amazonia with a hybrid voice, poetic and prosaic or technical. Discussing Amazonian design from an exclusively rationalist and/or technocratic perspective, would do a disservice to the sophisticated aesthetes of the region´s many nations. The clues to the future of Amazonia are in Amazonia.
https://www.youraga.ca/exhibitions/water-wise-river-breath-reframing-designs-role-water
The Architectural Review, 2021
A brief and fluid reflection on the tree, architecture and climate change.
Manifest - A Journal of the Americas, N. 3 - Bigger than Big, 2021
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BOOK by Ana María Duran Calisto
Keywords: Development policy, globalization, urbanization, settlement, clandestine economy, deforestation, roads, dams, social movements
BOOK, CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR by Ana María Duran Calisto
INDEXED/PEER REVIEWED PAPERS by Ana María Duran Calisto
CONFERENCE PAPERS by Ana María Duran Calisto
BOOK REVIEWS by Ana María Duran Calisto
MAGAZINE ARTICLES AND INTERVIEWS by Ana María Duran Calisto
https://www.youraga.ca/exhibitions/water-wise-river-breath-reframing-designs-role-water
Keywords: Development policy, globalization, urbanization, settlement, clandestine economy, deforestation, roads, dams, social movements
https://www.youraga.ca/exhibitions/water-wise-river-breath-reframing-designs-role-water