It all started with a newsletter in Cristina’s inbox. "I saw the announcement of the competition and I immediately thought it was very interesting," says Cristina Carrió, a 34-year-old Catalan architect who works today in Santiago for TECHO, a nongovernmental organization that seeks to eliminate informal settlements throughout Latin America. The email came with a special invitation: students, professors and professionals were called to participate in the IDB’s CitiesLab, an open competition looking for proposals to revitalize an old asylum called Las Hermanitas de los Pobres in Santiago.
The idea behind this initiative —developed by the IDB in its fourth international version, this time along with the Chilean government and the Municipality of Santiago— had as its main objective to find creative and fresh solutions to the urban problems of a city, encouraging the participation of creative ideas. All the proposals had to be sponsored by a university in the region and composed of a team of undergraduate or graduate students, teacher guides and professionals.
Video: a 3D bird's-eye view of Las Hermanitas de los Pobres, in Santiago
What was the problem to solve?
The teams had to present a project that would revitalize a patrimonial area of 103,000 square meters in the middle of a residential neighborhood, where the main building was abandoned and unoccupied after the 8.8 magnitude earthquake that struck the center and south of Chile in February, 2010. At the time the competition closed the reception of proposals, the initiative had received 84 projects from 37 universities, all from 12 countries: Chile, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Argentina, Guatemala, Uruguay, Venezuela, Peru and Switzerland.
Between June and December 2018, Cristina, together with a group of four architects, a civil engineer, a lawyer, and other professionals and students, designed, created and presented BarriOficio, the winning project of the contest that was sponsored by the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. "We believe that this is how these projects should be worked, with the union of different actors," says Cristina.
This was their formula.
Premiación BID CitiesLab en ex Asilo Hermanitas de los pobres del Programa Revive Barrios. Felicitamos al Primer lugar, proyecto BarrioOficio realizado por alumnos de la Pontificia Universidad Católica @ARQ_UC pic.twitter.com/v8rMd6P3pC
— Santiago (@Muni_Stgo) December 9, 2018
BarriOficio: from abandonment to development
No one would ever doubt how impressive the building is. The Asylum of Las Hermanitas de los Pobres stands on the Matta Sur neighborhood in Santiago de Chile as a closed fortress. After being left in complete disuse, the Municipality decided to develop a revitalization plan along with the IDB, so that the property could be, for the first time, open to Santiago residents as a space for community encounter and development.
Photo Gallery: the asylum and BarriOficio's proposal
BarriOficio was born as an integral proposal based on three pillars: the recovery of the building itself, the new construction to be built, and the change in the use of space. These three elements go hand in hand with the concept of circular economy: a place where citizens can go; be trained on a craft or skill; learn how to market it to key audiences and, in a final stage, sell and exhibit their products.
"The first step was to participate in the neighborhood. Go into the field, collect data. And that's when we started to get involved, to throw ideas, to schedule meetings with all the participants and this project came up," says Uruguayan architect Anya Fiori, member of the winning team of the contest.
The Matta Sur neighborhood, where the old asylum is located, has recently become a nucleus of workshops in Santiago. Currently, the neighborhood has just opened its first metro station and is experiencing a generational change in its residents, as gentrification in other sectors of the Chilean capital is pushing young professionals, students and self-employed workers out to Matta, who seek to undertake, exhibit and work in less expensive spaces and connected to the city center.
Meet the other proposals (in Spanish)
"The partner of one of the participants of the team is a furniture maker and has a workshop. We could see that there were a lot of people who have informal and formal workshops of traditional crafts and we thought it was a great opportunity to enhance that neighborhood identity. And so, with that, work the material and immaterial heritage," says Cristina.
BarriOficio is now in its validation stage, where the team is working in the field together with the municipal and government authorities, experts from the IDB's Housing and Urban Development Division, technical professionals and neighborhood residents, to adapt the proposal to the context local. Both Anya and Cristina are optimistic and hope that the dream of transforming the asylum into a place open for all can take five to six years.
"I imagine an inclusive city. That integrates. I am a foreigner, I arrived in Chile six months ago and I still think there are many things to do on this subject. I think that inclusion, seen from many points of view, is something to work on," says Anya. "This is how our cities should be. Of all and for all."
BID CitiesLab and PRIBIPE
This competition is part of the Program of Revitalization of Neighborhoods and Emblematic Heritage Infrastructure (PRBIPE), an initiative financed by the IDB and executed by the Chilean government, which seeks to implement management models for the urban revitalization of neighborhoods with heritage value. The program incorporates an integral focus to improve habitability conditions, highlight its heritage properties, increase local and cultural economic development and encourage the active participation of its inhabitants in the processes of urban transformation. Read more here