Corsica

By Jonathan Delgado

I visited Corsica for the first time in the summer of 2010, where I had the opportunity of experiencing the Program for Corsica Studies that the School of Architecture offers through the sequence of conservation studies and the Archive of Architecture and Construction of the University of Puerto Rico [AACUPR]. During three months I documented some of the buildings that the Corsicans who returned from the diasporas constructed in the city of Bastia and the community of Morsiglia. Here are some pictures from my travels.

View from the airplane of the city of Bastia

Place Saint Nicolas in the city of Bastia

View of Morsiglia commune

View of the Morsiglia commune

Ruins of a Genovese tower in Maginaccio commune

Comuna de Bonifacio

Chicago

By María Julia Escalona

Last August I traveled to Chicago for a ten days to participate in the 2012 AA/UIC Global Workshop titled Campaigning Architecture. During my stay in Chicago I got the opportunity to explore the city from a different point of view. Here is a recount of the city during this time through the lens of my camera.

Column, 2013. From the series Máscaras o Más Caras (Masks or More Faces)

Artist Introduction: Naimar Ramírez

FEATURED ON OUR HOME PAGE!

We introduce new collaborator, artist Naimar Ramírez! Read more about her work below.

A mask is an intermediary between its wearer and the outside world: a filter, screen or shield.

Photographs of textures from my (current) environment are sculpted, free-form, into heads with unclear identities. In order to transform the object into subject, they are documented, translated back into an image, which is presented on a paper similar to that of which they are made.

In the simplest terms, it is a covering. It can be created in solitude, as an individual expression; it can also be part of a ritual, a cultural action, a response (in agreement or opposition) to society. It can be and do many things at once: it can provide protection or disguise, it can transform and decorate, it can cast a likeness or provide as well as remove an identity, and it can establish a social/cultural connection. It can be deliberate, unintentional or forced upon.

Naimar Ramírez is an artist who concentrates in photography and sculpture. She graduated from the University of Puerto Rico in 2011 with a degree in Environmental Design and Photography, and is currently enrolled in the Photography M.F.A. at Savannah College of Art and Design. A deep interest in cultural encounters and language as well as the inevitable effects of translation on communication, fuel a search for similar mutations in her visual work. The transformations from abstract thought to concrete words are reflected in the photographic explorations, where often images are transformed into empty threedimensional pieces that are presented with an air of 'objectness.'

AA+UIC Workshop

Lobbying Architecture (Campaigning Architecture_AA/UIC Global Workshop 2012)

Stream 1: Alexander Eisenschmidt, professor

How can architecture lobby for itself?

Our stream focuses on interventions in the city, highlighting architectural potentials that play at the interface between public and private, collective and individual, commercial and communal, etc. We understand architecture as a facilitator of existing conditions and less as a problem solver, therefore, we seek to capitalize on what the city has to offer, exploring its hidden or underutilized potentials, and intervenes with pieces of “architectural propaganda” that stages new possibilities of use.

This is a graphic essay that explores the capacity of maps, photographs, narratives, and diagrams as indicators of actions and behaviors through spatial elements. Lobbying architecture is an attempt to make architecture lobby for itself and become a platform to explore new speculative narratives in the built environment.

Day 1