arch studio.2018

Architecture Option Studio: Speculative Architecture
Spring 2017

Escuela de Arquitectura UPRRP
Instructor: Regner Ramos

PART I: Argumentative Drawings & Fantastic Artifact

Amidst an economic crisis and limited employment oportunities, an unprecedented number of Puerto Ricans have emigrated from the island to the United States. This mass exodus has created new, detrimental contitions for the island. What are the effects of this mass emigration at economic, political, spatial and cultural levels? Elaborating an individual argument, informed by a period of research and theoretical discussions, this project seeks to address this phenomenon and create drawings, an artifact, and a spatial proposal that problematizes and critiques it.

Electronic Colonization Theory, a term coined by Thomas Mc Phail, explains how cultural customs and traditions are now mainly transmitted through media. Television, movies, ads, music, etc. have a direct effect in how spectators look, think, and act, making media a perfect tool for molding cultural patterns. Puerto Rico, being a US colony, has an overwhelming presence of American media, con- tinuing a more subtle, but equally effective, form of colonization.

Argumentative Drawings: Each piece holds an initial screen printed image, a very popular graphic style in Puerto Rican culture. A pattern of three dimensional elements beneath the screen printed sheet are then forcibly imprinted in each piece by frotting the paper against them. The images and objects on the drawing are arbitraty, in order to focus on the chosen methodology instead of the gpraphic selection. What remains as the final drawings is the seamingly unobstrusive, but clear presence of these elements forced onto the graphic.


Fantastic Artifact: Upon further conversations the argument evolved into a discussion about how the colonization process goes both ways. Mass emigration to the US has also created a shift in American culture having to adapt to a wave of Puerto Ricans and their cultural baggage. This artifact, consisting of a net of cubes covered in textures on both sides attracts the touch of two oposing users. The textures in both sides create a dialog between the push from one side and the response push of the other side, emulating a media colonization dialog between two cultures. Such relation has both soft textures and rough textures to the touch that may hurt or please each side.



PART II: A Puerto Rican Migrant’s Prop House

This final phase of the project questions how spatial properties of digital interfaces can become design properties within speculative architecture. The 90’s Windows game Minesweeper was selected as a digital interface that resembles, performs, and relates to the central argument of the previous Fantastic Drawings and Artifact. Other than a resemblence in appearance, the unveiling of certain information as you keep pushing buttons references the dialog explored in the artifact. This unveiling of informartion depending on the push is incorporated in this Chimeric Architecture where movable sets discuss how domesticity reflects a migrant’s cultural baggage. The house is set between digital dimensions influencing its migrant inhabitant. Each room contains a set of prop configurations that describes the realities of a Puerto Rican migrant with different stories narrated within them.