 Hi everybody, my name is Yaa Jamali Dean. I'm the coordinator of Advanced 4 Studio, the architecture program. I would like to welcome both the urban design and the advanced 4 architecture students, as well as, you know, other G-sub students and faculty who've decided to join our lecture this afternoon. The lecture, the title of the lecture is Designing for Resilience. It will be delivered by Adriana Chaffais and Rico, sorry, Victor Rico, who is actually joining us from his office, from their office in Mexico City if I'm not mistaken. Adriana is a faculty at the Urban Design Program here at the school, together with her partners, Victor Rico and Elena Tudela. She is co-founded ORU, Office for Urban Resilience in 2014, a design think-tank that focuses on implementing innovative solutions for cities through urban design and landscape infrastructure with a water-sensitive approach. Among many exciting projects, the work includes the contribution to build the urban resilience agenda in the city of Mexico in collaboration with CDMX, Public Space Authority. Adriana holds a master degree in urbanism, landscape and ecology and a master in architecture from GSD, where she graduated from in 2014, Victor Rico also graduated from GSD in 2014 with a master in urban design. Together they bring more than 10 years of experience working with public, private and academic institutions and NGOs. So on behalf of all of us, I would like to welcome Adriana and Victor, because I think the floor is yours at this point and you can unmute. Hello everybody. So I'm very happy to be able to be here and that this lecture can be delivered. We are also exploring this new format soon, so we hope that even if we are located in a virtual environment, maybe we can have some interaction. So I was going to ask everybody to shake their hands, but everybody has a camera off, so my strategy is not possible, but we just wanted to say hi at the beginning. And to start the lecture, I'm also going to share my screen. And in the meanwhile, I'm going to, this is, I'm looking now some of you shaking hands. Yeah. Okay, that was the objective. Hi, and hello, everybody. So I'm very happy to see you all. I'm going to share Victor, the award to Victor so that he can present himself as well. Okay. All right, I think I'm muted now. Hi everyone. Thanks for joining us. And I think we've been properly introduced. So I think we can start with the presentation that we have prepared for all of you. Thanks for joining. Do you hear me now. Yes. But we can, we cannot hear Victor. Do you hear Victor? No, you can. Okay, everybody is on the line. We're good to go. Excellent. Thank you so much. Okay. So this is Oro. This is big. Well, we have co-founded Oro between Victor and Lena Tulela who can't join us today and myself, Adriana. Our practice is based in Mexico City. We are a firm that specializes in urban resilience, a true urban design and landscape infrastructure projects. When we were starting at the Harvard GSC, back in 2013, while we were studying, we put together the application for Mexico City for to be part of the 100 Resilient Initiative from the Rockefeller Foundation. And that was our first, we can say that was our first official collaboration, which was very successful because the city was selected. Thereafter, since that time, since 2014 to 2018, we have acquired experience in the academic, public, private and development back centers. We can see the image on the left. It's the Resilient Strategy for Mexico City in which I participated. And on the right, we can see some projects in which Victor and Lena have also participated, such as towards a water-sensitive Mexico City, which is a water management strategy through public space, developed with the government of Mexico City with the Public Space Authority, which is an entity that developed public space projects within the government. So it was basically having an urban design studio within the city government, which was a very exciting moment for the city. Unfortunately, that disappeared. And then we have the Quebradora Park, which is another project with which Elena participated. And that also won a World Medal Halsima Award last year. So within the three of us, we got a different experience, but we established our practice in 2018. And now we have other five red members that are joining us. I think they joined this link. Carolina, Néstor, Bernal, Alibán and Laurelín. So we are a very small team, but we are going to show the first a little introduction of what we think and how we are working. And then we're going to present you four projects that we think might be relevant to start a conversation with you. So resilience has become our mantra. Resilience is a mindset, it's a lens, a framework that cuts across the scales, ecosystems, socio-political and economic context. In other words, for us to be resilient is to be able to adapt in a world that desperately needs to change. Resilience has allowed us to find new domains for design investment, finding utility to serve the world. As we can see, the world is not on track. We are facing enormous pressures and challenges. Previously, very recently, we have seen the loss of biodiversity in Australia regarding the wildfires, heat waves in India, wildfires in the Amazon, floods in Jakarta, and even right now the crisis that we are going through. Therefore, our practice questions the role of designers in light of the most pressing issues of the 21st century. The challenges are so complex that we are required to lure the boundaries of design with those from other fields of knowledge in order to seek solutions. This means that we think that the solutions need to be collaborative and we need to expand the agency of design and collaborate with other disciplines because no possible change can happen if we don't have an ecosystem, not only of designers but also of technicians and politicians and other decision makers that want to make these changes. And so we believe we need to shape an alternative future and we can do that by inventing new technologies, prototypes and models of design that can allow us to review the past, the present, but also to better imagine and communicate the possibility of alternative future worlds. This is a call for action because we need a paradigm shift. We see an urgency for a social and environmental equilibrium. There's an immense amount of ecosystem degradation and exacerbating social inequalities. For example, in the left here we see the picture from Chapultepec Park with the presidential house of Mexico was located. This is also one of the wealthiest areas of Mexico City. And on the right, we see urban sprawl occupying territories that are not suitable for urbanization. And these are in conflicts. So in this context, we think we could embrace these challenges through adaptability strategies need to pay solution and green infrastructure integrated to the green infrastructure that already exists in our cities. As we had mentioned before, we have mostly worked in Mexico City, but we have also expanded our vision to other countries similar to other similar countries in Latin America. This has made us realize that there is no other choice than to experiment. We need to take risk. And also we need to evaluate and learn from the experimentation. We need to learn from what works and what is not working in order to don't replicate the errors of the past, but also to learn from failure. Our approach. It's a transformative that transformative projects are processes and not objects. So the design itself. It's not only the design of a good drawing, let's say great representations and amazing presentations that we are doing are not enough. We are not sure that the projects become a successful reality. And we believe this is the real challenge for designers. We need to transcend the paper into a tangible solutions with lasting effects in the world. How do we do that? We think that extending the agency of design and creating the process is designing the process for this change to happen. We believe in territorial advocacy and not just isolated projects. And the process is fundamental for a long term vision. What we see here is the project design. But we envision that there's a larger process and there's a before and an after. That happens. So working within academia and government and the development banks has told us that the urban scale can never escape the socio political dimension. And Well, we are here right now we live in a crisis we are going to a crisis right now. And so maybe people can't total again the cameras but who has experience maybe you can shake hands. Who has experienced an accurate acute crisis before. Maybe not a pandemic of course with an earthquake water scarcity, some kind of crisis. Someone has experience. I think many people would have experience crisis before it's not. It's nothing new. Right. So we think we take we need to address the crisis, but we need to embrace meant and we will leave we come from a permanent place of crisis, which is Mexico City. So we live in a context of water scarcity, earthquakes, subsidence, recently extreme violence against women, air pollution, floods, mobility issues, social inequality. So these are very, very challenging projects. And because of this, this is our context so we have to say that we have no solutions what we have is more and more questions every day. So now, we are going to present some of our projects. This is just an image from our website. So you can see a different types of projects in which we work, which are divided in these categories research installations or exhibitions, urban design visions and strategy, landscape projects and we have also academia as now I'm teaching here and Elena and Victor are also professors at faculty of architecture. So within these range of projects now we are going to start the presentation with the first one, which is a project located in Bogota is called the Bogota environmental circuit. And the projects that I'm going to present are located within research, urban visions and public space projects so they are, they explore different scales and also different types of collaborations because none of these projects have been made by ourselves. I think we collaborate a lot. So, for example, in this project, specifically in Bogota, we collaborated with an office in Bogota, Contaller, Manuela Guzman, architects and other friends, Monica sauce and our friend from Mexico City, and we collaborated directly with the, the aqueduct of Bogota, which is which is the water community, and together with the mayor's office. So, the former mayor, Enrique Peñalosa, he envisioned that a good city, it's a city where people wants to be outside and not inside. So, he wanted to connect the people to Bogota as natural assets, but what ties a city, a very, very rich in bio diversity, we are going to see that in a few slides. And the environmental secret of both that the project, it's the city's commitment to position itself as a city that plants the territory by integrating urban development with its natural environment. So, water, it's a main unifier, water, it's a unifier for all of these ecosystems and it's what makes possible for these ecosystems to exist. In the glimpse, we present a city vision that integrates strategic projects for recuperating Bogota's natural capital. It includes reservoirs, 140 kilometer path across the Andes, several wetlands. And the recuperation of the Bogota River and its tributaries. So, it's a strategy that compiled diverse range and scales of projects, all of them correspond to a systemic vision. So, the biodiversity context of Bogota, it's very important. First of all, it's located in the savannah that borders the eastern and the unmounted, so it's a very, very rich country. The second most diverse country in the world, and it's a main ecological corridor for South America. Here we see a historic map where you can see the wetlands and the Bogota River, you can also see the tributaries and the mountains, all of them in relationship. The city itself started by locating near the Bogota River, but more and more the city has expanded towards the Andes. And we have seen with this urban expansion is that Bogota has lost approximately 90% of the wetlands, so today there are only 700 hectares from the 50,000 hectares that we had before. And this symmetry represents the natural state of Bogota and then how the urban fabric expanded across this landscape. And we have seen how the city started here in the Rio Bogota, and then it went towards the modern city going towards the Andes. And this that we see here, the Andes, it's the most important part for the city. This is the ecological system that we need to preserve. This is a section and we can see the different range of ecological patches and systems that occur. So this is where Bogota is located. It's at 2,600 meters above the sea level. And where water comes from, it's located at 3,600 and 4,000 meters above the sea level. So it's a region where we could think that there's abundance of water and there is, but yet the urban development is disconnected from the natural world and its assets. So if the current model of urbanization continues to expand, they are threatening the water sources of Bogota. So the convenience of having clean water coming out of the tub does not make visible the magnitude and the fragility of the water supply infrastructure. Eighty percent, 83% of the water that is consumed in Bogota come from this region. It's called Paramochingasa. Paramo is a specific type of ecosystem that is located in the altitudes of the mountains. I tried to look for a translation but I couldn't find one. So for explaining this, this diagram is very helpful because we can see the section. It was developed by a Dutch biologist and paleontologist that studied Bogota. And we can see how the territory works by attitudinal stripes. So all of the ecosystem are linked by the passage of water through these different levels until they reach the wetland and river. And in this diagram, we can see the relationship within the mountains that receive the most amount of rain and water and house as water goes down. So this is the high area water coming down here into the lower area to feed the wetland. So this is the co-systemic vision that we need to know. And when we created this vision and we placed different types of strategic projects, we realized that we need to follow the same logic. So from going from the high areas to the low areas. So we defined the project in terms of altitude also it's more strategic to start here because the projects here will preserve in the high area near the mountains. We'll preserve the natural water sources. So we can find the natural paths, we can find the aqueousyandes, we can find the reservoir, and also we identified other strategic projects in order to improve the quality of life in some of the most marginal neighborhoods, especially in the south, which is here. And towards the west near the river, the water river. And this was a part of the research we got the city gave us a lot of data and we developed the research it was divided within environmental aspects, urban aspect quality of life and riskability, but what we presented to them. It's a map of opportunities. So the first opportunity is that we can recuperate the ecosystem, the darker green are the paramus, the water sources. Then we have the river, the water river with the wetland and with the river at the tributaries. So then we identify other nine strategic zones for interventions where you can find most of the floods and the marginal population, population that has not access to urban services, mobility, etc. And then we went into each zone and developed as also some kind of guidance or a strategic projects, identifying certain strategies for the nine areas. Well, I'm not going to show all of the detail but if you want or someone is interested, these was compiled in a book, and we have all of the information and more than what I presented here. And if someone is interested, I can share the link here in the chat and maybe you can go through more detail. Now I'm going to give the word to Victor who's going to present the research project we have right now. Okay. Thanks, Adriana. Now we would like to present to you are an ongoing research. It's called medium scale redevelopment districts as a model for sustainable water management in Mexico City, the case of Takubaya and we want you to think about the medium scale because it's the key it's a key element of this whole research. First of all, this research is being funded by the Mexico Innovation Fund, within the grants program of David Rockefeller for Latin American Studies. And we are being guided by Anita, who is a professor of landscape architecture and chair of the department of. Yeah, she's the chair of the landscape department at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. So, and we go to the next slide. We are going to copy and paste a couple of links that you guys can have a go at if you have a phone it's a link to our Instagram address and you will basically be able to see the dramatic transformations of Mexico City across 500 years. So it's a city that has had an incredible confrontation with its geography over the past 500 years. But this transformation has been especially violent from the second half of the 20th century to the present. It's the city that was able to establish itself on top of a lake by way of expelling all all the water so basically dehydrating a gigantic, gigantic basin. And so today the water crisis in Mexico City is more than urgent and the city continues to face enormous pressures to redevelop in a more compact and sustainable way. The current water management model is no longer sufficient for providing the most basic water services for both existing and new developments. So, at the same time, water management policy is becoming increasingly central to the negotiation between new urban developments and water sustainability in the city. This means that since there's no more water, it's been very hard for entrepreneurs and developers that want to build in central areas of the city because there's no more water. So now they've been forced in a way to be creative in the way that they are managing water. So they themselves have approached different organizations such as WRI, the World Resources Institute. And together with them, we began this exploration of redeveloping districts and the notion of hydric districts as a potential new model for new models of decentralized water management. We wanted to also mention that while architecture has acquired a lot of popularity in an elite world, that has been proportionally inverse to its disempowerment, cultural disenchantment and inability to deliver design alternatives with the required urgency. So this research questions the role of architects, as Adri mentioned at the very beginning, in light of the most pressing issues of the 21st century. Under the lenses of history, data science, ecology and geography, this study is reviewing new design tools that can allow us to better understand multi-scalar issues. It has to more effectively imagine and communicate new spatial imaginations that can crystallize into alternative forms of transforming Mexico City. The research also reflects upon the role of design as an agent to construct multi-sectoral participation frameworks, which in other words is the process that Adriana was mentioning earlier, that can guide future water-related public policies and decision-making. But it is also exploring something very interesting, which is the elasticity of the urban and landscape design disciplines at the mid-scale. In order to blur the boundaries between the urban and the natural domains, quite similar to the above of that research. And so in many ways we are uncovering and resurfacing Mexico City's hydric task. So if we go to the next slide. So medium-scale development projects present us with an adequate scale to address some of the most pressing issues of the regional scale, and also allow us to solve the issues that are unique and specific to a more local scale. It is at the mid-scale that architecture and urban artifacts can function as triggers. The architectural artifact can recalibrate its position within the city, and a new centrality can be created, as we will mention in a while, in the case of Takubaya. So in this, in a large sense, this idea of the mid-scale is tapping into the notion of the quasi-object that Michel Serre proposes, which is very interesting to us as a design practice, the quasi-object is still an object and maintains its value as an object but incorporates new dimensions that enable the participation of other actors. So as opposed to large-scale and mono-functional infrastructure and piecemeal green infrastructure, which is how the city is working right now. The medium-scale redevelopment districts, if we go to the next slide, present us with an adequate scale to address some of the most pressing issues at the regional scale, but also allow us to solve us particularities of the more local scale. So the hypothesis is that medium-scale redevelopment districts have a greater potential to deploy multiple water-sensitive strategies. So the hope is that the mid-scale interventions can more effectively tap into diverse water sources, and then explore more decentralized water infrastructures. The hydric district as we are analyzing is a highly implementable urban framework that can serve to test alternative physical models of decentralized urban water management. The project is currently contributing to raise public awareness, inform multi-sectoral participation, and promote the sharing of responsibilities among multiple stakeholders. So by contrast to conventional large-scale infrastructure and piecemeal small-scale green infrastructure, the hydric districts offer a perhaps more grounded and coordinated framework to address the water crisis in Mexico City. We are researching Tacubaya for many reasons. Historically, Tacubaya has had a strategic location within the geography of Mexico City's watershed. Its privileged location between the slopes of the western ravines, as you can see in the greener areas, and the former borders of the ancient lake, granted this area with advantages in terms of security and stability against floods and earthquakes in the past. Also, water abundance and climate made it a perfect site for agricultural activity during the colonial time, and later on the preferred site for summer estates for rich families, which made it really attractive also for other people as there were new sources of employment. But in the end, Tacubaya's history has been marked by repeated cycles that move from attractiveness to settlement, to growth, to scarcity, and then to crisis, and then to the expansion of water infrastructures to begin the cycle again. You can see here how Tacubaya is right outside the areas where a lot of multiple risks are colliding. And also, Tacubaya's proximity to Mexico City's downtown, which is the white spot in the center, this would be the size of Mexico City in the early, before the 20th century, 19th century. And Tacubaya is in pink, that's just showing how close they were. So this proximity was key. There were a lot of, there was a lot of experimentation in Tacubaya from transport systems to water management to even the exploration of new dwelling models. And that has shaped Tacubaya in a very, very different way, being a historic district from other historic areas in Mexico City like Boyoacan. It has made it very unique, but also it has fragmented Tacubaya, and it has in a way hidden a lot of its history and its natural background. Well, also Tacubaya's future development could be guided by an existing land management instrument called SAC. Well, sorry, this is a historic image of Tacubaya. And we go then to the next, to the next image. So, yeah, Tacubaya's future development could be guided by an existing and current land management instrument called Sistema de actuación por cooperación, which it's not possible to translate, but it's basically a framework that allows, it's a legal framework of land management that allows city authorities and development promoters to agree on certain interventions in both the private and the public domain with the public focus. So, in many ways it would be a kind of a collaborative governance framework where private, there are private roles that have public goals, let's say. And recently, Tacubaya was announced as part of the urban regeneration and inclusive housing program by the current mayor. But they have presented, unfortunately, a series of isolated projects that could coalesce into a new urban model that can serve to test alternative modes of decentralized water management solutions. So we think that water is the one element that can really articulate all these projects. Tacubaya, within its mid-scale, can become a pilot project to test alternative models of urbanism, where water is at the very center. So, it is, in many, many ways, a collaborative process. Our team is working with authorities and with water specialists as a bridge between all of them. And we think that this pilot project will help to demonstrate how Mexico City can advance towards a more sustainable, informed and responsible water management. These are the most pressing issues of water stress and also climate change. Maybe we can show you a video of a workshop that was carried out in January. I'm not sure if there's going to be, yeah, it's inaudible, but we just wanted to show you that we organized this event. Anita Perez-Veta came to Mexico City along with four GSD students. We invited students as well. And there was a very rich discussion among Tacubaya specialists, architects, people from the World Resources Institute, and politicians as well, discussing what it means for Mexico City to learn from the mid-scale and the Tacubaya case study. And after this panel discussion, we organized four groups. And we asked these four groups to explore three different models of water management. The first one is how to deal with residual water of the new buildings. 70% of the water that is discharged from new buildings is soapy waters. So instead of channeling this water to the sewage, what if we can make space for this water and reuse it in other spaces, whether it's for irrigation or other purposes. The second one is rainwater. So all the rainwater that is falling on the surfaces of the Hydric District. What can we do with this water? Can we reutilize it? Can we store it? Can we channel it to other green infrastructure or sustain them? Yeah, green infrastructure. And then finally, run-offs. What can we do with the water that is falling on the streets? These were the questions that were asked in this workshop. And we are going to integrate all the findings of this research, of this workshop from January. The projects that have been publicly announced by the city authorities and also by the projects that were identified by the World Resources Institute in the compilation of all the projects articulated by water is what we believe can become the Hydric District. So yeah, this is still an ongoing research, but we will be happy to share with all of you the publication that has to be finished this year. And we think it's a great opportunity to test the abilities or the elasticity of the design disciplines within the very, very tight fabric of Mexico City. And I think with this we can move on to the following project. Hello. Is everybody still there? Yeah, I hope so. So the following project, it's called Chinampa Refugee. It's an incremental strategy that it's located in Sochimilco, which is a world heritage site by UNESCO. It's where Chinampa, which is an ancestral agricultural technology, still remain protecting wildlife and native species in this area has become increasingly difficult because of the many urban pressures. This is located inside the urban fabric of Mexico City. So we work in this project together with the Institute of Biology of PUNAM, so has been great, a great collaboration between science and design. They have been taking measures of water quality, also analyzing the habitats of the species, and we have been routing on-site strategies for this project to be implemented. Right now, the Chinampa Refugee already exists. They are 15 farmers that are taking this pilot project and the vision, and this is what I'm going to show you, the vision is to scale it up. So, the Chinampa Refugee, it's a conservation model to rescue the Ajalot, which is this little guy that you see here. And as well as the traditional Chinampa system. This model favors participation, the exchange of knowledge and permanent construction of a long-term restoration proposal, where the aim is to integrate the Chinamperos or the farmers, individually or in an organized manner to be the subject of change and positive impact. So, this model, this is a Chinampa. This is a picture we taken ourselves last year. This is the process. This is a series of steps that a farmer can deploy. So, the process consists on opening a canal. So, the Chinampas, the farmers have expanded Chinampas and they have blocked the original canal. So, we open a new canal to restore the habitat. And then, we also restore the, this is a very much, so this is a canal. Then, we refer a state around the canal so that the soil stabilizes, then you place it by filters and gates. This helps to create a new, to improve the water quality inside the canal. And this allows to introduce new species that are able to recreate the habitat in order for the Ajalot to exist. Then, the farmers need to use organic fertilizer for compost, but they can also use clean water from the channel in order to crop. They also are based on the traditional farming techniques and they use traditional crops. So, this system is able to maintain and monitor within time. We see here pictures of the little canal. These are the gates, the biofilters, and actually the research shows that the water quality inside these canals is better. The Ajalotes have a new habitat. Farmers are producing more. Therefore, this is a very good model. But this is a very small scale strategy. So, we envision how we can replicate this. Some ideas to replicate it is that, and that it's already working. So, some ideas are that the farmers receive a chin and pear stamp, which is a quality certification that allows a farmer to position itself and be able to sell the products in different markets and restaurants, higher value. And this also allows the farmer to have financial sustainability so that they can continue developing the system. And this avoids the chinampa to be transferred into an urban area or to avoid the increasing rate of greenhouses that this area is looking at. So, at the end of the day, we envision that the system can be replicated in within the short, medium, and long term to be replicated across the area and reactivate Sochi Milk as our production hop. So, besides having this small scale prototype, then we also help the Institute of Biology to specialize the chinampas that can grow in the medium and long term and the area. So, we can start to create some chinampa clusters that are already recuperated. And then, and therefore this, this can provide a new vision. And this is the last project, because I see that we're already going to the end of the presentation, but we wanted to share also this project is one of the latest one that we have developed is called garden of shadows. And it's a landscape infrastructure for cities in the northern desert of Mexico. This is a competition that was organized by sedato, which is a ministry of agriculture territory and urban development in Mexico. And as this competition to bear with them, this project is for the urban improvement program that the federal government is now running. So, the end of the project on the program itself is to work on the 10 of the most marginalized cities in Mexico. They located 10 cities that are the most vulnerable populations, and these areas are going to receive an investment in infrastructure, which can be from streets, parks, schools, hospitals, etc. So, the Ministry of Development allocated this competition and made a call for architects and designers. We were selected to participate on the public space area of the project. And at the beginning, we were assigned the site and the city, but they actually said that they didn't know where actually the project was going to be, but that it was, we knew the cities and the cities were located in the northern part of Mexico actually very close to the border of Mexico and the US. And our strategy was like to think what is that unified the city, what brings them together and what brings them together is climate. All of them are located mostly, most all of them are located in the desert, that their temperature ranges from 98 to 100 or 104 Fahrenheit, which is a very, very hot climate. So how can a public space work in a hot climate and how can people really choose this space? We think that the concept of shadow was very important. We begin. These are the two, the two boards that we submitted for the competition. And the good news is that we won. So we are very happy, you know, because we had the idea that this is it. This is the part when we start to realize how to ground ideas and take the ideas from the mind to the paper and then into the real world. So, at this stage, our project had three pillars, which is to create a microclimate through, this is to create shadow through vegetation and also to different infrastructure so that as this building that we see here or this structure is actually a structure, then how can we can integrate this into the most vulnerable best so that this provides quality space for these people and also its resilience because realize the city, which is Los Cabos. It's a city that receives the most amount of hurricanes every year in Mexico. So, when we look at our plan, we saw that the city has floods, but they also have high winds and hurricanes, and that the this area, which is the one and pointing out the shelters were not in place. So we believe that the public space can be adapted to a shelter and that's what we propose so that this structure can be also converted in a shelter in terms of emergency. There could be a cistern in place. It could ensure access to water, to electricity. We propose also to have Wi-Fi in order to ensure communications. And then it was a series, it was this, this structure together with a series of classes and of course endemic vegetation that will be suitable for the place. And this is an image of the, of that site and competition site. But then when we, when we won, there were several discussions and the site change, but luckily not the city that allows to continue choosing the information we have developed before. And this is where the previous site was. And now the site that actually the site that we designed is this one. The site was very complex because was located besides an old landfill. So actually the city wanted to, to develop a park in the landfill, but that was a very complex project because first you have to remediate the land and there were no all resources that were available. We told that we're available for the park will go into the site for mediation. So after doing some studies on the quality of the soil, this is based actually that looks as a vacant space. Mostly as a, mostly as a leftover of space. It's the one that we end up utilizing. This is a space where if you see here in the map, you can see that there's a stream going, but this is not a permanent stream. It's a stream that only appears every time it's flooded. So the, the site will, the downstream will get flooded. And it's also very secure area, but people use it as a path to go from this low area to this higher point. And this is the proposal that we have the, the, we were locally, we could remain the, the shelter with a multi sports court below and an auditorium. And we also have here is sports area and they know the landscape infrastructure. This is a diagram in the water authority of the city wanted to build a canal here. So our project it's located besides this canal and we are using the idea we created this some terraces so that they can we manage to let them filter some water from the canal to the terraces. So we can have different activities. And these are some of the renderings that we have. We are using a stone for the place that actually this is stone was located in the other side of the landfill and we are placing them in order to create the series of steps. We have here the structure with the auditorium. And this is all our images. And now we have the actually it's getting construct very, very fast. We have received, we receive these images when once in a while. As this is rapidly under construction, they started at the end of last year. And this is the most the only the newest pictures that we have from the site. So we are very happy that some of the ideas from the competition are actually being realized. Others we couldn't but but at the end, we are looking forward to see the results of this. And this is the end of the presentation. I want to thank you everybody for being here and being patient and listen to us. And I believe that now we have an opportunity to to open up for questions and to have a conversation. Yes, thank you so much, Adriana Victor, I think like Laila had mentioned at the very beginning would like the student to type their questions in the chat feature. And then we will read it for you guys. Thank you. Okay, I think I received the first question from an apologize for mispronouncing any name from at the end. She's asking if you can please explain the competition the competition process. I'm not sure which competition she's mentioned. Is it the last project? Yeah. This, this one at the beginning. The competition process, it was organized by the government by the federal government. And they had different categories. So they have public infrastructure, where you had markets, hospitals, schools, they have another category for public space and landscape. That's where we were invited. And the competition was organized together with the Faculty of Architecture, which is the National University of Mexico. They coordinated the competition. And they also invited the architects and firms to participate. So we were invited and it was a very fast competition because we received the invitation and more or less two weeks later we had to deliver an idea. So everything has been happening really fast in this project. Almost we haven't realized what what happened. Great. Thank you. I have another question from Nika Teper. In your project working within an ESCO site, are there specific protocols you must follow in terms of historic cultural preservation? Well, actually, the project was tackling the historic preservation methodology because what is protected is the agricultural technique, the Chinamp itself. It's an ancient technique that was developed by the Aztecs. So these were floating islands. So these areas in danger because urbanization is strengthening the model. So by recuperating the Chinampas, we are working hand in hand with preservation. Great. Thank you. The next question from Candelaria. Do you see the Mexican takubaya strategy being applied and implemented, adapted for other regions? How could this vision work for Arab cities? Yeah, we think it's a highly implementable model. Not just because it's technically feasible, but also because there's no more waters. So developers are now, as we mentioned in the presentation, forced in a way to be creative and they are actually very open to study and to understand what new techniques and what they have to offer to the city in order to implement circular models of water management. So technically, it's possible and there are, well, now takubaya is an interesting case because there's the interest of both the developers and also the city has announced it as a strategic area. So it's a great opportunity, but I think the case of takubaya can be presented to other city authorities and let them know that there's no need to wait for water to be completely scarce. And why wait for that moment? Let's try this model in other places that are not yet with this level of stress. But in the end, well, the ways that we can manage water are very similar here in takubaya and in other parts in other cities. So we think it's very, very feasible. Thank you. The next question is from Jamie Anaya. What has been the most challenging aspect for ORU in implementing long-term sustainable urban design approaches in a country like Mexico, which stands to work around short-term formal results? So how do you sustain kind of a long-term approach in the case where short-term is the way to go, let's say? So far, our practice is very young. We only have two years of existence, but we have worked previously with city authorities and in the Latin American case or in the case of Mexico, the biggest challenge is to skip, let's say, the interests that different parties have on a particular spot or a particular area. In many ways, even though you have a great vision and even though you have all the technical solutions, there will be always interests that are colliding with these proposals, right? So to us, I think this is the hardest part, to make sure that everybody understands the purpose of the project and the best available solutions, but unfortunately sometimes we just get on the way of these visions. But I think the other challenges, just to be open to collaborate with financial specialists, we're not used to collaborate with financial specialists. We're not used to sitting on a table with other disciplines that are looking onto maintenance mechanisms. So it's just a question of being able to create the framework in which other people can also contribute to the lasting vision of the project. Yeah, maybe as a follow-up, is there a kind of financial model that they would have to follow that you put in motion, let's say, in order to make sure some of those long-faced elements are still built or achieved? Well, I think each project has its own articularities and I think each project or each case needs to be reviewed one by one. But it's both operation, maintenance and finding solutions are necessary strategies and it's just something that is not at the very top of our minds while designing something. A lot of the times we think that the design will stand for itself but that's not necessarily true. We need to be able to spend time working out with financial specialists and with people that are able to activate the project because we can't do it all. This is something important. We don't have the control of the project, especially at these scales. Thank you. Anushai Eliorabi, I think the question is, this question pertains to sustainability and maintenance. For example, the agricultural projects, again to last, how do you assure the infrastructure is maintained? Are the farmers trained? For example, do you need to design their training into the phasing of the project? Yeah, that was part of the project. This allows the farmer to have a financial sustainability because the problem is that right now the farmers, they have the land, but even if they produce, they have no access to the market to sell their products. And if they want to compete with the industrial agriculture, they can do so. They can compete with the large industrial producers. So this is why the level, the certificate that is given to them allows them to sell their products as a fair rate, as they have high revenues, and this is an incentive for them to continue developing the system. So this is included into the design. This is the last part. Thank you. Matt Brubacher asks, working with large public entity, i.e. the government as the mutation, but also offers a certain amount of motive power, funding, structure, etc. Can you imagine a way that we as architects could start to bring this vision process or benefits to a more community, grassroots or small scale group working semi privately with limited resources? So how can you link the government into kind of the smaller scale grassroots approach? Yeah, I think that the process that we mentioned, we want to tackle that so that we can connect the community needs with the opportunity that the government has to invest in some areas. But sometimes the communities, they don't have a voice. So for us has been really important to connect with them and learn from what they need, and then bring that into the design. And then if I integrated them into the conversation, I think it's, we don't create proposals that come from our mind and imagination, rather we like to integrate different voices. So actually in the Takubaya project, for example, right now we have found an amazing partner, which is called Graciela, and she's a lady that lives in Takubaya and she's actually super connected. She knows everybody and she has a lot. She even shared more information that what we were able to find. She had all the government plans that the city has developed for many years. She knows all the problems and she has told us, we even had it right now that we are going through this crisis. We had a meeting with her by Zoom and she told us like we were discussing our proposal with her. So I think we have to reimagine how can we can find these key players into the communities. Right. And I just want to add something else that in, I'm sure this happens in other parts of the world, but here communities are very powerful. Communities can both promote a project or can stop big projects. I think our role as designers is to connect as we already mentioned and as Adriana illustrated is to be able to bridge the needs of everyone basically into a strategy that is catering to everybody's interest in a way. But this is of course this is this is one of the hardest parts in the design discipline. Oh, if I ask Victor actually and through what channels or and what venues would you say the community is able to express itself. As you mentioned, they have the power to do so. Yeah. So one, one thing that we that we did is for example, the video that we showed you in in Takubaya. This was a, this was an event where we invited everyone, the neighbors of Takubaya water specialists politicians, professors, and it was a since it's a neutral ground. Everybody has a voice and everybody is able to express their preoccupations and what they think is good for for the area. It's just a space. It's just being able to open these spaces so that so as to so that everyone can be heard. And, and then this of course has consequences right so a, this is just one one one example of how you can do it. But, but it's something that that we need to make sure that that is carried out through the whole process. We need to make sure that that everyone is taken into account in every step in every step of the process. Thank you. One more question that I have from Antonia about she says you mentioned the relationship between the Garden of Shadows and the channel next to it. Was that the main influence in your choice of vegetation for the project and what else did you take into account. So the choice of vegetation has to do with with the site and with the species that are endemic to the desert and to this tropical desert climate that is located in the city. And I think the question was also about the water channel, which was built by the water authority and since the channel was located besides our project, we tried to integrate it to these platforms where you can access the fault plane so that water is not only channelized but if the water is flowing we can just here and maybe the water will create a garden. Yeah, so just to compliment that the canal was built just to make sure that the water that is flowing in this in this area is channeled into a series of infiltration gardens. So rather than water just flowing through the space and then ending up accumulating in the lower areas, we are using the infiltration gardens to keep the water in this spot as much as as much as possible. Yeah, it was a way of hacking the create massive infrastructure that they wanted to implement. We couldn't get rid of it, it was a fight that we didn't, we couldn't but we're starting to find grounds of how to hack these infrastructures. So this infrastructure was kind of imposed on you, do you say more than in collaboration, I guess in terms of that edge. Well, yeah, I would say a water authority had its own project and we had to align. So we have to make a way that we can integrate both both desires, I guess. Yeah, that's great. I don't see any other questions that maybe I have one follow up question based on some of the thoughts that were brought up. You had mentioned at many points I think in your presentation few operating word that I thought were very interesting like you, the mid scale, for example you came back to it. Over and over you describe something called as the quasi object, which I think it's very interesting. What about the incremental strategy and how to replicate that. And all of those kind of strategies are a pushback against let's say the top down approach that the government usually is driven towards or also push back against the more say bottom up piecemeal approach that one would see happening, but not having the incremental scale that you desire. So I suspect that the mid scale is not really a proportional. It doesn't have, let's say specific dimensional criteria for you it has some other criteria with which you define what it is, whether it was a social or ecological or, or other so I would like to hear maybe from you more about how do you define that operating mid scale that you are interested in. Right. So, yeah, exactly the mid scale has doesn't necessarily have a fixed dimension. In the case of Takubaya it's something that we are still defining. The, the land management instrument that we mentioned for Takubaya has is basically a polygon is a defined polygon. But in our research we are discovering that interventions at that scale are not necessarily need to be confined within the limits of that polygon, but it's kind of a mix between good limits, also large scale infrastructure such as urban highways, the path of run offs that used to be rivers in the past. So it's basically an overlaying different kinds of information so as to have an idea of what the area of the mid scale in this case would be. But yeah, the idea of the quasi object is very near to the idea of the process where you can actually incorporate new dimensions that enable multiple participations. And then you have architectural interventions that trigger the, you know, the process of the construction of the new, let's say the new model of the city. This was interesting to us because we know that if we are thinking of Mexico City in terms of water sensitivity one cannot deploy strategies at the scale of Mexico City that's impossible. But, but the mid scale we think offers a more grounded opportunity to test multiple solutions and engaging with multiple partners. But it's a new concept even to us and we are also very interested in exploring the solutions that the landscape disciplines have to offer within the very, very tight urban fabric. A lot of landscape projects that we have seen occur in open areas or in areas that are really outside these tight fabric of the city. So it was it was interesting to see and to explore the limits of the landscape disciplines in this kind of urban fabrics. And maybe to complement that we, we are also looking at the mid scale because we have water has no, I'm putting here any match of water has no different boundaries usually we have the boundary the political boundaries, the municipal boundaries, and it shows what water does not reflect the reflects that so we had a done an analysis of the different scales of the watersheds in Mexico City. And what we found is actually that even if the area where the body on where the government was going to work. It's, it's kind of here, it actually corresponds to this micro watershed because it's still immense, which goes from the stream that will flow into into this area. So it's also the understanding of the territory of in which we are trying to develop the approach of the we call it the mid scale right, but it's also a concept of how the large the different scales are related to each other. Yeah, thank you. Now that was great. I think it's really interesting to kind of think about it, especially in the way you elaborated now like the quasi objects object. It doesn't imply a full object, but it's not the field or it's not the landscape only it's it's not only architecture it's not only landscape I guess it sits between these disciplines the way we understand them as separate. So it's kind of intersect both and I like this kind of the way you describe it it is. It's not it's there's a lack of boundary especially when you think about water very clearly but you also have about social boundaries like social boundaries and economic boundaries etc because a site doesn't tend to be so autonomous right as we operate on it. And which I think is a really kind of exciting way to think about form, let's say form making an intervention, intervention, physical intervention that doesn't lend itself either an architecture or a landscape. Yes, and also it doesn't talk about one entity right so you talk about multiple partners coming together so it's I think it's almost like you're locating yourself in between all of those with a kind of quasi position. Yes, that's correct. We, this is why we've been very insistent in the notion of blurring boundaries. And I think that the quasi object is that is precisely that it's the blurring of the boundaries between many, many elements from political social water, urban landscape. It's been an interesting and exciting research for us. No, that's great and I'm glad you expand on it because I want also to get the impression that from the students working on their project I'm thinking from their studio point of view now that you're not talking about moving from the lot to the block right to the urban you talk about another form of defining the site or a project or an insightful intervention that doesn't belong to the way we kind of used to think about scales, let's say. Yeah, I don't think that's great. Thank you so much. I mean, if you, unless you have more things to share with us. I think it's been like a really good an hour and a half now, our 20 minutes with very interesting questions. So I would like to, again, thank you for making yourself available from two different locations. Thank you. And it's been really fun and great. Kind of, I don't want to say it's a distraction from where we are today is actually very much engaged with it but it's also kind of an open imagination between the future. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you really appreciate it. So thank you also for being here. Yes, Victor, please. And just to finish, if anybody wants, we can share with you several links of the of the work and the research that we're carrying out. And perhaps just one final message for all the students is that what transformative projects are actually the result of a collective effort. There are various links between advocates, designers, policymakers, communities and politicians. So don't be afraid to go out there and engage all these parties.