Weekend Workshop with IWB Group

Group: Lota Renovación + IWB Group
Agenda: Exercise, lectures on Lota and IWB, brainstorming, BBQ
Locations: 4th year studio, Review Room, Lois' Sailing Club
Date: September 11th, 2010
Starting and Ending Time: 10:00am - 11:00pm

Exercise
Lois recruited Diana for a short one-hour excercise, during which we had to graphically answer a question "In Chile/Lota Project I see myself..."Everyone got a bristle board, stickers, and printed pictures/words that we could use to answer this question. Each student then presented their work.

Lectures
Lois Frankel
Lois introduced Michelle and Luigi (IWB project coordinators) and went on to talk about different methods of collecting data. It is obvious that collecting data using one method is not enough. A perfect example of it was the previous excercise (see: Exercise), in which we had to answer a question with the help of provided aid from instructors.

The result could have been much more telling if the question was formulated in different ways and the provided aid (such as bristle board) would have been more diversified.
Contextual mapping is only one of many methods ofdata collection.

Apparently, industrial designers are not very good at analysis, but are excellent at observation. With this project we will further develop the latter and learn the former.

Michelle Hotchin
Michelle's presentation consisted of slides and stories about Lota. This is Lota's logo, which translates into english as: History and Force that Moves Us.

The modern city grew with the coal mining industry in the mid-nineteenth century. It was established as a town on January 5, 1875 and became a city on 30 of November 1881. The name Lota is thought to be derived from a Mapudungun word Louta meaning small or insignificant settlement. The city’s coal mines were nationalized by Salvador Allende due to civil unrest and heavy Socialist support, but privatized again under Augusto Pinochet.

In the 1990s, after Lota’s coal resources were nearly exhausted and cheaper Colombian coal came on the market, the mines were closed, plunging the residents of Lota into poverty.Today, Lota is one of the poorest cities in Chile and is trying to turn its economy towards tourism. Tourist attractions include guided visits to the coal mine, White Beach, the Park of Lota (created by the Cousiño family), and the Historical Museum of Lota. The current population (2002) is 49,089. Central Lota has a lot of pedestrian walkways, and is big on street art, not just tags, but beautiful wall paintings. Horses and cattle are often used for transportation. One of the feature elements in Lota architecture are porticoes.

It seems, Chile has a strong municipal government, which is not highly influenced by the regional. After the earthquake hit, many buildings bacame known as "liar buildings" or pelligros. That means, they look fine on the exterior, but the structure within is nearly destroyed, rendering them unsafe to inhabit.

Two thousand five hundred (2,500) homes were destroyed, and people were moved into 18 square meters campamentos with no running water or proper bathrooms, introducing problems with mud, dirt, and lack of sanitation.

An interesting phenomen surfaced, when men refused to work low wage jobs at reconstructing the town, and women were the ones to pick up shovels and initiating post-catastrophe clean-up. Unemployment in Lota is 20% (official), 30% (unofficial).
Here's a link to Casa Digna, a short video on the destruction of Lota.

The video that Michelle showed us during the presentation was directed by Samuel Landaur (samylanda@gmail.com).

All the Chile Project slides and information will be forwarded to us later this month.

Cost: $1050 (tickets) + $132 (border tax) + $300 (spending money)
We are departing on October 23rd from Toronto (it is our responsibility to get to Toronto by the afternoon of that day) and return on October 31st - November 1st.
Things to bring: cash, travel health insurance (a must!), flea spray, layers of clothing, shower shoes, towel, cameras, laptops, adapters (220 Vt).

We will also later travel to Toronto to meet with IWB group again: November 4th - November 7th

Luigi Ferrara
Luigi gave an excellent introduction to the history and projects of IWB, which will also be forwarded to us later.

Agenda for this week (revised as per Lois' recommendation):

• meet on September 15th, 12:00pm to identify the themes that came up during the weekend workshop
• begin to compile and archive general information
• print Lota map in high resolution
• video conference with IWB on September 16th, 1:00pm
• continue researching and sharing information