Diego Barajas
Monday 29 September — Sunday 2 November 2003
Diego Barajas presents his book Dispersion (episode publishers, 2003), a research on global mobility and territories in dispersion. Based in Rotterdam, Diego Barajas concentrates his research on the urban dispersals shaped by migration, looking first at the Cape Verdean Diaspora and its territorial structure and then focused on the case of the ‘belhuis’.
The project studies global mobility and territories in dispersion. ‘Territories in dispersion’ refer to social habitats that are no longer physically contained in geographically continuous areas, but have been spread out and re-articulated by artificial means.
The de-territorialized condition created by increased mobility – particularly by migration had led to an urbanism of artificial re-territorialization a fictional urbanism as based on mental constructions but tangible that is manifested in the city as fragments, micro-environments of global circuits, each of which establishes its own identity, time, rules, and aesthetics ‘its own atmospheres. These fragments are globally connected and articulated by abstract infrastructures like telecommunications systems, as much as by physical places ‘ethnic shops, religious centers, etc. and by the imaginary and idealized realms through which dispersed societies operate. This is an urbanism ruled by traditional values, by intuitive and emotional forces, as much as by efficiency and functionality.
This research includes an analysis of Hilberseimer urbanism of 20’s 40’s, a case study on Rotterdam into the Cape Verdean transnational territory and the structures of Belhuizen ‘call shops’ in the Netherlands.
Diego Barajas (Colombia) graduated with honors from the University of Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia and earned his Masters of Architecture in 2002 at the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Is member of SUR (Space for Urban Research) a network of researches in different disciplines around urbanism in South contexts particularly in Latina America.
Contact Diego Barajas diegobarajas [at] hotmail.com