Prof. Diego Ramirez-Lovering on PIVOT

In 2006 I led a four-month study of Guadalajara, Mexico… my hometown. It began as an exploration of vernacular and utilitarian forms of architecture and their connection to social patterns. As the investigation deepened, there was an evolution in thinking from:

what architecture is (as an object or series of objects)…

to what it does (as a contributor to urban processes)…

to urban processes as constituent parts of larger city systems…

to the operation of city systems as complex combinations of the planned and the unplanned.

This was a real pivot point – the beginning of a transition away from a practice focusing on objects toward a focus on systems and the messy realities of cities as complex assemblages of physical, social and economic structures.

It was the start of a new direction – effecting processes of transformation for the informal cities of the Global South.