Internet Studio 2001 :: "Connectad Centers of the las Americas" for Culture and Commerce
1. PROGRAM
(click
here to see the program)
| 2. THE HIGH-BANDWIDTH
INVASION
Latin America is at the border of an invasion of high bandwidth Internet. Half a dozen companies are finishing their interoceanic fiber optic networks and are emerging on places such as Fortaleza, Rió de Janeiro, Las Toninas, Valparaíso, Lurin, Buenaventura, Punta Gorda, and Puerto Viejo and from there they are connecting the Latin American capitals to world wide high-bandwidth networks.
3. THE LAST MILE However, before this major investment can be felt for the common citizen the Latin American countries and institutions must upgrade in most cases their local networks, equipments. What is called the “last mile” problem is one that Latin American institutions will have to confront in the next five years before they can enjoy the benefits of high-bandwidth technology. 4. "THE CONNECTED CENTERS OF THE AMERICAS" FOR CULTURE AND COMMERCE (CCA). The purpose of the Connected Centers of the Americas is the creation of a place in each major Latin American city in which the common citizen, businesses, and cultural institutions can have access to the high bandwidth in the next five years. In its program the CCA has an area of cultural/commercial exhibition, popular interaction, rooms for videoconferences, and administrative area, an auditorium for 200 people. The objective is to support cultural and commercial institutions in their efforts of regional integration allowing them a space in which they can access this high-bandwidth technology while the problem of the “last mile” is resolved. The infrastructure of the project is of temporary character and it is expected to have a use of 3 to 5 years initially above public open space in each one of the cities in which these centers are created. Each studio will choose an open space in their own city. 5. MATERIALIDAD 5. MATERIALITY The discussion about the temporary or permanent character of the infrastructure can provide an important architectonic debate about the process of fabrication, materiality and construction of the project (see references in web site for digital-real processes). 
6. THE STUDIO The idea is that each student in his or her studio constructs a Connected Center of the Americas in each city. Each infrastructure emerges simultaneously in each une of the participating cities in which the Internet Studio 2001 takes place. The simultaneous act of constructing these centers has the intention not only of playing with the perceptive memory in the cities but also pretends to take advantage of the technologies of telecommunication to enter into the arena of integrating the digital and real among the cities that connect. In the fist half of the semester students will develop their own projects in their own cities. However as they develop their projects they will be required to look at the work of other students of other participating schools of architecture. In the second half of the semester students will be ask to participate in groups between 3 and 5. Each member will be from a different studio. Students will present their work in group, still they will be responsible of their own projects in their own cities. However, presentations and online reviews will be conducted in groups. Students will be asked in the first half of the semester to post their work regularly and to negotiate with other students the conformation of those inter-school groups. 7. HARDWARE
& SOFTWARE
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