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Ana Vargas wins AFIELD Fellowship 2018

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In November of 2018 our founder and director, Ana Cristina Vargas, won the AFIELD Fellowship 2018 prize for the TPS projects execution. This prize was granted thanks to the idea of developing a digital manual that will allow other architects and designers to replicate the Tracing Public Spaces’ methodology in Venezuela and other countries.

AFIELD is a collective network of artists, activists and cultural entrepreneurs who instigate sustainable social initiatives around the world. It is based on a fellowship programme that has been working since 2014 and, to this day, it has awarded 8 talented individuals. Initially, the individuals are recognized and chosen by their peers on the cultural and artistic practice and have decided to start a citizen-based project. These initiatives generally take the form of schools, research centres, cultural houses, etc.

This programme belongs to Council, an art organization founded in Paris in 2013 that operates internationally and it seeks to gather different audiences and collaborators for each one of the projects. Council believes in the transformative potential of the arts and it works to extend its influence across other domains.

Congratulations Ana! Thanks to this incredible prize we can continue tracing spaces, promoting citizenship and the encounter in public spaces.

Casa del Deporte

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San Antonio neighborhood, Naiguatá, Vargas, Venezuela. April - October 2017.

Team: Ana Vargas, Raquel Portillo, Gabriela Puppio, Leysbel Osorio, Héctor Chang, Daniela Hernández, Diana Ruiz Hueck, Nayari Medina, Jennifer Pacheco, Eliana Ramírez, Orlys Pacheco, and Ana Rodríguez.

Trazando Espacios in Naiguatá was a Macro workshop organized in partnership with Beatriz Padrón and her family where the TEP Team worked during the months of April to October of 2017 with 15 children between the ages of 9 and 13 and Azhair Navarro, community leader, as an local aly in the community of the San Antonio neighborhood in Naiguatá, Vargas State.

In this program the children learned, in three stages, to observe their community from a new perspective which allowed them to imagine how to transform the public spaces in their community and finally intervene a social center for all the neighbors: La Casa del Deporte (a community sports center).

In the first stage, OBSERVE, the TEP students learned about the importance of having spaces for community gatherings. Together we walked around Naiguatá to discover and identify the public spaces that exist in the area. We founds parks, bolas criollas fields, soccer fields, basketball courts, plazas, boulevards, public swimming pools, and the most precious of all: the beautiful beaches that surround the entire area. The students also learned photography techniques, which they used to take photos of the places that highlight their local identity. Those places were marked on a big map, which we painted and then exposed to the entire community to choose a space for us to transform: la Casa del Deporte.

After the second stage, IMAGINE, where the children carried out surveys to listen to their neighbors’ opinions and ideas of transformation, they learned basic design concepts such as surface area and the elements that compose a space, the sue of patterns, and the measuring tape as a tool to measure and scale dimensions. All of this so they could make their models taking into account the real proportions of the chosen place. We had an exciting trip with Referentes de Diseño, where the students, along with their representatives, travelled from Vargas to Caracas to visit Villa Planchart, known as Quinta El Cerrito, part of the Venezuelan architectural patrimony where each space and element is a work of art. And we visited the Jardines Ecológicos Topotepuy where the children learned about the types of gardens and sowing techniques using recycled material. This, without a doubt, was a day full of design ideas to inspire the students to work on their transformation proposals for the Casa del Deporte. Finally, we had a second exposition to the community where they chose the projects they were going to build.

La Casa del Deporte was founded in 1983 and was recovered by the neighbors after the Vargas landslide in 1999. For many years the community had been claiming to the authorities for the rehabilitation of this House where a Centro de Diagnóstico Integral functions. There are also bolas criollas and baseball teams, aerobics competitions, dance therapy, casino salsa and dance classes. In the last stage of the workshop, TRANSFORM,  more than 90 volunteers and neighbors from the community, starting from the youngest, became empowered to be the protagonists of the chang they wanted to see and intervened 110 m2  of the wall when restoring the facade of the Casa del Deporte with more than 9,000 caps and re-used mosaics. We also added a 8 m2 ceiling by building a pergola with 288 cans to provide shade for the platform by the bolas criollas field, which is located behind the Casa. We also built some furniture: 3 shelves that function as a library, 4 tables and 10 benches.

This intervention allows for the restoration of the Casa and; therefore, allows the community to recover its use as a place to teach classes for the entire San Antonio community and to reactivate the Club de los Abuelos (Grandparents Club), which used to meet in this space. This space also served as a nice waiting space for the Centro de Diagnóstico Integral’s patients in the Casa.

We want to thank our partners who made this workshop possible: Beatriz Padrón and family, the Fundación Club Playa Azul, Pizza Caracas, Impresiones Flexonet 2000, Pinturas Corimon, Grupo Ferfuen and Piscinas Latinoamericanas. We also thank the volunteers and professors invited to our complementary classes: the visual artist el Abraham Rosales, the architect and CEO of NoutaEC Gaudy Martínez, the landscapist María Mercedes Hernández and the nutritionist Andrea Castellanos.

If you are near Naiguatá, don’t hesitate to visit the Casa del Deporte, which is located here.  

The Tank

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San Miguel La Vega, Capital District, Venezuela. June-August 2017

Team: Ana Vargas, Raquel Portillo, Leysbel Osorio, Héctor Chang, Daniela Hernández, Diana Ruíz Hueck and Ana Rodríguez.

Tracing Spaces, in partnership with two other organizations, Alimenta La Solidaridad and Caracas Mi Convive, transformed a meeting place in San Miguel de La Vega. El Tanque, a space that was being used as a parking lot, was intervened and transformed with the addition of planters and a chalk board, and now functions as a learning and play area for the little ones of the community.

A team of 54 people, made up of 23 children between the ages of 3 and 14 who live in La Vega; 8 community volunteers, and 7 members of Alimenta Solidaridad and Caracas Mi Convive among other, participated in this intensive workshop.

Through this workshop. Caracas Mi Convive was able to institutionalize the work they have been doing in this neighbourhood for the past 10 years. Their objective has been to reduce delinquency rates in the area and transform El Tanque into a nonviolent space.

This workshop was carried out in three phases during the months of June, July, and August 2017 and their activities included the germination of seeds, the measuring of the spaces to be intervened, preparing the wood to be cut and sanded, assembling the pieces of wood into planters, varnishing and painting, and attaching the planters to the wall.

Following the designs, the students built 28 planters, one chalk board, and an alphabet made from recycled bottle caps set  in the pavement, an idea that was proposed by a group of girls from a nearby neighbourhood.  This resulted in  the intervention of 80m2 on the ground surface, and 48m2 wall surface, recuperating a space that was used as a  garbage dump but now is a  multipurpose public space.  Although this space is still being used as a parking lot, it will also be used as a meeting place and  a play and  educational area for the whole community.

Mural in the Rural School of Río del Pilar

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El Rincón, State of Sucre, Venezuela. July 10, 2017

Team: Ana Vargas, Hector Chang, Diana Ruíz, Ana Rodríguez, Mariana Cardozo, Leysbel Osorio, Leticia Gaona, Catherine de Wolf, Daniela Hernández and Raquel Portillo.

On Monday, July 10, 2017, the TEP team visited the a rural school in Río del Pilar - located in the peninsula Paria in Venezuela - to paint the walls of the classrooms along with the students who attend it. The cozy rural school has a history to tell us, it is not the same school it was 6 months ago. In February, our team had the opportunity to visit it. At that time, the structure was divided by a single wall, which allowed for two classrooms: one room for preschool students, and the other room for the whole primary students (1st to 6th grade). The teachers tell us that it was very difficult to maintain order and focus. One of the teachers emphasized that the difference between a first grader and a sixth grader was too large for the classroom to function effectively.

After that visit in February, the TEP team presented a proposal to knock down the central wall and replace it with two new walls. This way, there would be a room for preschool, another for students from 1st to 3rd grade, and one for students in grades 4-6. The transformation was carried out by Guillermo, who is a local mason and father of one of the children who attends the school, with the support of the San José Foundation.

On this occasion, the TEP team returned to the school to paint the walls of the room. The design of the murals was inspired by drawings made by the children themselves during the February visit. During the day, the team taught children to use stencils to paint. In addition, we had the support of other members of the community. From very early on, the mothers of children were cooking a delicious soup for volunteers and our young artists. Our team left with great excitement and great energy to continue the interventions in the region of Paria.

Tracing Public Spaces in Boston

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This coming thursday June 8th from 6:00-7:00pm, at Impact HUB Boston our director and founder Ana Vargas will be discussing her method "Tracing Public Spaces" and sharing the results of her work in Venezuela, India, and Chile. 

Tracing Public Spaces is a new methodology to study, create awareness and inspire future leaders, children, to take action to transform public spaces in high-density informal settlements. It proposes a multi scalar bottom-up analysis, with innovative tools of representation and design to address the challenges of community public spaces.

Ana developed the method ‘Tracing Public Spaces’ during her Master’s thesis at MIT in 2013, with support from the Tata Center for Technology and Design, through fieldwork in India, Venezuela and the USA. The method is based in observation, representation and design using a ‘toolkit’ that enables a two-way learning process between the designer as an ‘outsider’ and children as ‘insiders’.

If you are in Boston and you want to know more about what we do, please register in the following  link

Tracing Public Spaces in New York City

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Next tuesday June 13th from 6:00-8:00pm, at WeWork Times Square our director and founder Ana Vargas will be discussing her method "Tracing Public Spaces" and sharing the results of her work in Venezuela, India, and Chile. 

Tracing Public Spaces is a new methodology designed to study, create awareness and inspire future leaders, children, to take action to transform public spaces in high-density informal settlements. It proposes a multi scalar bottom-up analysis, with innovative tools of design to address the challenges of communities through public spaces.

Ana developed the method ‘Tracing Public Spaces’ during her Master’s thesis at MIT in 2013, with support from the Tata Center for Technology and Design, through fieldwork in India, Venezuela and the USA. The method is based in observation, representation and design using a ‘toolkit’ that enables a two-way learning process between the designer as an ‘outsider’ and children as ‘insiders’.

If you are in New York and want to know more about what we do, please register in the following link

Agustín García Padilla School

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El Rincón, State of Sucre, Venezuela. May 16 - 19 / July 11 - 14, 2017

Team: Ana Vargas, Diana Ruíz, Raquel Portillo, María Daniela Ceballos, Ana Rodríguez, Hector Chang, Daniela Hernández, Leticia Gaona, Leysbel Osorio, Catherine De Wolf and Mariana Cardozo.

Tracing Spaces at the Agustín García Padilla School consists of an intensive educational program, where the TEP team traveled for a week to the community of El Rincón in the state of Sucre, to work in alliance with the San José Foundation. This program will be developed in two parts: the first part in Imagine how it could be a park for the school; and the second in Transform, that is to say, to construct the park that the participants imagined.

The Imagine stage consisted of several activities where the 44 participants, 5th and 6th graders, imagined what a park could look like in the school. To begin, the students carried out graphic surveys to the rest of the student community to know what were their favorite games and what elements had the park of their dreams.

Then the young people learned to use the tape measure and to draw in proportion the games and elements that prevailed in the surveys. The most popular games are soccer, jumping rope, airplane, spinning top and marbles; the favorite items of the respondents are swings, slides, seesaws, spinning wheels and climbing walls.

The next activity consisted in making some collages where the participants divided into groups, shaped with clippings of magazines how the environment of the park would look and where the elements that make it up would be placed. Finally, to close this week full of creativity, each group made a scale model of the site chosen for the park, filling it with proposals to transform the school yard into a park.

Each team presented their ideas and models to the rest of the student community who voted for their favorite elements and surfaces. Now the TEP Team returns to Caracas to transform the winning ideas of the models into technical construction plans. Soon we will return to El Rincón to build the new park for the Agustín García Padilla School designed by 5th and 6th graders!

 

José Rafael Pérez Valdivieso High School

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El Rincón, State of Sucre, Venezuela. May 16 and 17, 2017

Team: Ana Vargas, Maria Daniela Ceballos, Hector Chang, Eliana Ramirez, Diana Ruiz, Ana Rodríguez and Raquel Portillo.

Tracing Spaces at the José Rafael Pérez Valdiviezo High School, aimed to teach participatory design tools to transform the courtyard of the institution. The Trazando Espacios team traveled to the town of El Rincón to work with 9th grade students of the school with the San José Foundation team as a local ally.

In this program we invited young people to transform the beautiful garden inside their school into a space for recreation, a pleasant and shady place where they could sit down to talk with their classmates, eat their snacks or just spend the break. This was achieved by building a series of benches made from recycled pallet wood.

More than 50 students participated in the activity. Divided into groups, they first made a schematic model of where the benches were to be placed strategically in the yard. Then they went on to build the 3 types of proposed benches. Participants learned about recycling and proportions, as well as using construction tools: tape measure, conveyor, level, sandpaper, paintbrush, hammer and saw.

Working with young people and the educational community in bench building, we discovered many skills that for some were unfamiliar, such as leadership, teamwork, hand skills, space and math skills, carpentry and design. Thanks to the realization of the benches, the young people managed to create this new space of entertainment for the entire educational community.

Quebrada Seca

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Quebrada Seca, State of Sucre, Venezuela. May 18, 2017.

Team: Ana Vargas, María Daniela Ceballos, Hector Chang, Eliana Ramírez, Diana Ruíz, Ana Rodríguez and Raquel Portillo.

The educational program Tracing Spaces at the Quebrada Seca Rural School Nucleus, located in the remote town with the same name, aimed to teach participatory design tools to transform a meeting space within the institution, sowing the value of citizenship in the members of the educational community. The team traveled to the small town of Quebrada Seca to work with primary school students with the support of the San José Foundation team as a local ally.

This time emphasis was placed on the third step of our methodology: Transform. The proposal was to construct in one day a mural of planters that, besides transforming a wall of the school, would function like germination pots for the orchard that normally works in the school.

Through the realization of 16 planters made of recycled wood pallets, the group of 17 young people aged between 7 and 12 years learned about recycling, planting, teamwork and proportions. They also learned how to use construction tools such as tape measure, sandpaper, level, hammer and brush.

Working with the students and the educational community in the construction of the planters, skills such as leadership, teamwork, manual and logical skills flourished, a fact that surprised us pleasantly. We loved working in this community, and we look forward to the participants being able to replicate what they learned and continue filling the mural of planters!

 

What leadership means – Ana Vargas in the World Economic Forum

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Ana Cristina Vargas

Architect

Ana Vargas, cultural leader in the World Economic Forum in Davos 2017, Wascon Shakira, Jamie Oliver, Forest Whitaker and 11 other artists and activists about the meaning of leadership:

“Responsive and responsible leadership, to me, is to act as a guide for those who follow us, being aware of the time we are living in and realizing how every one of our actions impacts the foundations we lay for those who will come after. In that sense, arts and culture are a medium that transcend everyday urgency and remind us to stop and reflect on the future, our lives and our roles in society.”
– Ana Vargas

Learn more…