Volume 47 25 Latent City Yaohua Wang 2 Editorial 49 Cycles of Creativity Arjen Oosterman 32 The Project Jan Jongert interview of a Collective Line 4 Mining Value Godofr edo Enes 55 Metabolic Wastebelts Lionel Devlieger  Pereira for Suburbia interview Alan M. Berger et al.

39 Neck of the Moon and MIT Center for 13 Resist, Release, Design Earth Advanced Urbanism Retire, Repeat Debbie Chen 43 Cos­mic Cir­cuitry 61 Logistical Hijack Sasha Engelmann Clare Lyster 21 Expanding Dredge Geologics 65 Global Security Neeraj Bhatia / Pipeline The Open Workshop Nick Axel

69 Acceleration and Rationalization Francesco Marullo

79 Rewiring Territories THE T he Petropolis of Tomorrow SYSTEM 87 P olysynthetic Reclamation Bruno De Meulder and Kelly Shannon 122 Coup De Grâce Patrik Schumacher 92 Unknown Unknowns 101 Revolution as Rob Holmes a Techni­cal Question 125 Infinite Circulation Amador Fernández- Ross Exo Adams 96 Open Supply Savater Blockchains 130 Babel Guy James 104 Geographies Edwin Gardner and of Uncertainty Christiaan Fruneaux 99 Deposition Effects Ghazal Jafari Jesse LeCavalier 134 Sample and Hold 109 Two Liquids Robert Gerard Pietrusko Tom Fox

140 Protocols of Interplay 116 Back to the Source Keller Easterling Thomas Rau interview

‘The system’ is oft lamented to little leveraging To position ones efforts effect. Aside from something out of our within a system so that its outcomes hands, what is ‘the system’, anyways? are multiplied by the system itself. And how out of our hands is it, really? short-circuiting. To modulate In this issue of Volume, we’re collecting resistance so that either excessive a series of definitions, maps and or insufficient current flows. strategies for intervening in it. disrupting To develop alternative processes and replace existing

Volume 47 Volume technologies.­ 1 infecting To introduce an alien and viral presence.

V47_BW_1MRT16-new grid-BIG-_JN_IB.indd 1 7/03/16 12:41 THE GREAT SOUTH AMERICAN PIPELINE by Godofredo Pereira and Samaneh Moafi, 2014. Volume 47 Volume 32 33

V47_BW_1MRT16-new grid-BIG-_JN_IB.indd 32 4/03/16 11:47 GODOFREDO ENES PEREIRA LATIN AMERICA IS A PLACE, BUT IT’S ALSO A PROJECT. ITS HISTORY AS A COLONIAL In 2006 Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, PROJECT GAVE BIRTH TO A RADICAL ONE Brazilian President Lula da Silva and Argentinean OF DECOLONIZATION. WITH REVOLUTION­ President Néstor Kirchner proposed the con­ ARIES LIKE SIMÓN BOLÍVAR AND JOSÉ struction of a gas pipeline connecting Venezuela DE SAN MARTÍN, THE IDEA OF LATIN AMERICA to Brazil and Argentina, called the Gran Gaso­ AS A COLLECTIVE WHOLE EMERGED AND duto del Sur. Although the project was never HAS PERSISTED UP TO THIS DAY. GODOFREDO built, its path through the Amazon rain­forest PEREIRA LOOKS AT THE FAILED PROPOSAL foregrounds the violent nature of resource extrac­ OF A PIPELINE RUNNING BETWEEN THREE tion. At the same time, the project raised unique COUNTRIES TO QUESTION WHETHER SUCH questions regarding the architecture of collec­ A MECHANISM CAN’T BE USED TO REALIZE tive politics, particularly if understood in the SUCH A PROJECT, THAT OF LATIN AMERICA context of the last fifteen years of political trans­ ITSELF. for­mations throughout Latin America. organizations emerged during these decades as important political actors. Examples such Neo-extractivism as the popular uprising known as the Caracazo We are now in the end of a cycle that in Venezuela in 1989, the Zapatista struggles witnessed during the past fifteen years a ‘turn in Mexico in 1994, the prominence gained by the to the left’ in Latin America. We can see this MST in Brazil from the mid-eighties,2 the CONAIE in the elections of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, in Ecuador and other indigenous organizations Lula da Silva and Dilma Rouseff in Brasil, Evo in Peru and Bolivia were instrumental both Morales in Bolivia, Nestor and Cristina Kirchner in resisting previously implemented economic in Argentina, Tabaré Vásquez and Pepe Mujica and political models and in maintaining the in Uruguay, Fernando Lugo in Paraguay and struggle for a different form of politics alive.3 Rafael Correa in Ecuador. Most of these elec­ These and many other social movements were tor­al victories emerged not only due to a dis­ part of broad coalitions without which govern­ course against colonial exploitation and post- mental elections would have never been won. colonial expropriation – a feeling of injustice It is from within this context that sociologist Eduardo Gudynas coined the term neo- extractivism. The term refers to this wave of left-leaning or ‘progressive’ govern­ments and how they have adopted inter­ven­tion­ THE ist policies around resource extraction, such as strengthening the role of the state, changing contractual arrangements with PROJECT transnational investors, raising rents and taxation regimes, etc.4 In so doing, govern­ ments like those of Kirchner and Chávez managed to wrest some degree of con­ OF A trol over their sovereign territories away from transnational corporations and fund a series of re-distributive policies. COLLEC­ Venezuela was paradigmatic in this sense. In the eyes of the government elected in 1999 under the leadership of Hugo Chávez, oil would allow not only TIVE LINE a radical break with the economic models underlined in the book Open Veins of Latin of the 1990s, but the opportunity to imple­ment a America1 – but also due to the continent’s series of political shifts at multiple scales: from submission in the eighties and nineties to the broad social programs to the re-struc­turing of Washington Consensus and its policies of the agricultural sector; from the upgrading of liberalization and free trade, implemented national infrastructure to the establishing

Volume 47 Volume by governments subservient to the IMF, World of new global partnerships. As in many other 32 33 Bank and US external policies.1 Against this, global cases, underground resources were social movements and popular non-governmental seen as the motor of development and a way

V47_BW_1MRT16-new grid-BIG-_JN_IB.indd 33 4/03/16 11:47 to exit the condition of colonial dependency a project. The inherently modernist nature that Venezuela had been stuck in for so many of such a gesture foregrounds what has been years. But to do so it needed to create condi­ a key political dispute within the left in Latin tions to insulate itself from the constant politi­ America: on the one hand, a common political cal pressure and power of its main trading project of national and regional sovereignty partner, the US. Contrary to previous govern­ based on resource nationalization and, on the ments, with Chávez, the availability of oil other, massive social movements of landless enabled the development of a ‘multi-polar’ peasants, indigenous populations and environ­ geopolitical strategy and the development mental activists, fighting back against the of – by way of financing – regional alliances expansion of these very extractive economies. and partnerships at the scale of the global The sheer immensity of the very idea of the South. Within this new frame Venezuela rein­ Gran Gasoducto del Sur project makes evident forced its position in OPEC, became a partner not only the dubious ecological impact of of MERCOSUR, participated in the creation a politi­cal project based on resource extraction of UNASUR, and created ALBA, an organization but also the tensions inherent between popular that promotes economic integration based power and progressive governments. It could on social welfare in response to the liberal be said that the tension between a modernizing policies of FTAA.5 Important trading partners desire to guarantee autonomy against neo- were found outside of Latin America too, such liberal policies by way of resource extraction as Russia, Iran and China. Considering that and the proposals for alternative (non-modern) these partnerships rely heavily on oil and gas forms of development brought forth by multiple trading, they can be seen as an extended social movements are an unresolved feature map of oil’s ‘political affordances’. In this sense, of every country in the area. the Chávez government’s establishment of PetroCaribe, PetroSur and PetroAndes was The Gran Gasoducto del Sur project didn’t clearly directed towards cementing ties with keep the image of the straight line that was drawn the three main cultural areas that influence by Chávez and Kirchner. In its most advanced Venezuela – Caribbean, South American and stage it connected key Brazilian cities such Andean countries. as Fortaleza and Brasilia (avoiding the Amazon rainforest) and from there to Montevideo in Uruguay and finally to Buenos Aires in Argentina. Gran Gasoducto del Sur In the end the project was abandoned, partially The Gran Gasoducto del Sur was a pro­ due to indigenous and environmentalist pro­ posal first formalized at the XXIX MERCOSUR tests, and partially due to Brazil’s state-owned meeting in Montevideo on 9 December 2005. oil company Petrobras backing out. In any In this meeting, energy ministers from Venezuela, case, its implicit construction of a ‘collective Argentina and Brazil signed a deal for the devel­ line’ can be read in two opposing ways: opment of an 8000–15000km gas pipeline to con­ As Venezuelan sociologist Garcia Gaudilla nect the three countries. On the 19 January 2006, notes, most of the institutions and intergovern­ presidents Hugo Chávez, Nestor Kirchner and mental partnerships of regional integration Lula da Silva approved the project and gave it its created by South American governments were name in a meeting in Brasilia. The gigantic gas thought as mechanisms for their integration duct would connect Puerto Ordaz in Venezuela into the global economy and emphasized the to Buenos Aires in Argentina. In addition to this, need for trade liberalization amongst members.6 it would allow pipelines to be connected to other For example, one of the common features to South American nations. This project was the all these agreements was the support for the most daring of all the interventions in the politi­ Initiative for Integration of Regional Infrastruc­ cal process of regional integration and eco­ ture in South America (IIRSA). IIRSA’s aim was nomic sovereignty. The photo-op of a later (and still is) the development of an infrastruc­ encounter shows Chávez and Kirchner tracing tural network of roads, dams, ferries, airports a straight line through the Venezuelan and and fiber-optic cables throughout the South Brazilian rainforest and the Bolivian, Paraguayan American continent in order to connect the and Argentinean plains. These lands are some region’s major cities and logistic centers to facili­ of the most protected areas of the world, and tate economic growth. Implicit to IIRSA is the

the leaders were apparently oblivious to the “favoring of flows over territories inhabited by 47 Volume environmental and indigenous concerns that peoples and nations” as noticed among others 34 35 would be raised by the implementation of such by social movements theorist Raúl Zibechi.7

V47_BW_1MRT16-new grid-BIG-_JN_IB.indd 34 4/03/16 11:47 Of course, by ‘territories and nations’, Zibechi context of an architectural design competition.11 was referring not to nation-states but to the We understood Chávez and Kirchner’s idea inhabitants of the South American hinterlands as a continuous monument to Latin America’s and in particular to its indigenous peoples. struggles for emancipation and as a manifes­ Understood within the context of IIRSA, the mode tation of solidarity between countries. Seen of integration the Gran Gasoducto was part in this light it was a unique gesture. Our project of is that of modernist spatial planning: a logis­ consisted of foregrounding this gesture of both tic carving of territory to facilitate the extrac­ cutting and bringing together as an eminently tion and circulation of resources as motors architectural one. In spite of its name, our pro­ of progress and development, from mining posal didn’t limit itself to simply building the to hydrocarbons and forestry. gas duct as originally planned. Instead, it sug­ gested that the project should be radicalized to its furthest political and spatial consequences A Collective Line – to the point where the circulation of hydro­car­ At first sight the idea of the collective bons acts in the spirit of the Venezuelan consti­ implicit in the Gran Gasoducto del Sur falls back tution, or, as Chávez would say, as “an instrument on unfortunately well-known modernist para­ of liberation and cooperation.” To be clear, digms. However, the proposal also pointed if anything defined the tenure of Chávez as to an idea of a collective that is transversal President it was the implementation of a redistri­ to the peoples of Latin America. This idea can butive politics – ‘sowing’ the money of oil to be traced back to Simon Bolívar and José de fund healthcare, literacy, housing, etc.12 As in San Martín, the key military commanders of the Brazil and Argentina, the social transformation independence wars against Spain, and their and the fight against inequality in Venezuela proposals of Pan-Hispanic unity. They ultimately was an extractive-based project. But in our failed to prevent the subdivision of Central and view, the project needed to move beyond such South America into multiple different countries, a modernist position and take into account but the idea remained alive and was made famous demands set by the social movements from by the words of Cuban poet José Marti in ‘Our whence this progressive wave of Latin American America’ (Nuestra America) and in those of the governments came to power; demands that Argentinian writer Manuel Ugarte in ‘Grand were not only for social justice, education Homeland’ (Patria Grande).8 Comporting to this and healthcare, but also for indigenous rights, idea of a collective, one should remember that for other paradigms of development and for after Argentina’s dramatic financial crisis of environmental protection against the extractive 2002 it was Venezuela’s buying of restructured industries themselves. Argentine bonds that allowed Kirchner’s govern­ We thus proposed that the Gran Gasoduto ment to remain viable.9 The gas duct con­nect­ del Sur should be re-conceived as a collective ing both countries would further cement such line at the scale of Latin America whose revenues friendship – a possibility of Latin American would pave the way for projects aimed to move solidarity that is evident in the image of the away from an extraction-based economy. two presidents embarking on a megalomaniac In its first installment this could take the shape re-designing of the continent by drawing on of a commons-protection-zone, a special juris­ a map with a thick felt-tipped marker. But if this diction­ established alongside the gas duct and is the case the power of the line was realized any future expansion of it. This implies that simply by tracing it on paper, simultaneously in order to transport gas, the member country as a connection and as a rupture with TINA’s would have to refrain from extractive activities paradigms;10 the line marked the possibility along the 1km-wide line (including agribusiness­ of a coming together between peoples and the and forestry) and instead promote other modes possibility of inscribing a different politics of production. The transportation of gas would in space. In starting with that line, that gesture, be limited to the time period necessary to pay the project evinced something very different for the development of the commons protec­ from the other IIRSA infrastructural projects: tion zone, after which it would be dismantled. it was first and foremost moved by transforma­ Our purpose was to avoid a simplistic opposi­ tive politics and by a collective project. tion of resource-extraction vs. environmental concerns. Instead, we wondered if it was possi­

Volume 47 Volume The Great South American Pipeline is a pro­ ble to take seriously the mythical Latin American 34 35 ject that proposes to explore the key ideas project: the construction of a collective that of the Gran Gasoducto del Sur project in the both recognized and respected the perspectives

V47_BW_1MRT16-new grid-BIG-_JN_IB.indd 35 4/03/16 11:47 of social movements and indigenous organiza­ ment and administration of the state as a pro­ tions, while at the same time being both able ductive apparatus.13 This notion of territory takes to balance the pre-existent extreme inequalities as its key object the management of circula­ ­tion, in South America and survive the economic be it of peoples and commodities. It is, at heart, pressures of international financial institutions. a military and logistic enterprise; it is the pro­ From here the project became a form of enquiry: ject of IIRSA and of which, as many have argued, along the line traced by Chávez and Kirchner the Gran Gasoducto is part. The second con­ are located some of the most disputed lands ceives of territory as the project of Patria in South America, from which we identified five Grande or Nuestra America, of a projected cases. The Orinoco Oil belt in Venezuela, who collective identity that informed the trans­ has already born witness to drastic environ­men­ forma­tive politics of ‘revolutionaries’ such tal contamination by the oil industry; Rondônia as ‘Ché’ Guevara or Hugo Chávez. This is not in Brazil, whose forests have been devastated a conception of territory as a clearly defined by accelerated urbanization and farming; Santa space, but as an assemblage permanently Cruz in Bolivia, where soybean plantations are under construction. More precisely, it is a matter forcing a massive deforestation and dispos­ of territorializing – a semiotic practice that session of indigenous communities; Chaco takes place through gestures, signs or sounds, in Paraguay, whose unique biodiversity is being through literature as well as spatial interven­ destroyed by large scale cattle herding; and tions.14 In this sense the line traced by Chávez Villa 31 in Argentina, a slum at the center and Kirchner is a political gesture that in mark­ of a dramatic dispute over urban regeneration ing space territorializes a collective project. and the rights to the city. Our initial project But if the project of the Gran Gasoducto did not propose a design for each condition. is of a collective, then the question is how can Instead, we wanted to evince the spatial and such collective encompass the perspectives territorial realities within which a collective of social movements and indigenous peoples. line would have to be imagined. For us the line In its path across South America, the line traced was the beginning of a research project on the by Chávez and Kirchner intercepted territories architecture of a possible solidarity between that are neither those of the nation-state’s fixed the peoples of Latin America. borders nor those of an imagined Pan-Hispanic union. It intercepted collective territories that don’t necessarily have physical limits or borders The Architecture of Solidarity and that correspond to a multitude of particu­ The Gran Gasoducto del Sur project marks lar modes of living and singular worldviews;15 a period of radical political transformations collective territories of which forests, stones in Latin America. For the first time a cohort and spirits are often part and the languages of progressive left-wing parties were in power. spoken are neither Spanish nor Portuguese. Its heroic dimension is thus indiscernible from Social movements that emerged as key politi­ the horizons opened by these socio-political cal actors throughout Latin America conquered ruptures. Surely the Gasoducto was partially space for the alternative notions and practices a logistical project aimed at a mode of regional of territory and the possibility of co-existence integration based on resource extraction and between radical difference. Despite the fact the circulation of capital. However, it was firstly that most progressive governments have slowly a project of political and material transforma­ returned to the old ways of extracting and tion. Underlying the difference between an infra­ plundering, it is still towards such a collective structural and a political understanding of the project that we should be aiming for. And pipeline proposal are two very different concep­ as architects we cannot but ask ourselves tions of territory. The first conceives of territory what such a collective project could be. within the tradition of the sovereign nation-state: territory as a political technology for the manage­ Project Team: Godofredo Enes Pereira, Samaneh Moafi Volume 47 Volume 36 37

V47_BW_1MRT16-new grid-BIG-_JN_IB.indd 36 4/03/16 11:47 ARGENTINEAN PRESIDENT NÉSTOR KIRCHNER AND VENEZUELAN PRESIDENT HUGO CHÁVEZ plot the route of the Gran Gasoduto del Sur over a map of South America. Puerto Ordaz, Venezuela, 21 November 2005. Photo: Presidency of the Argentinean Government

1 Eduardo H. Galeano, Open Centro Latino­americano de 2015. At: www.cipamericas. Misión Vivienda Venezuela veins of Latin America: Five Ecologia Social, 2009). org/es/archives/16490 (GMVV). The purpose of this Centuries of the Pillage of a 6 ALBA is the acronym for the (accessed 13 February 2016). plan was to produce at least Continent (London: Bolivarian Alliance for the 9 José Marti, ‘Nuestra 500,000 new affordable Serpent’s Tail, 2009). Peoples of Our America, or America’, El Partido Liberal, houses per year, up to a 3 The Landless Workers in Spanish the Alianza March 5, 1892 (Mexico City); target of 3 million residential Movement – in Portuguese Bolivariana para los Pueblos Manuel Urgarte, ‘Patria units in the country by 2019. Movimento dos de Nuestra América; The Grande’, (Barcelona: 14 Stuart Elden, ‘Land, Terrain, Trabalhadores Sem Terra – Free Trade Area of the Internacional, 1922). Territory’, Progress in Human emerged in 1984 in Brazil Americas was an expansion 10 Conrado Hornos, ‘Chávez Geography, 34 (6), 2010, from a long history of of the North American Free keeps up South American pp. 799–817. landless peasants and small Trade Agree­ment (NAFTA), energy diplomacy’, Reuters, 15 On territory see Gilles farmers struggles for the perceived as a foreign policy 8 August 2007. At www. Deleuze and Félix Guattari, right to farm idle land and implementation mechanism reuters.com/article/us- ‘1837: Of the Refrain’, in A for justice in land distri­ of the US government. venezuela-uruguay- Thousand Plateaus bution. See mstbrazil.org 7 Maria-Pilar Garcia-Gaudilla, idUSN0835483220070808 Capitalism and 4 Atilio A. Borón, ‘Promises ‘Neo-extractivismo, Neo- (accessed 13 February 2016). Schizophrenia (London: and Challenges: The Latin rentismo y Movimientos 11 TINA is the acronym for Continuum, 2008). American left at the Start of Sociales en la Venezuela del There Is No Alternative, a 16 For a discussion of the the Twenty-first Century’. In: Siglo XXI: conflictos, slogan frequently used by problem of territory in ibid., Barret, Chavez, protestas y resistencia.’ Margaret Thatcher to argue relation to peasant or Rodríguez Garavito. Conference paper presented for free market, free trade indigenous worldviews see: 5 Eduardo Gudynas, 2009, at the XXXI International and labor deregulation. Arturo Escobar, Territories of ‘Diez Tesis Urgentes Sobre El Congress of the Latin 12 Think Space, Money. At: Difference: Place, Nueveo Extractivismo: American Studies http://think-space.org/en/ Movements, Life, Redes Contextos y demandas bajo Association(LASA), 30 May – past-themes/money/theme/ (Durham: Duke University el progresismo 1 June 2013, Washington DC. (accessed 13 February 2016). Press, 2008). sudamericano actual’. In: 8 Raul Zibechi, “Interconexión 13 In particular the government

Volume 47 Volume Extractivismo, Política y sin integración: 15 años de initiated the housing 36 37 Sociedad (Quito: Centro IIRSA”, in Programa de Las programme Misión Habitat, Andino de Acción Popular, Americas, 23 September followed in 2011 by Gran

V47_BW_1MRT16-new grid-BIG-_JN_IB.indd 37 4/03/16 11:47