+ CITIES AFTER EXTREME EVENTS [Graduate Studio]

PORTOVIEJO + QUITO, ECUADOR / SPRING 2019

Cities After Extreme Events: Neighborhood Adaptation Scenarios

Sponsor
Texas Tech University College of Architecture

Research Assistant
Thais Marcussi

Institutional Partners
San Gregoriano University; The Catholic University of Quito

TRAVELING GRADUATE STUDIO | ENGAGED DESIGN PEDAGOGY | URBAN REGENERATION SYSTEMS

Latin American Studio 2: Cities After Extreme Events examined post-disaster redevelopment in Ecuador’s mountainous and coastal cities, where rebuilding often triggers displacement. Focusing on neighborhoods in Quito and Portoviejo, students conducted field interviews and site research to understand how communities navigate landslides, resettlement, and large-scale infrastructure projects. In response, the studio proposed regenerative systems—including detritus upcycling, wetland cooperatives, and landslide-to-parkland strategies—that support grassroots resilience and municipal planning.

Through peer-to-peer workshops and field-based study with students at the Universidad San Gregorio (Portoviejo) and the Pontifica Universidad Católica del Ecuador (Quito), Texas Tech students traced the cityscapes that are shaped by the interaction of urbanization, large-scale development, and Ecuador’s dramatic geography.

The studio focused on six areas, three in Quito and three in Portoviejo, that reflect the diversification of urban informality in these cities and active engagement by residents in negotiations related to post-disaster redevelopment projects. By identifying comparative contexts as platforms for making post-disaster planning place-based, this studio challenged the tendency to ‘build back’ places to prior variations with a baseline of future-focused strategies that can be adapted in similar settings.