LWCIRCUS announces new event | MayaLab020 – Design Methods Based On Social Practice in Mexico

LWCircus-MayaLab020| 27th March-4th April 2020 | Puerto Progreso seaside and Cienega Lacustrine area, Yucatan (Mx) (Deadline to Apply 8 March)

OPERATIVE WORKSHOP LWCIRCUS | LANDSCAPE DESIGN METHODS BASED on SOCIAL PRACTICE – Shared practice strategies for natural areas preservation and cultural landscapes revaluation

This experiential workshop, based on research in the field, looks for innovative operative design methods in collaboration with local communities and their relationship and coexistence with environmentally sensitive areas. Participants investigate shared practices; look for devices and scenarios to highlight prospective forms of sustainable development; work for a RESILIENT and INCLUSIVE RURAL FUTURES for the local Mayan Community. LWC represents an unique opportunity for students that are looking to learn about themselves and their world through a different methodology. That methodology immerses students in sensitive remote landscapes, and fosters an environment where they are encouraged to collaborate with diverse global practitioners (artists, architects, landscape architects, anthropologists, ethnographers, musicians or film directors) and people from the local community with multiple backgrounds and learning styles.

The workshop will be based in Puerto Progreso seaside and Cienega Lacustrine area, in the Coast of Yucatan Peninsula, as well as the main topic will be on the shared design practices strategies in collaboration with the locals looking for preservation of its cultural landscape revaluation. The students will start in researching and testing with alternative method working together with the Mayan cultural minorities living in Puerto Progreso, having the opportunity to live a full immersed experience on field, working with locals on the topic of the sustainable rural development inside the sensitive area, where at the moment the Mayan minorities are pressing on the natural system’s carrying capacity through a beginning of some informal uncontrolled rural developments. Causing a possible future high risk of pollution, that could affect seriously the Natural Area system both in seaside and Cienega Lacustrine area.

The main purpose of this INTENSIVE workshop experience is to encourage students to use their acquired knowledge with different attitudes, as the anthropological survey and shared design process with the rural Mayan population; working sensitively and responsibly with the locals for a sustainable outcome, to rediscover a “sense of the place”. The outcome may result in a re-appropriation of the traditional way of living and of recycling the waste, using and caring the place, where different members of the community can interact properly with the natural components, rediscovering the mutable open space as important heritage that needs respect, as a medium of cohesion between the community, its minorities, and the other components of the local natural landscape. The aim will be focused on the investigation around shared practices, through the involvement of multicultural and multi-disciplinary attitudes, looking for devices able to give life to long term process in term of sustainable development for the local communities and minorities that will be directly interested along the entire workshop’s path, from the survey phase till the final operative phase.

Under the guidance of the professors, local experts in environmental conservation strategies and local artistic-cultural conservation, the fully immersive experience will give to the students the opportunity to acquire precious knowledge and different attitudes in the sustainable design of cultural landscapes in natural and rural sensitive contexts. The students will have direct experience in this context – make measurements, interview local experts, survey on site, visit the natural sensitive context; retrace the history of Puerto Progreso seaside and Cienega Lacustrine area through the times; speak with Administrators and different resources users to collect precious information fundamental to prepare a Plan Guide and Micro Design proposals that will be discussed on-site by colleagues and international guest critics, resulting a base for the installations (cultural shelters) that will be realized during the Operative Workshop. The local Community and minorities interested by the LWC-MayaLab020 will have a major role inside the workshop experiences and on the base of the quality of the established relationships, it will depend the final result in terms of shared design process and final realizations on site. LWC Program’s goal over the next years is to contribute in the generation of self-sufficient communities through a different landscape design practice on site. This started with LWC-ArnoLab017 by enabling the local community to sustainably re-purpose a common equal and inclusive space inside the context selected and it will continue along the MayaLab020 and the astonishing natural and cultural contexts selected on the Puerto Progreso seaside and Cienega Lacustrine area inside the YUCATAN Region .

SCIENTIFIC COORDINATION
Pedro CAMARENA | UNAM – LAAP + LWC-MX | CDMX
Annacaterina PIRAS | LWC – IT | Florence

TUTORS & LOGISTIC REFERENTS
Wassim CHAMOUN | Juancarlos TELLO GURRIZ | Lea KALPAKLIAN | Marianela PORRAZ | Alessandra Lo DUCA

PHOTOGRAPHERS, VIDEO-MAKERS, SOUND ENGINEERING & PERFORMERS
Andrea FAGGIONI | Pim SCHALKWIJK | Chiara BALDI | Kazuhiro ISHIYAMA | Tahara TADAYUKI

Find out more at LWCIRCUS. Applications close 8th March.

Manuals