Carlos Arroyo / Productive Landscapes, poetic pragmatism in an urban context

In post-industrial Europe, a political and cultural debate over landscape had developed by the eighties, prompted by agents with interests as diverging as those of the environmental movement at one end, and the artists and theorists of Land Art at the other. The crisis that put an end to that decade changed the political agenda, leaving the debate unresolved; but the consciousness of an altered landscape had emerged, as well as the possibility to actively participate in its transformation as a cultural object.

At present, an equally diverse set of factors urge us to adopt an innovative strategy to make sense of altered landscapes (whether they are rural, urban, industrial or post-industrial landscapes), which in the current economic cycle are undergoing one of the biggest transformations in its history.

Continue reading

Carlos Arroyo / Biography

Carlos Arroyo is a Linguist, Architect, Urban Planner, and Researcher. He has a Madrid based office for Architecture and Urbanism, with international commissions in Spain, France, Belgium, Rwanda, Colombia and Argentina. His work ranges from institutional projects (OostCampus, Belgium) to large scale planning (Toledo Eco-neighborhood, Spain). He has developed protocols for innovation on all scales, from building technology to landscape management, developing new types of public building, or researching into new forms of housing. His projects, described by critics as “sustainable exuberance”, set the frame for a new architectural culture, language and aesthetics, through the ethics, technology and parameters of sustainability. His projects have been exhibited in international venues like the Venice Biennale or the Institut Français d’Architecture, and featured in hundreds of international publications in Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas, including an extensive dossier in El Croquis. He has taught and lectured in over 50 international institutions, including Tokyo University, AIA NYC, Princeton SOA, Boston MIT, Berlin TU, Vienna IKA, Paris ES, ENSAPlV, Bogotá PUJ, Santiago PUC, Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires FADU.