Tracing Public Spaces | TEP
Donation protected
Trazando Espacios is a non-profit organization focused on teaching and building citizenship through participatory design to transform public spaces.
Trazando Espacios has developed a series of educational programs to teach architecture and urban design tools to children and empower them to transform public spaces. Our bet is on younger citizens, children between ten and fifteen years of age, future leaders eager to change their communities. Through our workshops, children learn to OBSERVE, IMAGINE and TRANSFORM public spaces. After the workshops, the kids close a transformation cycle, from finding something that can be changed to making it happen.
TEP Methodology
Tracing Public Spaces (Trazando Espacios Públicos | TEP in Spanish) is a new methodology to study, create awareness and inspire future leaders to take action to transform public spaces in low-income communities. It proposes a bottom-up analysis, with innovative tools of representation and design to address the challenges of public spaces.
Trazando Espacios Publicos was founded in Venezuela, in March 2016. However, their work began during the Summer of 2013 when its founder, architect Ana Vargas, was doing her Master’s thesis at MIT. With support from the Tata Center for Technology and Design, Ana conducted field research in India, Venezuela and the USA. Her thesis was awarded Thesis Prize at MIT and Best Practice Award by UN Habitat a year later.
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’.
Program Funding
The project proposal is to focus the work of Tracing Public Spaces on one of the most consolidated areas of informal settlements in Caracas, capital city of Venezuela. We want to create a network of people and public spaces that transcends the scale of community impact to urban impact. The selected site is El Calvario, an informal district where neighbors have developed a strong feeling of belonging and identity with the community. It is divided in three sectors: Alto (high), Bajo (low), and Medio (middle); showing a lack a unity and interconnection between them. The area is located in an advantageous place as it is adjacent to El Hatillo, a culturally and financially strong area of Caracas.
Today, El Calvario suffers from three main issues:
(1) Lack of open spaces for encounter, recreation and culture
(2) Sectoral divisions inside the community
(3) Lack of awareness about the area as a whole
Program Impact
We propose six different approaches to solving El Calvario main issues:
1. Tracing Public Spaces (TEP): 4 months, 16 direct beneficiaries, approaches the three problems. It’s our main workshop where children learn to OBSERVE, IMAGINE and TRANSFORM public spaces. After the workshops, the kids close a transformation cycle, from finding something that can be changed to making it happen.
2. Tracing Green Spaces (TEV): 2 weeks, 30 direct beneficiaries, proposes the creation of a vegetable mural made of recycled materials, to improve social cohesion as each student adds to a greater good.
3. Tracing Spaces Mapping (TEM): 1 month, 200 beneficiaries, focuses on creating visibility for El Calvario by taking advantage of the event Calvario Puertas Abiertas to involve tourists with the community.
4. Tracing Spaces in Stairs (TEE): 2 months, 120 beneficiaries. As stairs are the meeting point in El Calvario, we want to transform one of the stairs by intervening the steps with a story about laying bridges which will help bring neighbors together in new points.
5. Tracing Spaces with Toponymy (TET): 6 months, 2,800 beneficiaries. This program is part of the conceptualization phase, but we plan to make a study of house names and roads to allow to creation of postal addresses in the area.
6. Tracing Urban Spaces (TEU): 12 months, 2,800 beneficiaries. This program is the most ambitious as it seeks to imagine with all TEP students a 1,000m2 square at the entrance of El Calvario.
Sponsor our Programs
Besides our program in El Calvario, we will continue to support children in other communities.
Help us expand our reach, and empower young citizens through TEP workshops, providing knowledge and tools for them to recover the public spaces. We have the three following types of workshop:
I. MACRO, is a three-month program for children between ten and fifteen years of age, as an after-school workshop. TEP team works with local leaders and sets a place to teach the children. Throughout the workshop, they acquire new skills: mapping their community, creating photographic compositions, presenting ideas to an audience (their community), negotiating their ideas and designs with neighbors, building models using real proportions, and learning construction techniques using recycled materials, among many other tools.
II. INTENSIVE, is a one week, six-day long workshop, for children between ten and fifteen years of age, as an after-school activity. They go through the transformation cycle but for a shorter period of time, and building a temporary intervention of the space.
III. MICRO, is a one day workshop for all ages, inviting citizens to address one of the three steps of the transformation cycle (observe, imagine & transform). The impact of this program is to create awareness about urban topics and demonstrate that coming together as neighbors can have a big impact.
· Micro Mural of Patterns: $350
· Micro Participatory Maps: $400
· Micro Mural of Vegetables: $450
· Micro Benches $650
Your support is invaluable for us to continue empowering children and making them agents of change. Your donation will allow us to expand the work and impact of Tracing Public Spaces, providing youth the tools and motivation to dream of a better future. More importantly, to help them realize that they have the power in their hands to transform their reality.
To learn more about us, visit our social media channels:www.trazandoespacios.org
Instagram: @TrazandoEspacios
Facebook: Trazando Espacios
Twitter: @Tespacios
Vimeo: Trazando Espacios
THANK YOU!
Trazando Espacios has developed a series of educational programs to teach architecture and urban design tools to children and empower them to transform public spaces. Our bet is on younger citizens, children between ten and fifteen years of age, future leaders eager to change their communities. Through our workshops, children learn to OBSERVE, IMAGINE and TRANSFORM public spaces. After the workshops, the kids close a transformation cycle, from finding something that can be changed to making it happen.
TEP Methodology
Tracing Public Spaces (Trazando Espacios Públicos | TEP in Spanish) is a new methodology to study, create awareness and inspire future leaders to take action to transform public spaces in low-income communities. It proposes a bottom-up analysis, with innovative tools of representation and design to address the challenges of public spaces.
Trazando Espacios Publicos was founded in Venezuela, in March 2016. However, their work began during the Summer of 2013 when its founder, architect Ana Vargas, was doing her Master’s thesis at MIT. With support from the Tata Center for Technology and Design, Ana conducted field research in India, Venezuela and the USA. Her thesis was awarded Thesis Prize at MIT and Best Practice Award by UN Habitat a year later.
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’.
Program Funding
The project proposal is to focus the work of Tracing Public Spaces on one of the most consolidated areas of informal settlements in Caracas, capital city of Venezuela. We want to create a network of people and public spaces that transcends the scale of community impact to urban impact. The selected site is El Calvario, an informal district where neighbors have developed a strong feeling of belonging and identity with the community. It is divided in three sectors: Alto (high), Bajo (low), and Medio (middle); showing a lack a unity and interconnection between them. The area is located in an advantageous place as it is adjacent to El Hatillo, a culturally and financially strong area of Caracas.
Today, El Calvario suffers from three main issues:
(1) Lack of open spaces for encounter, recreation and culture
(2) Sectoral divisions inside the community
(3) Lack of awareness about the area as a whole
Program Impact
We propose six different approaches to solving El Calvario main issues:
1. Tracing Public Spaces (TEP): 4 months, 16 direct beneficiaries, approaches the three problems. It’s our main workshop where children learn to OBSERVE, IMAGINE and TRANSFORM public spaces. After the workshops, the kids close a transformation cycle, from finding something that can be changed to making it happen.
2. Tracing Green Spaces (TEV): 2 weeks, 30 direct beneficiaries, proposes the creation of a vegetable mural made of recycled materials, to improve social cohesion as each student adds to a greater good.
3. Tracing Spaces Mapping (TEM): 1 month, 200 beneficiaries, focuses on creating visibility for El Calvario by taking advantage of the event Calvario Puertas Abiertas to involve tourists with the community.
4. Tracing Spaces in Stairs (TEE): 2 months, 120 beneficiaries. As stairs are the meeting point in El Calvario, we want to transform one of the stairs by intervening the steps with a story about laying bridges which will help bring neighbors together in new points.
5. Tracing Spaces with Toponymy (TET): 6 months, 2,800 beneficiaries. This program is part of the conceptualization phase, but we plan to make a study of house names and roads to allow to creation of postal addresses in the area.
6. Tracing Urban Spaces (TEU): 12 months, 2,800 beneficiaries. This program is the most ambitious as it seeks to imagine with all TEP students a 1,000m2 square at the entrance of El Calvario.
Sponsor our Programs
Besides our program in El Calvario, we will continue to support children in other communities.
Help us expand our reach, and empower young citizens through TEP workshops, providing knowledge and tools for them to recover the public spaces. We have the three following types of workshop:
I. MACRO, is a three-month program for children between ten and fifteen years of age, as an after-school workshop. TEP team works with local leaders and sets a place to teach the children. Throughout the workshop, they acquire new skills: mapping their community, creating photographic compositions, presenting ideas to an audience (their community), negotiating their ideas and designs with neighbors, building models using real proportions, and learning construction techniques using recycled materials, among many other tools.
II. INTENSIVE, is a one week, six-day long workshop, for children between ten and fifteen years of age, as an after-school activity. They go through the transformation cycle but for a shorter period of time, and building a temporary intervention of the space.
III. MICRO, is a one day workshop for all ages, inviting citizens to address one of the three steps of the transformation cycle (observe, imagine & transform). The impact of this program is to create awareness about urban topics and demonstrate that coming together as neighbors can have a big impact.
· Micro Mural of Patterns: $350
· Micro Participatory Maps: $400
· Micro Mural of Vegetables: $450
· Micro Benches $650
Your support is invaluable for us to continue empowering children and making them agents of change. Your donation will allow us to expand the work and impact of Tracing Public Spaces, providing youth the tools and motivation to dream of a better future. More importantly, to help them realize that they have the power in their hands to transform their reality.
To learn more about us, visit our social media channels:www.trazandoespacios.org
Instagram: @TrazandoEspacios
Facebook: Trazando Espacios
Twitter: @Tespacios
Vimeo: Trazando Espacios
THANK YOU!
Organizer and beneficiary
TRACING PUBLIC SPACES
Organizer
New York, NY
Melisa Socorro
Beneficiary
