NoMateria 2020 | Balance

“Designing the city at other scales is to minimize the lethargy of expectations.”
“On the 450th anniversary of Caracas, a group of architects called CCSCity450 promotes
a project to revitalize public space through cultural actions and urban interventions. The
collective project Ciudad Reactiva joins these initiatives and proposes the activation
of the public space with the design and construction of two mobile devices, Oko and
Mirino, new inhabitants of Caracas.
These are intended, in critical settings, to reactivate the abandoned public space through
the observation and reflection of the city, as a means to experience the urban space
based on its image. The choice of actions and phenomena such as observation and reflection
was the strategy to reveal alternative images of the city. Resources and motives
that give these devices an interactive condition with which anyone can connect.
Oko and Mirino are objects made with popular construction materials and techniques
such as welded rod, based on variations of the tripod and crowned with devices that
allow the manipulation of reflections. Oko has eyes that reflect the city in the form of
two concave mirrors, which multiply the images and Mirino is a viewer, which configures
and fragments the field of observation. These have a scale, which allows them to
stand out as distinctive elements in the city, they have heights of around 2.30 meters
approximately, but the necessary ergonomic requirements to facilitate interaction with
them have been taken into consideration for their design.
These devices express an interest in looking at the city again and retaking its spaces.
They are triggers for an interaction between the individual and his environment. Proposing,
based on this mediation, new dynamics in the public space and imagining Oko
and Mirino as characters of an urban prosopopeia.”