Orellanismo: Análisis tipológico de elementos semióticos encontrados en las fachadas de las edificaciones del Barrio Orellana.

Abstract

This thesis emerges as a follow up of the investigation “Tipos Guayacos”, which has the purpose of studying common architecture from Guayaquil, meaning, dweller-made architecture. In words of Enrique Walker, “(...) la categoría de lo ordinario incluye la arquitectura que la propia arquitectura excluye.” The thesis you’re about to read its founded in a great interest for architecture without architects, which is architecture that often goes unnoticed, even though, paradoxically it constitutes most of our city. With this approach we set our view into a neighborhood of great importance for Guayaquil: Barrio Orellana. This neighborhood was designed by architects and built through a property company in the late forties; it was one of the first neighborhoods in the city that were made out of concrete and even though, nowadays it’s considered patrimony, this assessment hasn’t been yet welcomed by the general public. The patrimonial notions that exist change throughout time, and for many, modern architecture is still too recent to be valued as patrimonial in retrospect. This perspective allowed boundless mutations to occur throughout the neighborhood and made it possible for it to become a rich urban composition loaded with different architectural languages that, at the same time, has been able to preserve vestiges of its beginnings as a designer neighborhood, as the representation of guayaquilean modernity. The matter of the thesis relies on this apparent architectural-code juxtaposition (resulting from the coexistence of the technical and the common) and it asks itself if its possible to maintain that semiotic richness the moment we get patrimony on the mix. In other words: How can we use Multivalence in favor of the preservation of patrimony in Barrio Orellana? The general objective of this research thesis is to identify those semiotic elements that exist on the facades of the neighborhood’s buildings. After they have been identified they get categorized inside of a catalog, which will be able to be utilized by the neighbourhood’s dwellers in case they want to intervene their buildings. This way they’ll have freedom to personalize their facades with elements that communicate their sensibilities the best, and simultaneously, they’ll be promoting the reincorporation of patrimonial language. To achieve this, there was a need to create two methodologies: one of identification (qualitative analysis) and the other one of intervention.