Lucas Correa Sevilla (MAUD ’12) and Pablo Pérez Ramos (MLA ’12, DDesS candidate) were recently in Quito, Ecuador, where they were invited to present their ongoing research “Sustainability Through New Methodologies of Urban and Landscape Design” in the “Ecuador Será Sustentable” congress. The congress, organized by Grupo FARO, pursues a multidisciplinary approach to a long-term debate on the interactions among environment, economy and society in Ecuador.
While other presentations were given by economists, biologists and engineers, Correa Sevilla and Pérez Ramos’ talk was the only one at the symposium engaging sustainability from a design perspective. Their research analyzes some of the paradigmatic eco-regions that can be found across the geography of Ecuador – one of the ”megadiverse” countries in the world – and projects scenarios of high urban density and high productivity landscapes and their effects on these highly sensitive ecosystems. Specifically it explores multiple morphological configurations for basic units of urban and/or landscape development to create open-ended scenarios based on aggregation.
The congress jury included Yolanda Kakabadse, president of the World Wide Fund for Nature, and Augusto de la Torre, the World Bank’s chief economist for Latin America and the Caribbean. Guilherme Leal, co-chairman of Natura, and Bernardo Toro, philosopher and educator, also participated as keynote speakers.
Photo: Lucas Correa Sevilla (left) and Pablo Pérez Ramos