ABSTRACT
This paper analyses the existing frontiers in contemporary divided cities. It aims to develop a reflection on the territory through impact design interventions understood as tools to articulate the city interstices, named in this research as -between sp the apparent, characterised by a concentration of contrasting neighbourhoods, to the invisible.
Could it be possible to impulse a new way of making more inclusive cities? Could architects, designers and urban practitioners through architectural design thinking activate the in-between spaces in order to make a more cohesive society?
To inspect these questions, Caracas has served to exemplify a multitude of physical, geographical, social, political and economic differences within the space. Particularly, I will focus in two different sites and locations: a public square in the historical part of Macarao, mainly characterised by a long-standing concentration of low-income neighbourhoods, and several walls located in the middle income municipality of Chacao. In both contexts, public spaces have emerged as fragmented areas but still as scenarios for freedom of speech, sense of belonging and local identity.
So this paper will present theoretical and empirical evidence collected from fieldwork and structured interviews- to finally conclude that impact design interventions, considered as urban tactics done in the in-between spaces, define a series of alternative ways of understanding the city that match with issues of building a more equal city, education, improvement of the individual and expanding the term communal beyond the traditional way of making cities.
By integrating impact design interventions in the interstices, this approach may help to structure and deepen the understanding of the city as a whole; inbetween spaces become linkages between different realities, mitigating fragmentation and socio-spatial segregation.