UNA MIRADA, DOS REALIDADES , a video installation created for the Pavilion of the Dominican Republic at the 2014 Venice Biennale of Architecture

 

Una Mirada, Dos Realidades (One Look, Two Realities), directed by Corinne van der Borch, examines the current and historical context surrounding the fairgrounds of the Feria de la Paz y Confraternidad del Mundo Libre (Fair of Peace and Fraternity of the Free World) in Santo Domingo. The fair, staged in 1955 by the dictator Rafael Trujillo to commemorate the 25th anniversary of his rule, reaffirmed architectural modernist tropes in its structures and overall master plan. The architecture of the fair facilitated the presentation of the country as a regional and global power.

 

Today, the fair’s structures are used both as the home of many of the country’s most powerful governmental bodies, but also by informal vendors during the day and illicit enterprises at night. The film captures the variety of types of occupation through personal interviews, and displays the transition of the fairgrounds from day to night. The inherent dualities and contradictions evident on the fairgrounds represent the unique national identity of the Dominican Republic. The film was an integral part of the inaugural representation of the Dominican Republic at the 2014 Venice Biennale of Architecture.

 

Drawing upon the representation of the contradictory nature of a country often omitted from the global architectural and design discourse, this panel will discuss the challenges of presenting the Dominican Republic, the success (or failure) of the film and the exhibit to do so, and the manner in which we define the country through a critical regional perspective.

 

Panelists:

 

Corinne Van der Borch, Director of Una Mirada, Dos Realidades

 

Shohei Shigematsu, Executive Producer of Una Mirada, Dos Realidades

 

Christy Cheng, Executive Producer of Una Mirada, Dos Realidades

 

Patricio del Real, Curatorial Assistant of the upcoming exhibit at MOMA, Latin America in Construction: Architecture 1955-1980

 

Deepak Lamba-Nieves, Postdoctoral Fellow in International Studies at Brown University; Chair of Economic Development Research at the Center for a New Economy in Puerto Rico

 

Sachi Hoshikawa, Commissioner of the Dominican Republic Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Biennale of Architecture

 

Corinne Van der Borch is the Director of Una Mirada, Dos Realidades. She is a visual artist and award-winning Dutch documentary filmmaker. Corinne is based in New York, where she received an MFA from the School of Visual Arts. She established Wondertime Films in order to create ‘ordinary magic,’ by collecting intimate stories and visuals that could otherwise easily go unseen, using the camera as her notebook. Mentored by experimental filmmaker Alan Berliner and the pioneer of Direct Cinema Albert Maysles, her work has screened in Edinburgh, London, Amsterdam, New York, and Los Angeles. She collaborated on short-film projects with architects Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu (SO-IL) and photographer Iwan Baan. Her feature length documentary Girl with Black Balloons, about the oldest living resident of the Chelsea Hotel, won the Grand Jury Metropolis prize at DOC NYC in 2011. 

 

Shohei Shigematsu is an Executive Producer of Una Mirada, Dos Realidades. He joined OMA in 1998 and became a partner in 2008. He has led the OMA office in New York since 2006 and is responsible for OMA’s operations in North America. Under his direction, the New York office has overseen the completion of Milstein Hall at Cornell University as well as the construction of the Quebec National Beaux Arts Museum and the Faena Arts Center in Miami Beach. Shohei has also led numerous collaborations with artists, including a seven-screen pavilion in Cannes with Kanye West, the Marina Abramovic Institute for the Preservation of Performance Art in upstate New York, and a studio renovation for artist Cai Guo Qiang in New York. Most recently, Shohei led the winning competition designs for residential towers in Coconut Grove in San Francisco, a mixed-use project in Los Angeles, a tower in Sao Paulo, and a new civic center master plan in Bogota, Colombia. Shohei is currently a Design Critic for Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

 

Christy Cheng is an Executive Producer of Una Mirada, Dos Realidades. She is a New York-based architect, writer, and editor who received a Master of Architecture from Harvard Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor of Arts in English and Communications from the University of Pennsylvania. Christy has held positions as an architect at a number of offices, including OMA, where she was a key member of several architectural and research-based projects. She has also worked at the artist Ai Weiwei’s architectural design firm, Fake Design, in Beijing. She currently works independently on a variety of scales and types of projects. Christy has taught graduate level architectural studios at Columbia University, Cornell University, Harvard University, and CUNY. She is a registered architect in New York and California.

 

Patricio del Real holds a PhD in Architectural History and Theory from Columbia University, and a Master of Architecture from Harvard Graduate School of Design. He has taught and practiced in the United States and Europe, as well as in Chile where he lived in the early 1990s. He has taught design-build architecture studios in the US and participated in the construction of informal structures in Havana, presenting his research on contemporary vernacular practices in Cuba at the International Biennial of Architecture in Havana. He co-edited an anthology, Latin American Modern Architectures: Ambiguous Territories, recently released by Routledge. Patricio is currently working at the Museum of Modern Art on an upcoming exhibition on modern architecture in Latin America.

 

Deepak Lamba-Nieves is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown University’s  Watson Institute for International Studies  and Churchill J. Carey Jr. Chair of Economic Development Research at the  Center for a New Economy  (CNE) in Puerto Rico. His current research interests focus on transnational migration, international development, hometown associations (HTAs), economic and social policy, and transnational ethnography. Deepak’s dissertation project examines the links between migration, development processes, and transnational transformations. It is based on six years of field work in Boston, New York City, and the southern region of the Dominican Republic.

 

Sachi Hoshikawa was the Commissioner of the Dominican Republic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2014. Sachi is an architect and real estate advisor. She holds a Master of Design Studies in Real Estate Finance and Development from Harvard University, a Master in Engineering from Kyoto University, and a Bachelor of Architecture from Universidad Nacional Pedro Henríquez Ureña.  Her interdisciplinary qualifications in design, engineering, and business have led her to participate in numerous international development projects. She is the Founder and CEO of Miliú, an investment, acquisition, and development firm in the New York metropolitan area that operates like a studio, in which research, creativity, and innovative design are intrinsic elements of all processes. Sachi has been a visiting design critic at Columbia University and the Oslo School of Art and Architecture, as well as a contributor to the architecture magazine Kenchiku Notes.