Learning From La Salada

Fair Game: Learning from La Salada examines the role of urban design in informal places. It investigates the controversial ascent of La Salada Fair, a regional commercial hub absorbing a sizable labor force of small apparel producers and distributors and attracting 30,000 people with each opening. Both egalitarian and exploitative, Latin America’s largest “informal” market represents a new typology of urban settlement that joins characteristics of many types of urban centers, old and new. After geographic and ethnographic analysis of La Salada, followed by a field study of spatial conditions which have contributed to its success, the thesis imagines how a second incarnation should unfold, extracting lessons about incrementalization, monumental sequence, and the ecology of work and play.

location: Buenos Aires, Argentina
Thesis for MIT Master of Science in Architecture & Urbanism
Advising Committee: Anne Whiston Spirn (Advisor), Brent Ryan, Julian Beinart

Presented in 2012 to Corporación Buenos Aires Sur & University of Palermo.