Lima Rooftops: case study of an urban desert

Carlos León-Xjiménez

Origin: Static Issue 04
Content: Text/Images

"When one looks over the rooftops of Lima’s 17th, 18th and 19th Century buildings, a process of decay is evident. Converted into slums over the decades, layers of dust and dirt, accumulated over the years, cover them. Like small deserts, isolated plots, and terrain-vagues. Lima’s rooftops are suspended spaces with particular ecologies.

This project is product of field research carried as part of an exploratory workshop in the summer of 2003 by an interdisciplinary team focusing on Lima’s downtown (el Centro de Lima). The aim of the investigation is to understand the potential of such spaces for art and ephemeral architectural interventions and critically explore the city as a terrain-vague. The downtown, founded in 1535, is Lima’s urban nucleus and in 1998, UNESCO identified it as a World Heritage site. Like many cities around the world, informal development drives much of the urbanism within the city’s centre. The rooftops of Lima function as a layer that seems to obscure a very complex social reality; however, as part of the urban structure, the rooftops must be understand as both a product and shaping factor of the social transformations within the city."

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Contributor:

Carlos León Xjiménez, born in Lima, Peru, currently lives and works in Berlin. He is an artist, art curator and anthropologist. Combining design, photography and installation, his work explores themes of strangeness, migration and intercultural mixing within urban culture. Carlos is a lecturer on Latin American contemporary art and regular collaborator with several visual art magazines in Peru. Prior to moving to Germany, he served as an assistant professor of Visual Anthropology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. His work and curatorial projects have been exhibited in shows throughout Lima, where he also developed various interdisciplinary workshops focused on urban culture. In 2005, Carlos completed a postgraduate research programme at the Bauhaus-Dessau Foundation that explored the topic of transnational spaces. He will soon start a Fine Arts MA at Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany.

Photo credits: Luz María Bedoya, Guillermo Takano and Carlos León Xjiménez (photos and collages).

Associated Links:

www.geocities.com/carlosleonx