Urbanismos de remesas

Urbanisms of remittances is part of an ongoing project by Husos. The investigation, now being published in book form, centres on those urbanisms that are shaped by the forces of love, labour, and translocal microfinance, based on the exchange that takes place when migrant workers send small amounts of money, as well as other goods, to relatives in their home countries. Studying these urbanisms – which are not marginal realities, but advanced laboratories in which to test out new ways of city-making in a hyperconnected world – allows Husos to analize political issues related to contemporary financialised capitalism and globalisation which have hitherto scarcely been explored, such as the absence of the migrant workers’ bodies in their home countries and the consequent crisis of care in the global South, or new forms of belonging and dispossession through transnational real estate operations, debts and mortgages. At the same time, the project also studies the role of architecture in these processes, while searching for some possible design alternatives.
Designed as a ‘foto-realovela’ (a rereading of the classic Latin American transverse photo story magazine), Urbanisms of Remittances is intended to be a means of communication with multiple uses and users, one that establishes new lines of dialogue between theory and practice and the various communities involved. In the style of an architectural project file, the bilingual Spanish-English edition includes a descriptive report, paper model and a long sectional drawing.