Maria’s

Maria’s is a mission to give voice to the multiple faces of Maria as a repressed and marginalized people through a multi-layered story of emancipation and political justice in Lima, Peru. The design in Maria’s is based on the thesis research of Mathematics of Resistance, which it in turn affects by adding new variables to its formulas. It focuses on improving Maria’s sidewalk through a network of solidarity and ownership that supports them, one already inherent to Lima, so that when they find themselves in situations of conflict they are not alone. A network of street vendors which has the ability to be as fluid and dynamic as the obstacles Maria faces and combines design with the human element to improve the urban language and create a new street-architecture by addressing four levels of need. The first is Maria’s primary needs of additional urban infrastructure, the second is the vendor’s need for legitimacy, the third is their mutual need for identity, and the fourth is addressing the conceptual ideologies discussed in Mathematics of Resistance. Furthermore, each of the vendors opens in a particular way that modifies the space they inhabit.