"While my classmates would play with cards or things like that, I played at making houses out of straws or anything that I could find, so I knew that was the career path I was going to follow,” he says.
It was not an easy path to take. José completed his five-year degree in the Dominican Republic, then worked for two years to get his professional licence, but decided he wanted to work on a larger scale than single buildings.
He gained a scholarship to study a Master’s in environmental sustainable development at a university in Taiwan. “I then started working in Taiwan but felt there was so much more I needed to learn to fully understand the complexity of the topic I was interested in: informal settlements or slums.
“Why do we have cities with very affluent areas, surrounded by patches of inequality where most of the population lives? This is quite common in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. That would keep me up at night—thinking about how our cities have these two city-making approaches: the formal city and then the so-called ‘informal’ city.”
After applying to universities around the world to do a PhD, José chose to come to Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. His research topic was an investigation of the history of informal settlements in Santo Domingo, capital of the Dominican Republic and the oldest city in the Americas.
“Santo Domingo was the centre of Spanish colonisation efforts in the Americas, and urban informality has a very long history there with repercussions across the continent.
“I investigated that history of urban informality and how those legacies are present in the current systems of urban inequality today. One of my arguments was that we can only fully understand the reality of current socio-spatial marginalisation by looking back at historical legacies that created these conditions.”
José believes the University is a great place to study for a PhD because of its extraordinary resources. “And I was lucky to have good supervisors who allowed me the research freedom to explore something I was passionate about.”
He returned to the Dominican Republic to do archival research and interviews. “I was then stuck at home for seven months when the borders closed. I had to wait for restrictions in New Zealand to be lifted, and my supervisors fought for me to be able to return—I am very grateful to them for that!”
This year José was appointed first-year coordinator in the School of Architecture and has lectured in architectural technologies and regenerative design. He has also received a Faculty Establishment Grant to continue his research into spaces of slavery in Santo Domingo, Cuba, and Colombia, where those spaces have conditioned a legacy of urban segregation and marginalisation that persist today.
Jose’s years spent studying and working in Taiwan continue to be useful. He is helping organise a conjoint degree venture between the University’s Faculty of Architecture and Design Innovation and Zhengzhou University in China.
“I am familiar with Chinese culture and speak some Mandarin, which is useful. Planning for the programme starts in Wellington next year and hopefully in the second half of 2024, we will start teaching in China. I will be the first lecturer from the University to be appointed for the new conjoint architectural degree.”