Is an investigation that, through drawings, explores the memory and urban imaginary of the Capital of Nicaragua.

Managua is a very particular place, It is located on the shores of a lake so large that it looks like a small sea. It has metallic trees that are taller than most of its buildings and the city has been destroyed Three times in the last 90 years.
Reconstruction was never completed. Two earthquakes, a revolution, and a process of arbitrary urban growth have created a city without a downtown area. A dispersed territory where impossible places, non-existent spaces, and mourning coexist. Half a century later, people continue to use places destroyed by the 1972 earthquake as location references within the city. “De donde fue..”(From where it was) is the expression with which most of the addresses in Managua begin. An entire generation of us learned to locate and relate to the city through spaces that we never experienced physically, and now another generation, the youngest, is trying to understand the identity of this territory.

According to architect and urbanist Monica Arzoz, the Urban Imaginary – “is a psycho-socio-cultural and symbolic representation, which can be individual or collective and originates mainly from the daily use and appropriation of any type of space. It is from these, where points of reference are created, places where relationships and socio-cultural practices are intensified and where an individual or collective, local or regional identity emerges, that is, a point where roots are established and networks are created”.

The drawings in this project are a personal, and at the same time collective, cartography of Managua, a city that is told based on what it was, what it can be and, sometimes, what it is.