 All right. Good evening, everyone. And thank you for coming. My name is Alice and I'm a 30-year student in the Master of Architecture program at Columbia University. I'm originally from São Paulo, Brazil and one of the co-directors of Latin GSEP. Latin GSEP is an interdisciplinary student organization in the Columbia's Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation dedicated to the promotion discussion and reflection of contemporary issues and ideas in Latin America. The overarching theme selected by Latin GSEP for the semester is authority. Authority refers to the acknowledgement of the existence of oneself through the capacity to recognize the other as such, a singular, suggestive person. Authority is an essential process to achieve empathy, the capacity to pull ourselves in someone else's shoes. If we cannot see the other, we cannot respect them, or if we can only see the other as the negation of oneself, we cannot relate. The semester Latin GSEP is working on a variety of projects related to the theme of authority, such as our new publication named Patio. Patio welcomes submissions from all creators with a focus on Latin America subjects. We invite you to submit any project, provocation, interview or imagination that you have created that addresses the theme of authority in a Latin America context. For more information and submission guidelines, please check Patio's website and Instagram account, the links you will be able to find in the Zoom chat. The events in the conversation series are co-created with Professor Anna Beach, co-sponsored by GSEP and the Institute for Latin America Studies and supported by Columbia Global Center Reel and Santiago. The series will continue to explore the umbrella theme of authority after tonight's event. Our last event is the keynote conversation led by Professor Anna Beach on authority and the third landscape on December 1st. So tonight we would like to welcome you and our panelists, Ines Mendes and Greg Melitonov from Taller Can, Jessica Carrera and Mariana Grajales from Comuna Taller, and Diana Wisner. Tonight's event aims to bring forth the Latin America urbanization process that produced dramatic ramifications of unnatural and human patterns in the region. Inviting practices working in Latin America allows the conversation to be ingrained in the specificity of the localities bringing forth the discussion around identity. The panelists will share case studies and examples from their authorship to guide the conversation towards a dialogue of synergies, possibilities, ruptures, and tensions of the urban space. So tonight's event. Tonight's moderators include myself, Osvaldo Del Bray, born and raised in Bayamon, Puerto Rico, study architecture in San Juan, and is now in his second year in master of architecture program. Also joining us is Juan Moreno, born and raised in Bogota, Colombia. Juan is an urban historian with master's degree in geography, and is currently pursuing his master's in urban planning. So we're going to present Taller Can. Gregor and Melitonov and Ines Guzman met when they were working in Lorenzo Piano as part of the design team for the Whitney Museum of American Arts and the offices for the highlight. And they founded Taller Can in 2013, and their practices based in New York City and Guatemala. Their work includes mixed use development residential projects and installation design. They also founded Fundamental in 2016 as a sort of mirror practice. It's a nonprofit which allows them to expand beyond the limits of their commercial contracts to explore topics of environmental systems within urban landscapes, socio-economic and physical barriers between communities through the process of building while engaging the next generation of architects and designers in the narrative. They have been recognized or included in as one of six firms including, sorry, the AIA NY has included Taller Can as the recipient of its new practices New York 2016 award. Our next guest, Comunal Taller, was founded in 2015 in Mexico City by Mariano Doñas Grajales, and he was shortly after joined by Jessica Amescuacarreras in 2017. Comunal is a team made up of women committed to encouraging and facilitating the participation of adult women, young people and girls in older projects and processes developed together with the communities. They focus on respecting and valuing the contributions made by women in strategic, administrative and constructive processes, always respecting their cultural context through a participatory design approach. They have been recognized by multiple awards for their work by various organizations such as the Architectural League of New York for emerging voices in 2018. And they have also participated in the Venice Biennale Free Space with the Mexican pavilion Echoes of the Land of a Land in 2018, among other recognitions. And last but not least, as fellow Bogotano I get to introduce Diana Viesne, the Anaiso Landscape architect from Bogotá, Colombia where she founded her practice in urban ecology and social management. She's also the founder and director of Fundación Cerros de Bogotá, which was created in 2009. Through this foundation and her architecture practice, she has highlighted the close relationship between the Colombian capital and the mountains that frame the urban landscape in the eastern portion of the city. In 2007, she directed El Camino de Cerros, a groundbreaking document published by Bogotá's planning department. Diana has also received a variety of awards and international Biennales. Some of her recent awards include for the first place in the next green awards awarded in 2016 in Los Angeles. So finally, before we give the room to our panelists, each panelist will be presenting from around five to seven minutes and we will follow up by opening the floor for conversations and questions from the public. So please feel free to send your questions in the chat or to us personally. With that, that you can start. So we're going to try to talk quick, because there's two of us. But my name is Gregor Malatanov and Ines Guzman is my partner. And I'm from, we kind of have this spirit of all charity baked into our practice. I'm from New York and Ines is originally from Guatemala and a lot of our work. Hopefully you can see the screen. Okay. A lot of the work sort of reflects this outsider approach. This is one of our first projects, which is a cafe that was one of the first projects we made after working for Renzo's office, where we were both, and Ines was kind of coming back to Guatemala after quite a long time away living in Costa Rica. And it was for me an entirely new culture and experience. And so our first kind of, you know, impressions as somebody from outside discovering a new country in Central America is really the degree in which the indigenous population gets in overlaid on to all the kind of cultural traditions. And so it was almost natural for us to be sort of have blinders on to these traditions that really don't exist in the places we're used to working so we kind of isolated and exaggerated them to kind of remix these cultural traditions that people locally are very familiar with, but to us were very new and exciting in kind of a way that made a new and refreshing space. And so we kind of grew into being more sort of our studio grew and our opportunities grew and we became sort of more fluid in the language of the, the culture we we sort of started to realize that Central Guatemala is not a monolith, and that it's really part of a developing culture a developing economy and a lot of global forces intersect so this is a project that kind of speaks to that, where we kind of were overlaying a lot of those colors and textures and patterns and local tradition traditions and letting some of those isolations blur and and kind of mix a little bit, along with bringing out issues of sort of sustainability so sorry, I'm just blitzing through the, we maybe didn't account for such a short presentation, but essentially, these are, these are kind of some of the typical scenes that we were used to working with, where there's this heavily globalized commercialized context. And so we, we wanted to create something that both reacted to that context in a very artistic way in a very commercial way and kind of fed into that culture but also try to turn it on its head and create, you know, an interior or world and interior ideal oasis sort of riffing on sort of passive sustainable practices water collection and develop a very sensory experience, again overlaying all these patterns colors and textures, and then we also started sort of leveraging all of our experience working with local craftspeople I'm sure it'll come up in the discussion about working in Latin America really gives the opportunity to work in ways that are a little more spontaneous improvisational and temporal so we created as was mentioned in the outset we created fundamental, which was a chance for us to really do a design build project and sort of try to address some of the public space issues that we saw that that just didn't really come through as we were working for commercial clients and that program invites international students down to Central America at the time for a period of three months intensive to do a project from concept to to construction in three months so everything is done using donated funds donated materials and and a mix of students of different ages from universities in different parts of the world. So this was the first iteration of that, which is applied Chomo it's a sort of an installation at the base of a public the National Theater which is a green space in the city which was really falling into disrepair and being underused so we were trying to bring more voices to the table and it ended up being used as running a Saturday Children's Program and we expanded that that program as our studio has also expanded beyond just Guatemala we expanded that program into Costa Rica. Florence who's on the call was part of this team where again we sort of tackled a brownfield site next to transportation rail line where it was just sort of an underused public space and allowed us to spin out from that a narrative about engaging with local community participants and kind of building I think the tagline for this was blurring boundaries so the design installation was meant to sort of blur boundaries between sort of different social groups and different communities that we found on site. So this is using bamboo poles that are painted and given a reflective tape. Again, the project typically does a lot of low tech high impact work because it's using donated and recycled materials, but at night it acts as a giant light installation during the day it's it's sort of more of a children's playground, which is made of these mounds which are used using recycled tires and kind of gravel, which makes a natural water filtration. And I'll maybe save this one for the Q&A but the team for the sort of most recent iteration of the project which is in top of Chula, Mexico. So we've partnered with this group from CUNY, who is sort of leading the design for this theater attached to a civic cultural center. And so this is this is kind of like the new iteration that will be the first time we do it in Mexico. So it's very exciting to kind of be growing this organization as sort of our studio continues to grow and evolve. Thanks. I'll stop sharing the screen. Great timing. No perfect timing. It just cut out in essence and it all worked great. I'm not gonna talk a lot in the camera. Yeah, I'm done. Now we're going to follow with Comunad. Jessica, if you want to share the screen. Yes. And you view my screen. Yeah. Well, Marina was not able to be here. We're sorry that it's just one of us. But right now she's traveling to one of the communities where we are working. So I will try to speak as as there as I can to try to explain our work. Well, in Mexico we have a vast territory with a great environmental and cultural diversity integrated by 68 indigenous groups, each of them with their own way of understanding the world inhabiting the territory and producing indigenous communities. In the last section, despite this, the public policies of our country are completely disconnected from the reality that exists in rural communities, since through their federal programs have imposed their own agenda based on the industrialization of the ways of living. In our country and in Latin America we're standing before a panorama of social cultural economic and territorial crisis that requires to rethink our role as architects. It is in this context that we question ourselves, how do public policies affect our territory and culture? What is the role of the architect in the in view of the problems that native peoples have faced for decades. The first and second exercises of the project social production of housing located in the northeast Sierra Fuebla were developed through participatory processes with the residents of the community. Both projects aim to demonstrate that the qualitative and quantitative properties of housing can be improved with local construction, knowledge and local materials, as part of the same project. In spite of the collective effort of integrated research processes, knowledge sharing, chemical training, workshops, assemblies and self-construction based on mutual aid, the first exercise was invalidated by the National Housing Commission, since its regulations consider vernacular materials such as bamboo, earth and wood as precarious and inadequate. So how can native peoples preserve their habitat when they are forced to use industrialized materials outside their ways of living? How can they preserve their constructed culture? Again, this, against this background, we carried out a second exercise in collaboration with the Union of Indigenous Cooperatives of Josep Anticataliste, in which we proposed a mixed constructive system with the objective of gaining access to federal housing subsidies and not preserving the use of bamboo in walls and roofing. The project was awarded in the first National Rural Housing Competition, organized by the same government agency. However, they expressed that these winning models could not be replicated by building companies nor real estate developers, so they were considered a failure. Again, housing was seen as a market product and not as a human rights. The most significant achievement of the housing exercises was not in public policy, but in the joint people of the Petsinta, who from the technical training workshops that took place in their community and their need to have a dignified educational space, decided to design and self-build their own school. The concept productive rural school emerged from five participatory design workshops with students who expressed the need to rethink the way of teaching and learning in rural communities by proposing an architectural program culturally appropriate to the reality and needs. The project is focused on the rescue of traditional knowledge and crafts, as well as the preservation of their mother tongue now in order to detonate productive chains that prevent the migration and disintegration of families in the community. This conceptualization would not have been possible from our imaginary and personal experience. Here is the relevance of the dialogue and participation under equal conditions. Today, due to the collective work and community contributions, we are about to finish the second stage of construction. Although the project has not been completed, the new school has tripled the number of students enrolled. It is serving seven communities in the region that months ago didn't have access to high school, and is improving the life conditions and opportunities of young women by integrating them to local productive chains. While the Tepecinda community was celebrating the opening of the school in 2017, a series of earthquakes affected the states of Oaxaca, Chiapas, Morelas, and Puebla, entities with the greatest rural population in our country. A few months later, at the earthquakes, we were convened by the Extepecan Committee for the Defense of Life and Territory and the University of the Earth to carry out a participatory action research process about local ways of inhabiting, recovering and improving traditional housing, and also to design a new housing model that could dialogue with the collective memory of the Zapotec peoples of Oaxaca. The diagnostic and participatory design sessions were thought with 20 women affected by the earthquakes, who expressed the most important aspects in terms of rebuilding their homes, the relations between functional spaces, and the different scenarios for the project progressive growth. This allowed us to develop a decision making tool that responded in a flexible way to the particular needs of each family. Subsequently, this analysis was translated into a new participatory tool with which families designed their own reconstruction housing. This led to 25 different projects which rescued the traditional way of inhabiting the place, and at the same time considered the needs and particularities of each family. The constructive system of the housing model responds to the natural and local materials available, as well as to the demand of the families to carry out the reconstruction of their home through assisted self-construction processes. For this reason, the model consists of compact earth blocks that the families can produce and assemble during the construction process, thus promoting new productive change in the community. Currently, the project is financed with public public resources to the further reconstruction program, and has recognized it as a pilot project of social and participatory architecture to transform public housing policies in the country. The integrity perspective that participation, interculturality, and alterity share, supposes the ability to communicate with the other from the knowledge and understanding of their culture. In this regard, we rely on different dynamics of participatory processes that enable us to open the dialogue and integrate the different perspectives of actors and users of the project. This democratic and integrated vision has led us to perform social dynamics with different tools. One of them has been participatory models which attempt to directly integrate users in the design of the project. Such as the case of the Chaubert Houses project carried out in conjunction with the network of cell cloud midwives in Zolo Corazon, which aims to reduce the maternal infant mortality rate in the indigenous region of Los Altos de Chiapas. Because the midwife did not have the technical constructive knowledge, we developed in conjunction with the young team of architects Armando Casas, a participatory tool that allowed us to design together and break the language barrier between saltale and Spanish. The design of the instrument and its components is based on the understanding of the place, the traditional typologies and the vernacular constructive systems which help the midwives recognize the forms and proportions of the possible project solutions. During this exercise, we could observe that the midwives could solve almost immediately the functioning of the space because they know the particular needs of their vocation. However, they found difficulties in the technical constructive aspects. On the contrary, when the husband participated in the sessions, we recognize that it was much easier to solve the constructive system first, since men are used to build the vernacular house in the saltale communities. The dynamics show how gender roles and our life experience modify the way we perceive, understand and do architecture. From our work, we approach architectural practice based on the values and principles of the concept social production of habitat, whose notion understands the habitat as a social and cultural product that implies the active, informed and organized participation of the inhabitants in the management and development of its environment. For the above, we turn to the democratic vision of participatory architecture, where it is recognized that if the people from any social cultural context have the capacity to identify their needs and generate strategies for the improvement of life conditions. In this sense, participatory architecture is to respect all forms of life and to conceive our practice as a social process that is interrelated with technical and local understanding. In order to enhance the exchange of collective knowledge from where decision making is carried out through a constant process of dialogue. Finally, our practice is related to a constant exercise of denunciation, democracy, social justice and defense of human rights, in which we advocated the construction of an inclusive collaborative and congruent society where inhabitants are recognized as subjects of action and not as objects of intervention with the potential and responsibility of influencing the public policies of our country and therefore the historical reality of the community. Thank you, Jessica. And last, Diana. Diana, you're muted. Yeah, now you're muted. You're muted. So I just asked you to unmute. Okay. Yes. The screen is black. Is that right? No. Yeah, here we see the presentation. Do you see the first slide? No. Maybe try share screen. So it's the top left. Okay. Perfect. I want to begin with a concept from Leonardo Bob, which is a philosopher. Citizens is citizenship is the right from city and floristy from forest or jungle. Forest and human being live a socio-ecological path with the forest becomes a new citizen respected in his state in integrity, stability and extraordinary beauty. The logic of mutuality is assumed, which implies mutual respect and synergy. We are called us florists. In terms of compulsory quarantine, we citizens of Bogota have had to look to the hills again. The over 13 hectares of the eastern hills seem unperturbed by what is happening in the city, in the country, in the world. It seems as is this piece of the Andes mountain. He is statically watching over the life of its inhabitants. The country's capital is a privileged city, and it's surrounded by a majestic mountain range. A set of more land peaks and multiple water courses that have unfortunately been there and it's an accessible, effective to this, it's an inhabitant. This low access is a subject of reflection and action. We assume ourselves as citizens in the high plain tropical forest in the region of Bogota. We extend this type of citizenship. We are connected into a new civilizing narrative. In an area of transition between the city and the forest reserve, we promote ways to relate to others and nature in urban rural peace process within a city of more than 8 million inhabitants in a country that is still trying to understand what this means on a national scale in a country that hasn't learned how to live with the forest. That is why we are agents of peace. This year, which has been full of uncertainties. We and the passion of our group of Florestanians added to the fears derived from the scarcity of opportunities generated a challenge of creation and intense movement. In the meantime, which has been just lived in Bogota show the impact in the pandemic that has had on the street on business on meeting places. And we can now see ourselves almost hidden behind our masks, walking at different pieces of life. Despite this landscape life buses in the eastern hills. The importance of the very existence. The hills are also subjects of reinvention, coinciding to our 11 birthday, we decided to launch the campaign. The hill save us to highlight the vital and protective role of the hills from the city. I need that become more evident in these times of pandemic and quarantine. In these six months, we have worked intensely to launch also the largest platform and complete on formation. People flora found a moors water based in citizen initiatives, projects, children, and children's projects, but historical studies, neighborhood studies, then citizens are able to take the hills on their homes, because we are growing designs in the process, learn the names with top top names and the sacred faces. As flooring times, citizens, we have withstood the changes that have altered the ecosystem of other hills, and perhaps, pretentiously, we have always said that the mountain need us for restoration. We made plans and talk about how necessary these actions are to recover the value of diversity lost by the construction of the city. But we have breathed the fresh air. We have rediscovered the landscape and now we do realize that it's not we who will save the hills, but they are the ones that can save us. In the light of the current crisis, the need for green spaces in urban environments for us and for the whole world has become evident. However, in other cities, perhaps in too many, the deficiency and safe and accessible green spaces affect the improvement of physical and mental health of communities and become evident. The pressure from citizens to walk the trials, the trails, we hear the children voices and show the acute need for natural spaces without congestion. It is precisely in this scenario that we that has motivated us to insist the possibility of building a shared vision and a comprehensive management of the city eastern hills. We have involved the children in this process. We are now doing our plan for our cities and we are dreaming about creating a sociological corridor that restores existing trails with native species. We dream also that we have neighborhood packs that will train guides and share stories about their ethnobotany, their geology and their environmental stories and lookouts among other species. This affectionate and productive coexistence is already becoming a reality. In a living and a very small living laboratory that we have created that we call umbral culpurales on this. Here, with the collaboration of volunteers, experts and people, we make collaborative restoration with native species orchids and composing process that have been carried out as these as a circular economy with the procedures from the people. And we want to replicate this model to have a private property for public use. The natural reserve acts as a laboratory of collaborative transformation and throw a volunteer program we have carrying a participant restoration from five years. We also generate collective works such as a collective the rain we produce land art and offer weekly talks on human ecology. In which the mountain takes the stage. This love this work is long and has not been easy. We are discouraged by the lack of resources and to stated by the low echo of our activities. We are also overwhelmed by the reality we live in our country, the violence they attack on environmental leaders, the increase of poverty and the generalized pain in a country that resists change, a country in which this year we have lost more than 80,000 hectares of forest. However, our hope is still alive. And we remain motivated to contribute our little piece of peace of the life in this beloved corner of the fields of poverty. Thank you for all the panelists for the presentation, we will now start opening up the conversation so feel free to ask questions in the chat, or raise your hand you can ask personally to in English Spanish Portuguese. We have all the languages here so we can help translating and then maybe to start the conversation. So we wanted to touch upon the question that for all the panelists. We wanted the conversation through the lens of scale. So thinking of architecture from furniture to installations to infrastructure ecosystems. So the question of scale has a direct correlation to spheres of public community spaces. So we would like to ask if you could talk a little bit how the manipulation of scale in your desire approach it starts to dialogue to democratic spaces. Alice who did you ask the question to to all of the panelists. Was it clear what Alice he asked it was a very long question. It was a little bit quickly. You can repeat the last part. Yes. So the last part of the question is how manipulation of different scales can inform democratic spaces. The conversation was created. A lot of the reason was the different approaches of design from they can come now and yours. So the question is from all those scale from ecosystem to furniture. Yes, we have. I haven't shown my work as landscape architect, but like 13 years ago I proposed a plan for the mountains of Bogota, and it was very published and it was excellent for the people that there was no political priority for the for the mountains Bogota. So we began as an activist 11 years ago. And at that time I remember not being very comprehensive about my plan with the with the very precise examples. Now that we have this be a little laboratory. And we are in the small scale. We are doing a work with the people we are making the pack with the with the neighborhoods we are working with the people and people is understanding what we were proposing 11 years ago. And now we have more beer more. We have more resonance in our narrative. So that big scale and big picture that we have clear from the planning. We are now putting in a very little like a point and it's giving more results and we are having many little points in different parts of a citizens initiatives that have a complete this big plan. So these different scales have been worked in at the same time in more effectively. And I can, I can continue in our case and we always work with the with the different scales like since the research since the research work where where we try to approach every project through a moment of participatory research with the community about the place that it includes how it includes the systemic view of the community about their territory and how this territory is interrelated with their ways of living and the problems or the potentials that this place can give to the community. So we always try to go to the large scale to the small scale and every every time it is connected in the rural communities. Everything is interrelated in the ways of the natural resources and give the pattern for the spatial for the spatial architecture and also it gives the materials and the nature is interrelated also with it with the time where people of the community can cut the wood and can or can have some water or can have some materials for the renovation of their houses. So any architectural project that we try to make in collaboration with the communities, we always have to be to interrelate all the scales from one from one place to another. So, every time we have to work with with a large medium and small scale. So maybe in our case. And I would like to invite our team from Papachula to join the conversation but the fundamental initiative is basically talking about democracy on the side of architecture or even processes that emerge from the collective imagination and we're we're it's everyone that's participating it's not just the students is not just tired can it's the community that plays the selection everything so that that's our approach to democracy, a very complicated term these days, I say I have a question to maybe bring together what both that you're going to share with us, which is that in your approach to this local cultural traditions. Which include of course, local knowledge, local constructive knowledge, you are transforming in an almost alkencal process intangibles. And in this process, it seems that materials have a critical role to play so can you share with us a little bit more of your experiences with materials in as a tool to construct these spaces and to intervene in these local scales. Yes, also maybe it can be related with the question that so that Candelaria put in the in the chat and our view about the local materials that is is that we never introduce a new material that is not local, for example, like not because it is a natural material, it's good to introduce it in a place where that material does not exist, for example, bamboo, bamboo it's placed only in special ecosystems and we only use it when that is one of the most repetitive natural material in the area so that is why the first approach is to try to have an understanding of the natural resources and which are the natural materials with which the communities have been building for a long long time in traditional ways and also if that knowledge is still available in the community because sometimes in some communities, they have been in a process of urbanization and many of the local knowledge have been published so the first thing that we have to do is to try to see if the natural resources are still available, like in some places, some of the materials have almost gone because also this development and this process of urbanization and also because of the forestation etc and also to see if what is the local knowledge about these building systems without information related with the ecosystem and also related with the aspiration of the community about the project, we try to build more than a design project, it is more like try to build a communitary strategies with which we can have the potential of the natural resources but also the knowledge of the community that can be also understood as related also with the local economy so everything we try to also not to understand the place with a systemic view but also to try to build strategies also with that systemic view so that everything can be in a I don't know how to say it in English but like in this I don't know if I if you want if you want to add something that you want her to touch upon yes, well, our approach is very much hands on and do it yourself and make it happen so we basically work with what we find what we get donated and hopefully things that we can reuse that are unused, abandoned or for example, the project, the play achomo the one that we presented first was made out of elastic elastic material that was left overs from a factory that produces all this elastic bands for Victoria's secret and then they exported and basically what we found is that they didn't need it they were probably going to burn it or who knows and this material has had already three uses the first one was the project itself then a fashion designer collected some of the one we had and design samples with it and then it was used for marking paths in the in the ravines of Guatemala city. I think there's like an interesting thing because you have a dynamic where sometimes in a developing come on country where the wealth is they're interested in external standards of quality. And so there's a look outside of the country's borders to try to raise standards of expectation and is turning a blind eye to what's local, but a lot of times our clients are commissioning us to do something and they want something like what they see in the magazine but the materials and furnishings are all imported and that increases their price three times so for the same amount of money, you can do something that's completely one of a kind custom using traditional crafts and materials which keeps the money flow local and also allows there's there's also a kind of I would say a sort of whittling down of the traditional application to groups that aren't in the indigenous communities so they find something that sells like a mask, and then they learn how to make the mask and make it on repeat because it's something that can be kind of put into markets that may start to dilute its actual cultural significance as a commercial product. So we're trying to also find opportunities to see where the craftsmanship is there but maybe the integrity has sometimes gone away so that we can we can kind of help to refresh and it's something that's very common and we work also with a lot of local product designers local artists and as mentioned local fashion designers who are all sort of trying to reimagine this blended culture in in the same way and sort of see see things through a new new lens and embrace some of the sort of again the sort of global reality and not segregate these things as much as they have been in the past. I have a comment. More than a question but when I was listening to I forget your name because you have common now only. It's Jessica Jessica. And we're talking about the difficulty of using the indigenous traditional and natural materials I mean I've encountered that also in Brazil like when we're working specially working in the Amazon and places where you know obviously those are the materials that you know we're traditionally used there's also the question of temporality right. A lot of the indigenous and indigenous ethnicities and also local, you know, white folks that have been there traditionally for a long time. Have have wellings that are supposed to to last a certain amount of time right. So when you start trying to connect those ways of living, it's not just a question of materials right so it's a question of how they live to some kind of policy, which is usually unified and and and just you know for the whole country if we considered, you know, the Amazon, the legal Amazon itself, not only Brazil, it's the size of the US, right so that's already crazy. If you consider consider then Brazil and the other countries around the forest I mean it's, it's just crazy and we have like one policy. Right so one thing that I started thinking and I think a while ago and I think now is a time that maybe it will make more sense. It does make more sense already in the US and maybe in Latin America, if we start going down this path could make sense in some years is if we to affect policy, we start demanding the calculus as a guideline for private financing and public financing about the carbon footprint of materials. And then, and this is something that you know I we have tried to start with the private sector in Brazil and it's now like you know some people are starting to kind of like want to discuss this. It's just like something that you know occurred to me because you're never going to converge the two things that you know they, they, they, they're just like coming from two different parallel imaginaries they're not going to converge. So, just a thought. Yeah, I think that the theme about the public policies is also related with that question. And we have all also been working on that path, you know, trying to fight also with the public policies, trying to demonstrate, not us but also a lot of civil organization in Latin America and in Mexico. So, to, to fight public policies and make them understand the, the simple view that they are, they are having about habitat, no, that they are only seeing the quantitative aspect, but not the qualitative aspect and also that that way of much of the organization of solutions through all the territory also in Mexico we have only one public policy about housing about the materials when you have a lot of ecosystems a lot of indigenous cultures. We have also been working on that path, and it has been a very difficult, like in the past 10 years, but with this government, some things have changed that are that are a little bit closer to try to understand the great potential of local materials and also of local knowledge and also of local economy to have much better houses much better community spaces, and also we also try to use our work to to set like a kind of example to demonstrate all the potential that it's around the nature of working with the community, not working, not making the project to the community, no. So, it is a long way and maybe we will not see in our lifetime the effect, but I think that it's very important that the community also try to have this reflection of the professionals but the communities by themselves to have this reflection, so they can also be, they can be organized and try to defend their natural resources and their ways of living and try to have a path more of autonomy than of dependency know so I think that the reflection process is a very important part also of our work to try not to change just our own minds but also try to make a reflected process in the communities. And Candelaria was also asking if the we have seen the effect of these construction methods that we're working with the communities, these are not methods that are co created like what what we try to do is to try to reinforce the local knowledge of all the local materials. And with the tech with technical knowledge we try to improve some of these systems so that they can last longer so they can be replicated in the same region. And one of the examples is the productive rural school that is like the third project that we made in Sierra Noroncal de Puebla after the first exercises so the local knowledge about the first two exercises of housing was taken from the community to implement it in the construction of the rural rural school so now we don't have to be there so that the people can also use those that knowledge was that was over there but they just needed a simple change or a modification around a simple improvement of how to use the bamboo. So it can be a local material with the potential to construct everything that they want to construct to build service. And Luis Karen said you had a question in the chat do you want to ask personally or do you want me to read. You can read it I think you read perfectly. I could ask it doesn't matter. That's why I just put it in the chat but it doesn't matter can read it or you can read it. Yeah, go ahead. So I was curious on all of the presenters. I'm going to read the question how the presenters talked about different forms of spontaneous practices in some form or another. Either ways of working that seem to subvert or question standardized modes of production, traditional or expected modes or forms of spatial occupation, and the use of materials that are not typically associated with the production of in light of communal struggle with info navite that seem to reject practices that don't fit into the kind of globalized modes of production or market marketability. What is the role, generally of your practices to make the critical character of these spontaneous practices acceptable to become in other words more widespread, especially in locations that where the great governing drive towards modernization and further globalization, how is it that these things that seem to be very much kind of rooted in the place that seem to be kind of anathema to that kind of a sense of globalization and modernization. How do we make these things so that they become kind of acceptable and part of a kind of a structure of kind of like solving the problems that are at hand. We try to to break with this idea of what the architecture be, you know, like we tried to get out of the box about thinking just about the design or maybe something about the space or the materials but we tried to in in this way to create an accompanimento social integral is like to to be together to be next to the people to give them to to try to collaborate is not like in a vertical way of working center horizontal view of our work where we have to understand as much as of the technical, social and the territorial problems that we have in face. And also we tried to put more our energy, not only in the design, but mostly in the design of the strategies not of the project, not of the spaces, because we think that like the architecture will be the result. Also, and also that architecture can be the way by which the reflection in the communities can help a lot more in the oncoming years. So, and also we tried to break with the idea of the short term, we tried to think of much more in the long term, and sometimes a little bit difficult also with when you draw are working with with public resources because sometimes it's impossible. Now, nowadays we're in a very huge problem with Konami, because they want us to build very quickly on the houses and this kind this approach is completely different. The most important thing is the social process and the architecture will be the result, and the architecture will show if the social process was the appropriate or if it was just like a construction process of real states. So, we tried to break all that things that in our school we were we were teach, we tried to get out of that idea and that is that is why we have this concept, we follow this concept of social production of habitat that was, it was thought since the 60s. It was, it has been placed in Latin America a long time ago, like 60 years ago, to this kind of work. I want also to contribute I think in in our case and we have many plans and many perspectives about the city and how we relate with the with the borders of and I have studied many examples and many plans that we have, we have done in Bogota. And we have seen that it is easier for an for a mayor to construct infrastructure and to do it, you know, any kind of formal use, but we have And I agree with the Jessica, because we thought that we need this, like agreement with the people and how they, how they relate with the nature and the borders, and how they relate with life with all the expressions of life. You don't realize how do you think about what is happening in the soil and what is all the processes, and with water and with all the things that are having a relation and an incredible process that we can imagine. So, and we try that we try to to do something that it could be invisible because it's worth with the people if we are creating creating relationships, we are creating a new way of relating to others and you cannot see it in infrastructure. And it's going to see it in a long time. That's why we are talking that we are having another way of relating urban and rural areas in a huge city. And sometimes maybe not the obvious solution that we have been learned about planning or designing, but the invisible lines that we have to cross to change things. And on our end, I think it's very similar to what Jessica mentioned and because it's more about bringing the people together. And in our case, the people were talking especially about the students and to be exposed to processes and experimentation and dealing with communities, governments, almost a sort of not asking permission to do something which is also part of the what you mentioned to be more spontaneous and we limited to a three month project in order to to not make something that could potentially happen in three years or a long term vision but something that could happen really fast that generates probably a fast impact in the place where it's happening but especially a strong impact on architecture students and more and more we're working with other students and So, as Jessica mentioned is getting out of the box and sort of breaking the rules in a way and following other rules but is less about the outcome and more about the process and the people. And I think also what we run up against is a lot of entrenched thinking. And so, getting sort of the municipalities are getting sponsored companies a lot of times we work in places where everyone knows what the problems are. They don't need that outside the box, thinking they need to be shown the way. And so we're typically parachuting in and quickly offering to create a piece of public art to really break log jams that already exists with a lot of people on the ground, doing good work community organizing, or working in some cases in preserving either like railway lines or urban waterways and things like that, but there just seems to be, they've they've all seemed to read a reach a point of inertia. And so using art and design in a kind of low risk high impact way is a great way to show people like look there are possibilities if you just get something going. And that's allowed us to kind of blitz through a lot of kind of typical processes, and, and that's been that's been very refreshing and also to sort of the previous question, I think that there's something about fostering kind of like the architecture equivalent of a slow, slow food movement that needs to happen there needs to be top down appreciation of design in order for people to to see its value. So, as much as I, we do kind of work ground up in terms of bringing everyone to the table possible. It's also about enriching people's lives in the public through design. I think model has a question. I was going to ask is it kind of speaks to to what we're talking but keeping in the theme of scale. How can you plan for your initiatives to scale up and this is addressed to others to all the speakers. I don't really scale up in size. Quite literally but scaling in replication and an impact. So how can we design as students and as architects for initiatives to grow in scale. So since many of the designs that you presented today are more than what gets built. They're an initiative to create community and they're like the idea that could scale up. So at least for our fundamental initiative, we kind of took the covert opportunity to to spin it out. So one of the teams for the first time we're running three parallel projects, rather than one per year. And that was a step that we took because we recognize that, even if it's successful as successful as it's been it just has limitations if it stays the way it is so we've tried to create a program that can be kind of offloaded in terms of a methodology, rather than, you know, again design that always points back to some office, right. In our case and we make this laboratory in the mountain, where the mountain speaks. And we try to, this is a private space, and we're trying to say to the municipality that they don't have to buy all the land to have this socio ecological corridor in the mountains of Bogota. And we're trying that the first stage is to pay for all the land that it's extremely complicated. So we are trying to make an example and scale the replication that a private place can be public use. And all the things that we are doing in the process of having a new way of basing that, and a new way of relating with others with this little laboratory so we, we think this they are they are hearing this proposal to change their politics. So this is a very great question, because if we try to to be just ourselves the ones that are trying to change something outside. Nothing is going to happen so the word of replication it's one of the one of our most our and one of the things that we're always thinking about so for us I think that the, the key word is a knowledge, knowledge sharing, because if if in those process where you are working with the community in either project that you're working. You do not make like those participatory research processes you do not make these reflective processes with a community you do not make these training workshops where there is these know that sharing from either from both sides know not just from the technicians to the community but also to from the community to the technicians. And then anything new will be born from and burn from that know. So, and we think that one of the most important things that we have to do is to try to. Potentiate these knowledge sharing to different processes know in every part of the project, so that at the end, it will not be necessary for us to continue working with the community know. So they got we do not, we do not have so the committee do not have a dependency on our work, but they can have the autonomy to replicate the project with their own with the knowledge that they acquired together. So, and if there is no knowledge sharing, they will have to be as dependent as in the time where where we arrived and also I just want to try to also say that. And participation and the local knowledge is always their participation do not start when we start working with it with the community, always always the community have some kinds of participation and some knowledge and some local view of the ways of making the project so we are just like one of the actors that are trying to collaborate in that objective and with the community. But we are just one part of all the actors that are a part of this project or other projects. Okay, I have a question also. I think Greg start touching upon funding and Diana talking about said is that that was also something funded by the government. And just taking to consideration all the fires for example that's happening in Brazil, and that fires that are happening in California. And a lot of these fires they are the government doesn't seem to care that much in Brazil, for example. So I just wonder how is the relationship with working with the government or when you're doing work for public spaces versus private and it has been very difficult because we are the citizens volunteers and we are very apart from the government and we are trying to give the relevance of the of the biodiversity of the city in the plants and still now this mayor, which is a woman mayor, she's more receptive about this kind of process, but still still difficult because of course now there we have another priorities of health, but we are we have made this big campaign and we have been they are they are looking at us and and they are talking with us so and we also began a campaign with the children that children can talk about how they imagine they the diversity in the cities and the streets and they are taking those those voices in the plan and I'm working because I'm not working and doing volunteer but we are they are taking this these voices and our messages to the future plan of Bogota so I'm very optimistic now hopefully after 11 years of this work but I think maybe this time is going to be the time. Sorry Ness had to go deal with her newborn for one second. So, I think, you know, fundamental is a, it's pretty new program and we're not we can't really say that we planned it out very cohesively from start to finish but it essentially runs without money. All the projects you saw were built for less than $10,000. And that's for three months of includes housing for the students who come for three months. And I think that the government organizations that we have worked with in the past. They are not really willing to again there's bureaucracies that are impediments to progress, but governments have tons of resources when it comes to materials because they build roads and they build bridges and these things. And if you can sort of leverage existing resources that people kind of have at their fingertips and are used to working with at a exponential level of scale. For them it's nothing to donate a few truckloads of gravel, right, but for us it helps create mounds with in combination with donated materials and combination with donated expertise and these kind of things. Our program is very interesting to us not only because of the way that we bring people together but the way that we get everyone to actually have essentially be a literal stakeholder in contributing something of actual value. Put it into those like potluck dinner, let's say. And so that's been very exciting to us to see how getting also to learn the way philanthropy works in the states, or grants work in the states doesn't necessarily translate down to Latin America but other, there are other ways of contributing with goods and services. They're actually very fluid. I'm just going to make a comment to Louise's question and I think all of these comments also. I have a theory, having worked with a lot of communities in Brazil that the this that you have called the spontaneous Louise. It's always there. I think what we need to do is to acknowledge, you know, it's, it's history and its existence also, you know, and tell the story. And I think the threshold between what is private and public, you know, there has been historically so much action. It's just not a story that is told. And there's so many, there's so many communities living in, you know, outside the kind of homogeneous standards that we have precluded us as the ones that you know we have to live in. And sometimes I just think it's, it's a question of uncovering it like that word doesn't exist in English but letting it be seen. Even and I think urbanization has a lot to do with that. Like when you it's very different when you work with a community that is in a very urban area. And it's considered poor and divided of any kind of identity, or another one who is as poor as this other one, but somehow is grounded in another kind of set of values and can function in a much grounded way. But even in, even in the communities in Sao Paulo, you know, Sao Paulo is this humongous, cool metropolis. And when you go to the periphery, it's, you know, the amount of misery and poverty is overwhelming. You know, you know, someone is doing their little chicken, you know, cage where you know like they learned in Seara up north and, you know, and there's a story to be told about that or a garden that has been you know the place where the women, you know, congregate. I don't know, I think, without wanting to be romantic but I think, you know, there's also stories that we need to learn how to hear I think to listen to. I think what I was after and my question had to do with the fact that for example, and this is something that Jessica brought up in her presentation is like okay they're making these things that seem to kind of solve a problem that is very very real needed and it's done in a way that is both kind of communal community participate per community participatory and and seemingly I don't know. I would assume that it's inexpensive and that this seems to be like a solution that could be applicable in a lot of kind of instances. But that to a certain extent if one of the kind of great housing Mexican kind of conglomerate of sorts cannot accept, even they might know that there is this incredible need to solve this problem. So how do we begin to not in a kind of romantic way but how do we begin to literally kind of make proposals that are just very much I don't want to say like, you know the kind of, you know, like knowledge that has come over like, you know, hundreds of that is very practical knowledge that may not necessarily be part of this like center, it's eccentric in fact that could actually be kind of a solution to like all of the, all of the problem like some, like a lot of problems and I think all of the practices from today about these different ways of approaching, you know, certain issues that may not be kind of standard traditional or, you know, and so how do we make these things and whoever brought I think it was Gregory that brought up the thing about the slow, slow food movement, how do we bring this to architecture and it seems like the practices that we saw today are a great example of a kind of laboratory where these things are being kind of tested. And, and so if the tests are successful, how do we, you know, how do we disseminate this knowledge so that you know, maybe, you know, the buildings that come on is building, you know, and what can actually be built in the peripheries of Sao Paulo for example or like is something that would be parallel, you know, to kind of allow for these things so this is the basis of my question. The interesting thing is that as their experience and experiments have happened a lot have already happened also in Brazil in Sao Paulo, and they didn't continue so I think it has to do also with this breaking, you know, the threshold of being an agent and being focused as such and we don't do that historically right with same thing with minorities and you know whatever it is. But I think I think the other thing that and I think that's what I was trying to say when I was talking to Jessica is that we need to change the metrics. So, what is it that we are quantifying. So, and that's why I got to be a little bit helpful, hopeful, when we started a discussion with banks in Brazil, and the situation now with, like Alicia is saying is so crazy in Brazil, right, I mean, all over the world, that the private sector is the one who has is stepping in to have a discourse to save our natural resources that crazy. So, how do we influence the, how, how value and how, and how success is measured. And I think the key. So, if it has to do with what Jessica is saying if it has to do with the metrics of well being, right, how do you measure that. And it's, and it, every not for profit. I would say in Brazil, maybe even the world that I've participated in that I'm at the board with in has that problem because at the end of the day you need a report, and you need to justify the money that the UN gave you or this company the woman gave you and what is the metric. Or you say oh you know the kids are happier. So how do you measure that. So that's why I'm saying that in terms of the material I think there's a path now that we're trying to understand. But I think we need as architects to be very radical and it's, and we, I don't think we have started that yet, which is to trace the contemporary and the carbon footprint of materials, because that is a metric that we're trying that we're starting to understand, and then natural materials are going to make a more sense, and then temporality is going to make more sense. You don't need to build a building that lasts 100 years. You don't need to build that. You need to help the community. You are saying, I'm sorry I interrupt you, but about the metrics. No, we are not having metrics for social impacts and cultural agreements. I think we have to learn how to make the conversations, because we always try to bring us bring up our perspective from our ways of resolving things. And in the case that we you were talking about indigenous people. We have to bring the conversation and here and not to push the ideas from from where is our perspective we have to bring that conversation and learn to have the conversation in a different way. And also like the that that metric needs to be built by the people who is leaving those places who is building their own constructions know and not in a romantic view because also what we always say is that participation is not a romantic view. You know, any of you that you approach to participation in a community in a project you can see that participation is a process of negotiation. It is never a romantic process. No, it's always a big struggle between different interests, interests between different logics, and between different perspectives of reality. We can open the dialogue between a person's it will be much better, we will have much better metrics if they build those metrics not and that they are not built by the government or by the enterprises or by the real estate. So I think that we have been this this idea of colonization of the way of what should be like the good living or the best living or the or, or, or, or, or, like a life that can be suitable for each, each one has to be built from from the people who are part of those projects, like not not even us that you are being with them, it has to be from their own Cosmo vision from their own way of living because people from urban areas and from rural areas will have completely different metrics of the projects completely different. No, it's not just about the sector of who are making them but also the reality of that each people is having in their life, all the experiences and that is why participation in their culturality are very strong tools to to make this happen. I think we are wrapping up the conversation if anyone have any last questions or comments. And I wanted to lastly to touch upon Greg's comment, you touch upon monolith. I think that one thing I wanted to bring to the conversation to lay the ground for our next conversation is the word letting America. So as you were saying Guatemala cities of this melting pot, some follow other like big urban cities are this really large melting pot, yet everything is defined as letting America. So what is letting America would be, there's so many people from letting America in United States, are they Latinos, are they from letting America. So I think if you could expand a little on that point. I'll try. Yeah, I think being I'll just speak from my own experience being from the United States were pretty bad with geography were pretty ignorant people in general. And one of the reasons our firm is called Tair Ken is because when I first came to Guatemala is my first time in Latin America and I kept asking as what is taller, I keep seeing this word everywhere taller, taller this taller that and she's like no tanto as Tair. And so like it takes from an outsider there's a very high barrier to entry mentally for Latin America. We just think of everything as south of America and and clearly that's incredibly ignorant but also being there as I sort of talked a little bit through our slides. There's the, the, the different world of the Hispanic overlaid in the indigenous culture the in our case, the living mind culture. And after that, after you kind of break through that you start to realize oh there's a there's a there was a wave of Germans that came over to do the coffee plantations and part of Costa Rica and Guatemala look awful like Switzerland and frankly I'm only familiar with certain pockets of Central America so I'm the worst possible person to talk and I'll, I'll stop but but I think that there's the idea that there is a Latin America whatsoever is is a completely false construct there's a sort of like with anything there's layers of upon layers and blended cultures and I think for us that's trying to express that in our design as much as possible. And creating this kind of pastiche allows more people into the design work rather than kind of an unlimited palette of streamlined minimalism or anything that just starts to set up walls between people. Yeah, I think that's really well put and I start conversation for the next conversation series we're going to have a nice kind of lead so everyone in the call is very welcome. It will be a December 1. So I would like to thank all the panelists, everyone who came to support us, the professors who are here as well. Thank you. And then, if we might ask the panelists to stay a little bit on the call. Thank you very much everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.