 The second one is going to be dealing with the relational dimension of architectural practice in in the light of climate change and and as a means to also become part of the climate change discussion and action. The first speaker is going to be I'm going to introduce the two speakers now so we can do a more kind of vibrant let's say dynamic. Daniel Moreno Flores is the first one. Daniel is a passionate and inventive architect based in Quito, Ecuador. His work is focused on an economy of means and material that connects people to the environment working with simple construction processes and accessible material the forms adapt to the environment teams and inhabitants. He's the national curator of the Ecuador 9 Biennale but American architecture urbanismo in Paraguay in 2009. His work has been widely awarded including the National Architectural Design Honor Award at the 21st Pan American Biennale Biennial in Quito in 2018 designed and built with the work of the Naranja Limón home with Santiago Baca a National Architectural Design Award at the 20th Pan American Biennial in Quito 2016 and a fill-in lesson the American architecture and urbanism in so he's been basically widely recognized. His practice is very unique in Quito in Ecuador but also in the world but he's also very well connected to a number of people his help creating a context with Alvore there with many other people in in Ecuador in Paraguay in many places around around in the region where he's operating and it's become a model of an alternative way of practicing that is very much influencing also students and and young practitioners. Camilo Garcia and Diego Barajas Usos Colombian born and they've been practicing in different places from the Netherlands to Madrid now. Usos is an architecture an urbanist studio with the transdisciplinary focus whose work consists of design projects research and academic practice. Their projects include host and nectar garden home at the building in Cali one guy one building one budget one vegetable garden at the home they share the bath yard the very recent project that they did that was widely published among many others founded in 2003 by Camilo Garcia a mark at Berlage and Diego Barajas PhD at Ietsam a mark at the Berlage and also you both studied at Los Andes right in Bogota before Usos is based in Madrid and regularly operates between Spain and Colombia. Usos' work has been widely published in international magazines and books and has featured has been featured in places such as the Venice Biennial the Rotterdam by the Venice Biennial in the the year that Emiliano Gadolfi did this exhibition on experimental and alternative practices that was so influential in the long run the Tumtolla work for sustainability and humanity their work was also in the Oslo Triennial that was curated by people that are very connected to actually Luis Alexander Casanova was around here yeah there and that was also very celebrated the after belonging Triennial and and it's been basically a word everywhere and exhibited everywhere I must say that the garden the garden house in the garden building for butterflies in Cali is being considered one of the first examples of architecture that expanded as a transmedia architecture and was also connecting the discussion about labor the discussion about ecology and the discussion about media in a very unique way so I'm very much willing also to see what's the way that the two of you the two practices can be clarifying what is that that architecture can do for climate change that is doing within climate change. Hello everybody I am very happy to to be here and share with you I am Polish I will speak in Spanish I feel more comfortable at first I would like to explain some of my personal position I studied at an alternative college where there weren't teachers or classrooms there were some horrible environments that stimulated a personal creation of human humanity the teachers or shall we say the adults that accompanied the children and the children would build their day-to-day in forests in natural places and in creative spaces and that childhood illusion was a learning experience since play and it has impacted my adult life and has created some principles around surrounding architecture and these principles dream which always interests me to expand the mind and to think that anything is possible to create joy to enjoy the moment and enjoy what one is doing to share to share with the other to connect with the other optimize to always think about how we can generate less resources how to think of how to create materials or resources and to think how we can be efficient and last is to learn to always create an opportunity to learn and understand more and to also go back to what I can do to in terms of and so for me I want to go back to what you can do by hand and to also go back to what I can do to in terms of connecting the human brain with the human being as an honorable act to build thinking but to also constantly be in the reality and so for here is just kind of touch back to reality and touching things that here in this case we have something from the Incas my study is something that's very small but I've connected with a lot of people and the vinculation of that has been very great and so in Quito we have a lot of the architecture is very it's very related and connected to to in thought sorry there's a lot of criticism visiting projects for others there's a collective intelligence on the other hand I want you to also know that it's not just architects that are a part of my team but also the builders the masters of labor so here we have Fabian Jaime Luis and here's Roy who's here with me from Buenos Aires and Pablo asked me to mention him and he's a great friend of mine I would also like you to know that our collectives in Quito have also created groups for example Kui who works close to the public space so Kui that focuses on the appropriation of space that isn't really attended to together we understand that we can do things better and to advance things even beyond and it was formed from the earthquake of 2016 that suffered Ecuador Ecuador is a group that formulaized after the 2016 earthquake in Ecuador and together we learned that we could support the catastrophe and there's another group that's called the Republic of Exception we're a lot of people that have to deal with culture industrial design architecture with environmental themes and we've understood that we can create an understanding that's more general for the public and we can demand from the city and the state to give us space that we can work within so that our work continues to contribute to society this is a new group that is formed it's called La Hortiga it's an urban ideal and it's a public work or an urban work and that's where I work and that's where I look for ways to develop within life it doesn't necessarily have to deal with economy and we we habitat spaces that have been abandoned and we give them new life with the understanding that we have I want you to understand how Ecuador is a little bit is supposing that the world is spherical we have the equator we don't have seasons, the days are always 12-hour days and there's a very regular climate the particularity of being on the equatorial line on the 21st of March and also September the sun is perpendicular and there's no shadow in that perpendicularity I also want to speak about the region and also the surprise that water has on the region and so we here we are along the Pacific and also along our border is the Andes the highest point is 6200 meters and the Andes divide the coastal zone and with the Amazonic zone I come from the capital and there are a lot of mountains around and the waters to go out are always at a certain point either towards the Pacific or in this case towards the Amazon recently I have been very concerned with themes around water and I've noticed that the territory always has these withdrawals of water these red points are also places where I have intervened and I've understood that a territory that's so big our interventions there's small medical cures for the environment I want you to understand the importance of this territory where we have really tall mountains and there are a lot of and so we also have these natural yes faults thank you for these for water and the city has a growth since 1935 that doesn't consider the territory this city could be anywhere and the city devours the territory the land and so these waterfalls are 90% blocked and the water that comes in comes mainly from the snow caps always we need more resources for sustainability and always the water comes from further away all the water that we consume goes back to the rivers contaminated I would like for you to see the aesthetic that the city has in which it provides a construction and a development in which the people automatically build and they work with very unfriendly materials and that's where it becomes really interesting with the intelligence of tradition and where you can see the construction of where the populated areas are it's interesting that in a city that's so gray you see still several points where water is coming out and being born we have waterfalls five minutes away from the city and we don't even know and where we have water passages now they're completely closed this this waterfall is from this water this water point passage and this part here is from here in the very back but it comes from this passageway here and this river that is open is completely contaminated all of the drainage goes into this river and this is the most contaminated river within the country I want to tell you now about a project that I've been working on with Sebastian Calero and I want you to understand the way of working we spoke a lot with our clients and we developed a shared understanding this is a private construction there's very few contests or bids to do this and there's very limited opportunities for public works so these works are also parts of reflection and opportunity they are the clients and they live in the mountains they go to the mountains often and Chepico has been here a lot as well so we identified many things about the mountain but also the strategies that exist within it what it has to do with time there's an aesthetic that exists in how you do this traditionally or popularly and when you put materials together as well that look stratified and that has to do with the economy I'm interested in that the materials come from the environment as previous panelists have said it's important for me that it's accessible from sourcing within the earth and also like for example the reeds that accompany the rivers or the wood that is also given oxygen I'm also very interested in recycling and understanding that people don't have an awareness of what used to be there but in this immediateness of life they throw away the past so when it interests me that whenever there's a destruction of a place I want to pick that up that material and think of other forms or ways of the economy this is the common model of construction in which you create a lot of impermeable flora in which you create a lot of impermeable flora and then and there's a climatic impact as the sun hits these buildings it impacts the climate but all of this water can't be filtered necessarily and it collects at the very bottom and everything that we consume goes to the rivers so what we propose in this house is that we adapt the ecosystem and that we can live together one of the strengths that comes from this house is the treatment of the black waters and the gray waters and it's how we convert the black waters into new life and that's where the thinking changes and it turns into something because our undoing can affect wildlife and we can create vegetative filters and also the water can permeate the earth and filter into the water as well the inspiration is the local architecture the local architecture always has to contribute to the land and then the architectural thought is to sustain these pieces of earth that can sustain life and we can see the recycling here and we've created a work that like an exchange that's not monetary so a museum within the city considered all of this to be trash and I didn't see a lot but I understood that there could be some important things so I accepted the contract they offered me to clean it and to take whatever I wanted and it was incredible because I found a lot of wood and we found a lot of woods that don't exist anymore we stopped our work at our offices in order to help put these columns in nearby it's beautiful because the clients also get involved in this process and they create a feeling of pertinence and so we have some pictures here from the location this is the land and it's annexed next to a familiar place so the goal was to unite both lands this brick is from here and we wanted to convert it into part of the house all of the nature and topography we leave it as is and this architecture adapts to this circumstance this tree here ends up here this is another tree and the house looks as if it's always been there and then the house doesn't only connect to this natural area but it also starts to think about how it connects with the distant environment and this andyna topography we didn't cover it so here the tree appears, let's say between the house and we can see how this is a house made out of wood primarily and so this wall that has been filled in to be a part of it but they can also be filled with or part of something else unlike the other panelists we haven't done previous tests we do the test in the work we also take a lot of risk in Ecuador, it's a seismic country and Ecuador is a cynical country these these walls do not have a one these are and we have these cables that help us sustain this because there's also a vertical structure here we were interested in this in order to generate thin walls that aren't heavy and the house is closed to all the places that aren't interested to us but they're connected to the parts that we are interested in the parts that are part of the ecosystem for example this part has a part that's really connected to the nature around it right here and also this tree and we see here this window that is connected on the other side and we see a tree on the other side and you have a long view of the mountains as well what we did here are boxes that are made out of walls floors and ceilings bricks that made or bricks and ceilings that are made out of uh or sorry floors and ceilings that are made out of bricks and the ceiling is also made out of brick all of this is made out of pottery we see where the plants are and we can see that here I put the plant here only to explain how it works there's a line of circulation and then we see these boxes of dirt there's an intermediary zone that's kind of like a neutral zone and you can see here how the trees are and how the house opens up so that you can see the trees and so we see these intermediary zones made out of wood and then we see these others made out of dirt and there's a huge cover that covers this intermediary zone and this is also made out of reeds and it's kind of like a species of bamboo type but it's also really small so I went back this last weekend to see how it was after uh see the damage and it's interesting to see how nature has uh really like grown around the space before starting before starting with the house I would like to show you or tell you more about the water treatment that it has we have the sink we have the shower the washer so there's a grease trap that it goes to and then the toilet it goes through a biodigestive bioprocessing and so it goes to a vegetative filter both of them do these are swamp plants or marsh plants and it has a vertical filtration we have another filtration system that has a horizontal filter and so this all goes into a collective of water plants with aquatic plants and fish after this and so we can use this water again and so now we can use this water again the fruits are even more important so as you can see here we have these uh and the nature that we have in the land and what we all do is put uh throw this water into the rivers we're unaware of what the damage we're causing to the environment the city where I live is 2800 meters above sea level the rivers cover a lot of land before getting to the uh ocean this idea of death and and catastrophe in terms of the environment we use it as life such as um systems that where we can create synergy with the night with nature this is the filter of the house it has a lot of nutrients and therefore it's enormous as we see here it's almost five meters tall it's quite impressionable and so there here we have this this pond of fish and there's a connection with the fish to see how we feed them and how to see them grow this is the house and we can see how it's almost invaded by the nature so when we built this we actually pulled this wall back so that we could build this and make the tree room space for the tree and then you see the other tree and how this is situated in between the two and we can see here this other tree and we can see how the architecture is built on top of the nature and all of the house looks out this way this is the living room of the house which is also by the exterior it's incredible because it almost seems like we're in a tropical zone but we also are in a part where we can look at the cement and we can look at also like how this is concrete and so it's flowing with the life of the human being and also nature and so we've used a lot of wood and we've also done what the clients have really dedicated themselves towards and using giving back and using what we have already and here's what I was showing you earlier about the cables that are helping sustain this vertical structure and I work a lot to use the minimal amount of materials needed and to find a lot of synthesis in the creative and constructive processes the cables that were used to sustain the walls they also come into sustainers of the house and also in the creation of the mobility and we can see how these systems here of wood also carry these systems of dirt and so we see contradictions between the elements that are most flexible they carry the element that's heaviest and also we can see this subtle way of supporting the earth and I'm going to show you some pictures so you can see more elements of the house we also put fragile plants into this construction and this is the living room and then as you go from one side to the other and handrails the clients have an idea or concept of that everything is in your head and we take into awareness how to use this house in a way that we shall say organically so as we see here these these passages don't have handrails and there are also children that go through these spaces and so here's a zone where we have a hole in the ground and so this space has a very unique temperature that's also very comfortable nice and so here we see these cables again and we also see this wood that has been recycled and this is a luxury of the house without having spent a fortune on it and here we have nature and the pond thank you okay um okay hello and many thanks to Andres, David, Cia, Amale, Lila, Lucy and all the people that has made this event possible we are very happy to be today among also people whose work we are greatly and which enriches our own work and also in the public okay so there are two aspects of climate change that we believe are equally important the first lies in understanding that climate change is interconnected with multiple realities of our everyday life for example with certain desires linked to some ideas of progress or even beauty with which we can agree or not but in any case we have to take into account as we are going to see in some examples regarding fashion or apparently banal experiences like shopping as such climate change from our point of view needs to be approached from an ecosystemic perspective and seeing how it relates to a large sets of aspects of our daily lives the second lies in understanding that our impact on the climate has partially been the product of a number of power relations that are to a large degree asymmetrical and that have been strong determining factors in our construction as society these are relations that have frequently involved domination and violence towards nature and also towards members of our own species for example we might think of the extractivist dynamics of the colonization and domination of territories in various parts of the world and the transformation of their climates a phenomenon that continues to the present day this includes the subjugation of other sentient species such as animals or human communities linked to those territories it also includes other forms of violence towards groups considered to be subordinate such as racialized people women non-binary bodies and many others from our point of view in order to tackle the colonization of the biosphere that has led to climate change we should not only mitigate its consequences or adapt to it but we also should go to the roots of this phenomena to see what has caused a multiplicity of colonizations and also micro colonizations and the related violence whether natural or social between species relating to race gender and so on so we could see we could say that we can truly develop a new relationship with the climate through tackling that implication of oppressions as some lesbian Caribbean feminist thinkers would call it these two aspects of climate change lead us to think that even though this is clearly a very big problem we believe that it also represents an opportunity to revise the whole web of power relations but also a dreams and desires that makes up our societies and perhaps it is also an opportunity to reinvent our climatic and social relationships to build these as care relations and as new forms of affection and unforeseen kinds of togetherness and solidarity in this task of transforming our relations which will which would eventually lead to new relations also with the climate we could identify these three sets of actions that we believe can help us from an architectural perspective first we'll be taking care of micro realities the second fostering new transformative imaginaries and the third mediating in the construction of implicated communities we think of the work they do at us as a set of micro laboratories that are incomplete are imperfect but which perhaps can still offer some tools that could be useful in these considerations so we will focus on on on the host and nectar garden building project but briefly mentioned two other projects here highlighted in yellow in the in the image this project is located in the tropical Andes in the city of Cali in the western part of Colombia it is one of the most biodiverse parts of the world in the map on the left it shows the 12 mega diverse countries in which also Ecuador is included but it also is part of a region the neotropical in dark green which according to different sources shows shows a sharp declining a sharp species population decline with south and central america suffering the most dramatic decline with 89% compared to 1970s this loss is partially triggered by the same action that's caused climate change and by global warming itself so this project is a textile atelier house that and a host and nectar garden building for insects butterflies and birds that are part of Cali's ecosystem we carried out this project with a community of workers neighbors biologists and entomologists both from Cali and Madrid it started as a private commission for a group of women who run a small atelier from their home where they produced textile garments and hand-painted fabrics they needed a new building both as home for two of them and as their worship in order to prevent the atelier owners from getting big loans or mortgages the building had to be designed to be built in stages it needed to be flexible and adaptable to their small and a stable economy a perimeter external circulation was designed connecting spaces independently uh from one another so this layout has enabled different configurations in time in the building we adopted the morphology used in some Caribbean towns in which houses are separated one meter or three four feet or so from neighboring buildings an effective strategy to create cooler areas in between buildings in this case it also gave space to a larger vertical garden surface on the sides of the building which helps in controlling some exposure and humidity this complemented by cross ventilation throughout all interior spaces creating a continuously cool temperature so no airs no ac or no fans are needed which is unusual for Cali where the average maximum daily temperature is 29 degrees celsius 85 Fahrenheit which is and with an average maximum humidity of 81 percent so it's basically always feeling hot this is a project uh this project has been a platform that allowed us to test and publicize botanical experiments which have been carried out there for more than 10 years the first phase was built in 2005 these experiments were related to an architect architectural membrane a material composed of nutritious plants that host caterpillars and nectariferous plants that feed the butterflies certain birds and also other insects so here's Lorena she's in the nursery like working with some aristologias and passive florals it was a collective work together with biologist Francisco Amaro and Lorena Ramirez and the atelier workers and with the advisory of the local zoo um so while the building was designed as a shelter for different species it functioned at the same time as a sort of informal biometer given the fact that the presence of butterflies is a sign of the status of a given ecosystem as they are great natural bio indicators being located in a biodiversity hotspot where the largest amount of butterfly day butterflies per surface in the world is concentrated so it additionally served as a sort of branding strategy for the atelier anchoring its identity with Kali's ecosystem in its uh sort of microglobal expansion of sales a careful selection of plant species was made together with the team so we created these these cards they classify in the plants in relation to butterfly and insect species uh one per plant also whether they were nectar hosts whether they were bushes uh or climbing plants are also according to the uh demands of of sun exposure water pruning requirements and here they're positioned in the building uh we created a system for the bush plants to grow out and a metal mesh mostly for for climbers and a system of maintenance and irrigation was also designed uh we can see here a map again of the tropical Andes which is a hotspot for biodiversity a hotspot means basically that is a place where a lot of biodiversity is concentrated but it's highly threatened so it's so Colombia is up here and that's Kali where the star is which is the most the second most biodiverse country in the in the world this map shows in orange uh the color uh in orange color differences of bird endemisms of three kinds and in black dots uh the areas of intense human activity so this explains an enormous pressures pressure on all kinds of resources in hotspots where human settlements and natural biodiversity are coexisting next to one another more and more urbanization and land transformation processes due to the expansion of arable land for agriculture with all of its consequences on ecosystems and global warming and reducing and limiting habitats for wildlife in this project another architecture was tested which tried to re-establish a less extractivist relationship with the territory and with other animal species in particular with these those still non-domesticated such as insects and most birds rather than seeing them as resources to be exploited as it has been repeatedly been the case in the so-called agrologistic project as described by Timothy Morton as the largest design project ever formed here we explored the possibility of a new relationship instead one based on care and unaffection through a situated work of gardening this project included both the design of the building itself as well as long-term responsible gardening actions laid by the telier workers with the participation of neighbors and visitors so um for example when customers suppliers or neighbors came to the building they were offered a free seeds or seedlings related to the local ecosystem uh together with information on gardening and the environment from these postcards that had been prepared for visitors or also during workshops ideas were shared about how to take care of flora and fauna or even during fashion shows where informative leaflets were distributed and this collection was called butterfly wings at the same time through everyday routines related to caring for the flora and fauna a social construction took place as well as the building of bonds of affection between the people going in and out of this building in any case the social here can be understood as a construction not only between humans but among different species gradually the people inhabiting the building changed their imaginaries towards the caterpillars that ate the plant leaves which were traditionally perceived as best but as the workers knew they would become butterflies they started to look at after them and care for them so together with hummingbirds for instance these insects started to perform as a kind of trojan horses caring with their social desirable aesthetics a broader ecosystemic agenda thus they have helped introduce new imaginaries towards for example less commonly desirable species species such as beetles moths and caterpillars within this small community of workers these micro actions and experiments sought to recognize the home space but also the city as an imbricated community of workers plants birds and insects the home atelier was sold a couple of years ago and new inhabitants have moved in the project no faces a new challenge about the kind of relationship the newcomers we have with the plants insects and birds and as of last year it didn't seem very promising host and nectar plants membranes were quite neglected but something interesting is happening outside of the atelier one of the women of the original atelier moved to a new location nearby and refurbished a house making a host and nectar garden in her new place so the project has therefore continued growing in new locations and is also present in other actions even if they are small ones that have emerged from it one way or another during the last years we have known about other neighbors friends and visitors using host and nectar plants in their balconies gardens and family events also this is for example a wedding with host and nectar plants used as a dormant for the dining tables and as presents for guests to take home and probably plant so this this project is is part of a series of social bioclagnatic exploration we've been conducting in different projects over the past 10 years when we say social bioclagnatic we mean explorations that engage with the climate both in environmental terms but also in terms of the social atmospheres or social climates that architecture can produce and or interact with if in the garden building we explored the relation of an architectural membrane with urban biodiversity in the project called one guy one bulldog one vegetable garden and the home they share this exploration is broadened towards the ecosystem of water and its recycling that feeds urban flora although in a smaller scale it consists of reusing an updating a small 46 square meter flat in a residential building from the 60s in Madrid it's for Jaime a doctor working in emergency room and albondiga his dog so the project is composed of micro actions that include among others a vegetable garden that functions as a thermal barrier which does away with the need for AC in the summer which is increasingly hot in Madrid it features all summer curtains to shade to shade the home and the plants and also a winter transparent curtains that create a sort of greenhouse effect in winter it also includes soft cool cushion islands for albondiga a rescue bulldog whose man-made breed is extremely sensible to high-temperatus so these refreshing cotton hemispheres allow air to circulate in between and give the bulldog a place to rest apart from the bedroom which is here in the right the project also features a multiple use periscope capsule which capsule which is this in the in the left that alters and transforms and transforms the conventional use uses of the living room into a place for siestas or a bed or as a bed for overnight guests or a projection screen or for receiving more intimate visitors indeed with regard to occasional encounters the living room is often a central place in gay sexual culture reserving the bedroom for closer relationships this is the irrigation system of the vegetable garden made up of an exposed micro landscape of tubes and filters that treat the water from the shower creating what could be a desirable replicable prototype in this case responding on a domestic scale to the critical scarcity of water in an increasingly dry region like that of of Madrid these maps show the certification trends in fact over the course of this century 80 percent of Spain will be at risk of the certification and large cities like Madrid put an enormous pressure on regional water sources housing is responsible for 70 percent of the water consumption in Madrid this set of actions were designed to help us rethink our social interactions and our relationships with energy and nature in densely populated cities at the same time creates a space for other human and more than human body narratives in the domestic space in this project we explore new social bio climatic possibilities around other masculinities and the idea of alternative post heteronormative specialities in the home space we examine these ideas again in another project called beyond heteronormative suburbia this is a semi rural location in the mountains 80 kilometers from Madrid it is a home whose design tries to respond to different everyday needs of a gay couple and their extended transnational family it is part of a series of architecture domestic projects we have been doing during the last years in which most of the structure is timber from forests which fall which follow a set of protocols which are aimed to dealing with them as responsible managed by a diverse ecosystem and not as monoculture tree plantations in this case the wood comes most of the wood comes from a special Spanish forest near Soria which is 200 kilometers from the site and this is a project in which we try reconnecting not only with the biodiversity of the plot itself but also with that expanded plot in which material cycles of a building construction operates so here we see some images of the prefabrication process and here is the current stage of the of the works so to conclude in order to face the problematics of climate change we should acknowledge the specific and implicated situations composed around it this can be achieved to a situated work that takes care that takes care of its macro realities as much as the multiple relations of interdependence and power that shapes them architecture has a direct material component by being inserted in our everyday it has among its main abilities the construction of imaginaries as well imaginaries that we believe are necessary to transform our relationships including our relationships with the climate climate change is a collective problem as such it is also an opportunity to revise and to reinvent our relationships and ideas of community recognizing the implicated communities we are part of composed of different forms of existence and different but still interconnected interconnected struggles environmental and social ones in our point of view these common implicated grounds also have to be thought at different scales from the micro community of a man his dog his tomatoes and other vegetables and the water landscapes of which all three depend or those of a dispersed network of neighbors people and insects around a building or on much larger communities but the architecture in different scales and through different mediations tectonic and non-tectonic once has the capacity to facilitate the blossoming of new extended communities giving them a place and representation opening up space for new relationships that are also very much based not only in collective imaginaries but also on affections thank you thank you very much addressing the issue that we're discussing here and full of possibilities ideas criticality design and aesthetics and everything that architecture has been activated and mobilizing to design but that is now articulated differently in facing a number of changes of paradigm I would say that we're now discussing today I would like to start very directly with a question that has to do with the role of architectural devices as kind of elements that can rearticulate the social and that's something that it's very much in both presentations the possibility of thinking architecture thermal to an ecological perspective as Camila and Diego defended in which basically there's no way to to separate a part of the design from the way it performs socially politically economically biologically and that's something that of course has its traditions in architecture but it's also sort of a kind of game change way of explaining doing and understanding architecture so maybe we can start with this this kind of relational materially relational ecosystemical way of thinking of architectural devices as elements that articulate a number of realms that otherwise could be articulated differently yes thank you yes I think I think that that for us is very important to try to understand and to be aware of all the kind all dimensions scales possibilities but all the dimensions involved in every architectural device regardless of of its scale and because whether we are conscious or not it plays a big role in in different kind of spheres in very multiple and and even contradictory kinds of spheres and so if we are aware of all those dimensions maybe we can embrace them better and we can somehow be a driving force for some kind of transformation which is not material but it can be also immaterial social etc and for example and and even sometimes very small architectural devices like a tomato can be very transformative in unexpected ways for example something we didn't mention but in the case of of one guy one bulldog and one vegetable garden we very much worry about them the the the social the socialization of the corral of the corrala that is a kind of typology of a very typical Spanish typology that where this building was where this apartment was based and the corral always is a traditional is a traditional type housing typology that has an enormous also material heritage a physical heritage that has been lost which it is it's about it's a socializing space it's a very important socializing space because of these balcony corridors for example and because of a central courtyard and this makes a very particular typology that in this case in this building it was a kind of mutilated corrala it was made of the cysts it has these balcony corridors when people socialize a lot because in Spain there is the every every every day tradition to put the clothes to dry outside so people socialize and so on but so this it is is this used in that way but not about the patio no so we were wondering for example in this in this particular project how to rethink this socializing aspect of the corrala but not in the building because we were not able to work in the building but from the interior design so we decided that in this case for example of the of the of the set of the of the garden which we work together with very much with Jaime this we were going to plant more cherry tomatoes on the ground that could make a kind of excess of food that we could share I mean he's also very engaged with other people that is in the building and so on so as a kind of provision of a kind of device that could become a kind of socializing device device that could make instead of encapsulating the food production of the home become a kind of socializing device and actually what has happened which is even also more interesting is that he has started to retake all the previous experiences of food a responsible food that he was become he was a part of before with his ex-boyfriend but he then he broke up so he was a bit apart of that and and the new vegetable garden reconnected him with all these experiences and he made a family with two neighbors with two girls neighbors because in in Madrid you have these buckets buckets of baskets baskets of food and it was too much for him so they made a family out of that so you see that the the the the device of the of the of this architectural device no they were mentioned in this case of this of this little plant pot vegetable plots became also as a socializing device and as another device for implicated new implicated relations where where the bulldog is is is involved with Jaime and his fiancés or meeting encounters or whatever but also the neighbors that create new relationships and also and for us it's a very critical issue also in related with climate change how we are socially involved how we can really create a think and engage with new ideas of community no since it's a collective issue how we can really think of this implicated implicated dimensions no and there are a lot of different struggles together no and how we can relate the climate issues and not taking it not seeing them separated from social issues and and and so on I think these architectural devices have a lot of potentials sometimes we are not really aware of of of transforming no and and sometimes can be really really small for me it's important to come back to re-ask things to unlearn a bit and to try and look at things a different way and one important aspect for me is making the conscious awareness of everyone and to be able to talk about distinct parts of life for example the consideration of the past that there were people before us and that generated understanding and knowledge and also to position ourselves in the land in which we live and to consider social dynamics and to understand that people can generate within their own small social groups and also to strengthen or to grow the common good and to create knowledge that is beneficial to all and with a certain anarchy the economic resources are not necessarily the most important but the thought and also the human resources and to rethink things to do architecture is complex and it requires a lot of resources and you can find it in different ways stop open your eyes and see what the land offers you what the city offers you and to do architecture with the minimal amount of resources necessary and to optimize certain practices in order to not use so much energy and to replant things that aren't working so well within society in a way the discussion of climate change is bringing back this classical dispute in social sciences between the qualitative and the quantitative like the calculation versus the qualification of the characterization in your case there's kind of an assembly of both ways of analyzing but I want to talk now about the qualitative dimension of design which often is not that much understood when discussed climate change for instance for instance there's a number of things that you've been certain instances I would say that you both have been taken like for instance move away from the notion of nature as available resources from extractive economies to ones that are kind of confronting this idea Timothy Norton is presented all kind of aligned with it of agro logistics and criticism that he does more coexistence and discussing the limits of coexistence that's one of them the other is this way of constructing a sense of for instance belonging as Daniel was saying that is not that much as something that is built up through nationalism but is constructed through forms of associability the third one that has to do with the with the allocation of life not as something that is individualistic but more aligned I would say for instance with the thinking of people like Rossi Bradotti as something that is allocated in ecosystems where technology culture aesthetics materiality non-materiality it's assembled together I would like to discuss this because somehow the kind of hegemony of kind of the numeric is often hiding a little bit or shadowing a little bit the need for certain qualitative instances when it comes to do a transition to a paradigm of ecological paradigm or free engagement with environmental that's a that's a great question I mean it's yeah as you said we we are trying to work in both ways like doing a research that is qualitative and quantitative and also in relation to to this assemblage and to this kind of implication of different factors that create climate change what we have also find or not fine but we have been trying to test is the possibility of using some certain devices which work to open up to connect with the complexity of those juxtaposing factors that you you are describing not such as for example in the case of of the the project in Cali we we like and we work with many kinds of insects but butterflies and home members they do have an appeal that is something that can connect easy like easier with the more let's say complex issues that are behind why are they are disappearing why why are they affected by different factors which which in a way it's a product of this extractive economy no and the fact that part of all that is kind of becoming like expanded and and in agri-logistic project which has been there for 12 000 years it's a continuous expansion and every time that there is an innovation in technology is basically to expand it like to intensify it more no so for us this the fact that the people are using this in a wedding it's a way to connect with this sort of complexity that you are describing and create a sense of proximity with that other reality which for example has happened like when the at the beginning of some of the environmental movements in the world like that there was this story of the trafficking of of of feathers of of of tropical birds which were imported to the US and to the UK and to many places in Europe to to you to be used as an adornment in the in the heads of of people like upper class and women and middle upper class and then suddenly this that that kind of open up reflection about like the origin of those feathers and how those that that extraction was affecting those ecosystems and suddenly they that was connected also with the race of the first one of the first agencies or organizations to protect the environment was the royal society for the protection of birds and somehow that apparently banal thing as something related to fashion in New York and London suddenly became like a trigger element for this sort of collective action towards the protection of nature and that ban actually at the beginning of the 20th century the the the commercial transactions of of these feathers which I mean there's many things behind that one because they were really affecting the I mean some people were arguing that they would not affect the populations in the places of region but actually they did but it was measured so there's another another another very interesting of these layers is how knowledge is produced what is it produced how is it measured and that but then it's it's a yeah I'm going to try and respond with whatever I've understood I think everything is very empirical we have a low technology and it's a developing country and then there are no ideal models that we should say to apply within the equatorian reality but we use certain models that don't necessarily correspond to the reality and I think those those don't necessarily articulate well with what reality is we have been in thought of the the environment and how we think they should go in terms of these concepts and so we try to reduce energy consumption and have clean energy however so that's not following us necessarily in a direct form development is kind of like a monster and has no concern for that and we're doing a little bit so far we need the ideas to multiply and also to take that into account of awareness so we shouldn't you know consume the primary forest but we don't have necessarily the forest that we can work well in in terms of architecture and so we also understand that there has been a certain invasion in terms of species for example eucalyptus and so in this Andes region we understand that we should use this type of wood and to plants plants that belong in their native environments and their ecosystems and so we also need to understand what we're using in terms of trash and how we're using landfills and using those spaces and then we're trying to reduce the amount of trash that we're creating and there's been a learning in looking back on how things were built because the people that have scarce resources and they're spread out throughout the land and they build with what they have around them and that's a large learning and I think working in water it needs to have more value and in actuality we have a large quantity of water we haven't confronted necessarily the problems and I think it's important to start to work with that Okay, let's go into open it to the audience and so those of you that have questions just raise your hand Ming, please Oh, we need a microphone here Question for Daniel actually We were talking about aspiration earlier What's been the reception of other people in the city to the house that you built? It's a house that's very difficult to understand I think there are certain people that know it and have lived it and that connect with it but I don't understand well if other people can create that connection with a house it's a house that breaks certain schematics in how one lives and being there is very appreciative because you're there living with nature but if there's a model that's being pursued more cleaner construction stronger materials everything's cleaner everything's more abstract The question would be how do you see it What did you think about the house? That's a question The house is amazing I want to visit it is what I think and your work just from a super subjective point of view for all it's worth you do an amazing job of playing with the rules and breaking the rules it's really really really refreshing and I have a whole bunch of other questions there which I'm not going to ask it's going to take too much time but I'm wondering a lot of non-architects have trouble relating to architecture it's hard to get them excited about ideas and what I was seeing in your house the ability to break some of those rules and to remake some of those connections I could see a lot of non-architects getting very excited about experiencing the house and ultimately the success of design and the success of an architect is in how many times he or she gets copied and so I'd be curious over time if other people see the house if it gets copied across the city because from a personal point of view I'd like to copy your house we have a question there and then one here in the last presentation I can just translate it what they were doing is still in the production phase of the architectural mechanisms but in this panel they are already resolved so they can start to apply them and the mechanism itself is not complicated it doesn't require advanced technologies because it's like changing that perception of that an architectural mechanism has to have technological advances that's not what needs to be characterized by an architectural mechanism so what I'd be interested to see of the two projects is how for example a drawing where these practices of what has been done become a whole city to offer this vision of the application of the architectural mechanism that you have created to offer a new view in a more personal way that doesn't necessarily have to be for architects the same with you thinking about replicating these ideas of that apartment all over Madrid, all over Spain, all over the world to understand it in a different way because in the last panel I think they are still working a lot on the mechanism and the part where it is applied is a little lost do you want to say it in English now? I guess so I was commenting on Hake's architecture mechanism and how he talks about what my point of view is that this architecture mechanism that's being presented in this panel is very real and very applicable as we saw so what I was offering was this idea of seeing these architectural mechanisms being applied and being implemented in terms of a drawing, for example in their case where it's a drawing where a whole city or a whole town is made from the project that we've seen and then on their end as well this architectural mechanism that can be replicated and it's very real in a space like Madrid and then all of Spain etc so it's this idea of moving away from the production of the architectural mechanism and then responding to it more of like its application yeah I think as architects we have to look and engage with the realities that we are confronted in multiple dimensions and how every project even if it has a kind of quantitative aspect which looks like small can have a strong catalytic effect and that's why this qualitative aspect is so fundamental and also because the problems that we face are embodied in very specific situations and in very concrete situations and every situation is so different from each other and we talk about climate change it's not generic when we our bodies feel it and we feel it in so many different ways and it's not the same from someone from the tropical rainforest or someone in the north of Europe or someone very specific or someone who is wealthy or someone who is not wealthy so the solutions also have to be tackled in the same way as the problem and coming back to your proposal and when you introduce the panel this idea of the situation is because the problems are very much situated the struggles are very much so this is why we have to make also situated solutions it's just because this is the reality we are facing it's very specific so it's how to be able to put our energies in projects that somehow even if we have little power as architects but it can be somehow or it can be somehow has other kind of possibilities beyond the specific apparent materiality around the limited object which is more kind of expanded object that functions in many other scales in many different dimensions that we have to be very much aware of and I think climate change really put this issue on the table it's so specific for example we cannot deal with climate change without dealing with social issues with gender issues as well for example if we think about the colonization in Latin America it was a colonization this colonization of climate that it brings also a racial colonization it was a racial issue as well there was a racialization of people as well coming together with this colonization of species of nature etc and gender as well was created there was this laws of 1512 of Leyes de Burgos the laws of Burgos in which all gender issues were stipulated how Indian women has to cover themselves their bodies of course for moral issues and they had to marry Indian men and they had to serve their Indian husband in their house so it was a kind of Maria Lugones another feminist Latin American thinker that shows how really make us understand that the colonization of climate came very much about other kinds of colonizations other kinds of social and this is this idea of unricated struggles that we have to also face and for us it's really important to engage with these different kind of dimensions of the architectural devices that we are dealing with in different kind of in different kind of situations maybe also in relation to your question which I think is very interesting very good question is in a moment in which communities are more dispersed and the way in which collectivity is built we also have to find other ways to create new ways to bring people together and not we never saw these actions as not being let's say political for example because they were not in a public environment anything can be anything can be something that deals with power structures like the way that you use water to water your plants could be one decision that has many many many implications because actually that water is irrigated with 40 liters of water and a person consumes 120 liters per day and if you go to the there is a project in the city that's that's that's where you go to make more gardens in their homes and if you put if you add that to the pressure on on the water deposits in the city then that's which are already exhausted because of climate change then you're going to have an unbalanced and even more unbalanced situations so so we see those more like and maybe grow to other places and areas and that's that's also why we also find important to use other media other media like like in other projects that we didn't show today for example but we we are testing how to use a photo so for example photo to discuss issues among communities who are maybe familiarized with that type of and not maybe with sitting here in a panel or people who don't go to natural history museums but they go and shop a t-shirt no and then so that is also a way to try to work with this broader context that you are also describing I have assimilated that architects at least where I work in my country they don't have an important I have assimilated that architects do not necessarily have a I have assimilated that architects don't have necessarily have this incidence and that our practice is very small and very minimal and that our practice is very small and very minimal and then I feel that private projects if they are a reference to ask how they could make certain practices and so I think that these smaller private projects can be a way to ask ourselves how to do something in terms of greater practices but I think the real change should be to make public architecture is to do public architecture that is available for all and that we can talk about all these issues and that we can all talk about it and touch it I also think I think also in exhibiting these projects it helps people to understand and to familiarize themselves with it and I feel like development goes against what we should be doing for the things around the environment in this collective intelligence around society I feel there's a lot for us to still keep going and there are a lot of things for us to still understand for example architecture could be a destroyer in terms of concepts and so building with local local materials or structures made of earth we can transmit that we will have gained a lot I think there are very complex realities and there's a lot for us to learn in terms of developing solutions we have a final question the last one congratulations Daniels for the presentation and the work that you are doing also thank you for showing us that a low cost project can provide high quality and also benefits to the environment my question is do you have an idea of the cost of the that you were saving in the project and the cost of the new materials and the other question is I taken from the previous presentation that they said predictable and replicable my question is do you think that you can replicate this project in a larger scale and predict that you're going to have benefits let's say like next to the a river having these filters in order to clean the water let's say my Changara river thank you oh congratulations for the work and the architecture and the presentation my question is if you know how much you saved the recycled materials and instead of buying the new ones and the other question is if you can make this project in a larger scale to clean rivers and that I don't have a quantified I haven't added it up I understand that there is a percentage there is not a 100% there is a percentage maybe a 30 40% 30 or 40% I feel that despite that I find many positive things in the building I feel that even though there are a lot of positive things within the construction we still have to understand that it can be done more in these solutions I can understand that there is more to be done in terms of these solutions until it reaches 100% of clean materials in order to get to 100% of clean materials these things are difficult to replicate in bigger scales like for example if we are talking about recycling you need to find many materials to be able to apply in a new construction but I do understand that it is not to make new constructions it can be reused in furniture that has already been used and then the incidence of material will be much stronger and we can use so there in the material incidence will be using more existing materials and then for me at the moment it is important to talk about that it should be built in neighborhoods that we should build in neighborhoods that are already consolidated and in that way we transform the idea of building but we don't spend a lot of energy in finding the new use so when they are outside peripherals it should always be chosen by materials that are outside of this we should use materials that are offered through nature well it's been a long day amazing we have so many things to bring with us what is very important for us in regards to these summits is the possibility to accumulate new knowledge to put it together and articulate in it for us it's very important to bring different voices so we can talk from an innovation point of view from the way that online platforms can articulate new forms to access knowledge to understand what is the way that ecology get articulated with economy with even other notions of market to see particular experiments in which basically the whole design became a little bit of a laboratory like all these accumulated new forms of dealing with or re-engaging with environmental issues it's what we're trying to collect and articulate to these summits so it's been already quite amazing thank you so much for these great great presentations and work and thank you very much to all of you for being part of this discussion we'll have more coming soon but now we can do all the things thank you very much