 Good evening, everyone. I'm thrilled to be welcoming David Baraghan tonight to present the work of Al Borde, a partnership anchored in Quito, Ecuador, that he shares with Al Borde's other principles, Pasqual Gancotena, Maria Luisa Borja, and Esteban Benavides. Al Borde stands today as a unique model for what an improvisational and collaborative approach to design can do as it resists theory and dogma to dedicate itself to advancing local development and engaging communities in social and spatial innovation. Through this talk, we hope to recognize today as Indigenous Peoples' Day. I want to first invite you all to take a moment to join me in acknowledging the Lenape community, whose land we occupy and their traditional territory, elders, ancestors, and future generations. Though we are dispersed virtually tonight, our campus, home, is the Lenape Hoking, the unceded ancestral homeland of the Lenape peoples. Today, we acknowledge as a school that Columbia, like New York City and the United States as a nation, was founded upon the exclusions and erasures of many Indigenous peoples. GSAP is committed to addressing the deep history of erasure of Indigenous knowledge in the professions of the built environment generally, and in the Western tradition of architectural education specifically. With this, GSAP commits to confronting these institutional legacies as agents of colonialism and to honoring Indigenous knowledge across its teachings and programs. It is important that these statements be met with action. I want to tie this acknowledgement to our support of the unusual and inspiring work of Al Borde, who is committed to a unique form of practice. The firm is devoted to its collaborative nature, insistence on discovering ways to live and share in other ways, and insistence that we must do much more with much less, all in order to address inequities through making and imagination, and move beyond the prevailing means and patterns of the continued force displacements of people through capitalist culture and the devastating effects of growth-driven policies and practices whose harm can be so clearly registered through the built environment around the world. Quote, we are always prepared to face life without hope and without fear, without hope of success and without fear to fail, says the studio, citing Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, who advised architects to remember that, quote, life is more important than architecture, as the one explains, quote, I think that it is a very important idea for us. We are not an architecture studio. We are people who are wondering about what is necessary in life and what is necessary in our society. And so our Borde's practice seems to mobilize where it is chiefly needed, where an 18th century abandoned ruin can be transformed into a house with flying beds, where a bed of trucks can be reinvented as a pop stage in support of women's empowerment activism in Quito, where a lack of material resources can lead to reimagining timber and its structural properties to create housing prototypes in response to an earthquake, and where dedication to low carbon building leads to a phenomenally beautiful house, half above and half below ground and constructed of local stone and eucalyptus timber to regulate climate inside and out. Through a deep engagement with communities, workshops, and collaborative social productions are inherent components of the practice who structure itself, enables it to be deployed nimbly and effectively to change and transform with complete openness and adaptability, both in response to a continuously changing context and with a commitment to always put architecture at the service of life and new modes of more creative, sustainable, and equitable living. As recently shared in an interview, they say, when we accept a client, we are not thinking specifically about whether the project is architectural or not. We are thinking about ways of living. The business of architecture is very interesting, but it is very small compared to the business of life. End of quote. While the scale of the work is always small, small enough to be approached and constructed fully by the team, our board's impact is extra large as a model of practice today recognized and amplified around the world. For example, in 2019, the firm was named by Domus as one of the world's best architecture firms and has received many other awards, as well as speaking and teaching engagements. I'm also really thrilled that this evening's response will be given by G-SAP's very own Juan Herreras, whose series, Constructing Engaged Practices, has focused for so many years on supporting and amplifying inspiring practices, such as our board is. Please join me in welcoming David Barragan. Good evening, everyone. I'm glad to stay with you this afternoon. Thanks to the being a model for your words, for your thoughts, and we appreciate it a lot. And thanks to Juan Herreras also for the invitations and for the conversations that we have, the day before to this lecture. Thank you to everyone who produced all of these lectures, all of these sessions, all of these events. I know it's a big work to coordinate all of this, this big agenda that you have in Colombia. First of all, I want to introduce my partners, the people behind the board, Pascual Gangotena, Maria Luisa Borja, and Esteban Benavides, and me, who are behind this idea. We don't call exactly a firm of architecture. Sometimes we say we are a firm, but we are a way of life in a certain way. If you can stay at home, I stay at home. I know it's a privilege to stay at home, but if it's possible for you to stay at home, don't forget to wear the face mask. It's a simple action like this could save a lot of lives. And in this moment, right now in every country, also it's a political action to wear the face mask. Sorry for this in between explanation about this, but for us, it's really important to be very conscious and very awake about the conditions that we are living right now. Before to beginning this lecture, this is a small lecture with Juan, we were talking about the new conditions of the new behaviors that we have with these virtual conditions. I don't wanna talk the, I don't wanna do a whole session of 40 minutes, 45 minutes, because I feel like I'm in a monologue in front of my screen. So I decided to split this lecture into chapters and I'm going to introduce two main ideas to you in order to create a debate and talk with Juan. You can send all of your inquires, doubts, questions, comments to the chat and at the end of each chapter, we can talk about your ideas. And after 13 years of running an office in Quito, Ecuador, many things have changed, of course, we change, but also we're going to change a lot. However, there are always two questions in our minds that never change. For what and for whom is our architecture about? For what and for whom? We always are concerned about these two questions. Before to say yes or no to any project, we need to answer these two questions. The answer is always related about what we can learn or what we can discover to each project together with our client. That's why it doesn't matter if we are designing a single family house, like this house or a mobile stage for the slot walk in Ecuador, because it's not about the scale, our concerns, or about the architecture program. It's about what we can save with each project. Like our installations at Benny's Biennial 2016, where we discuss about the overvalue role of the money in our neoliberal society and how our society neglects all their kind of resources or assets that make it possible any kind of project, especially the project that involves social issues. Or even a documentary film is a project for us. In this case, we talk about how the emerging generation are inventing themselves after the most critical Ecuadorian financial crisis in the 2000. So it's not about the format, it's not about the scale, it's not about the typology. It's about make it happen. So in that way, this story began in a remote beach in the coast of Ecuador, where all of the land is a communitarian property. And the closer public school for this community of 20 families was one hour and a half walk. So the school dropout was really, really high. So the community decided to run their own school in 2007. They are fishermen and farmers. They build their own houses. They have an amazing knowledge of materials and construction techniques. This was the school that they built in 2007. The school was a success, an unbelievable success because it is in the middle of nowhere, that this beach is really, really remote. And in 2009, they needed a new building, a new facilities in accordance with the learning methodology that consists of promote the learning by self-motivation of the students. A very autonomous way of learning. This is the, maybe you know this picture. Some of you maybe could see in the internet. You could see this picture before. This is our first intervention in that beach in 2009. We don't know anything about participation design, participation construction, cooperative process and stuff like that because as you know, in the architecture school, all of the learning is always very, very individual. And we don't have also this kind of spaces in the university to work with others in other kind of real situations. So we began only with, we led us led by the common sense. When we arrived to this place, we began to understand and we began a knowledge exchange with the community. Try to understand as much as possible why is what is going on there and what we can take advantage of this knowledge and how we can create a synergy there. So we began a journey, a long journey to understand what we are able to do with these resources that we have at that beach. And at that moment with that people in that place. The result was a hybrid between the local knowledge and our architecture knowledge, a mix of layers of knowledge. And this give us a lot of awakenings of what happened when you arrived to places like this when the local knowledge is so powerful or so present. The project was a success. Kids didn't want to come back to their houses after school. So two years later in 2011, the community asked us for an extension. Sorry if some of you wanna see plants. I don't like to see plants before you can find plants of the project. I wanna, in the lecture, I always wanna share the all of the stories behind the scenes. So they asked us for an extension. So the beach is more than eight hours by car from our office. We in these two years, we began to work with participative project and we began to work with an anthropologist creating different kind of social methodologies or to approach to different kind of communities. But these conditions was really hard to try to work like this. But we don't wanna quit this idea of participation or this idea of involved people. So we designed an incremental construction logic that let the community to build the project as big as they want. Every project, every process give us a specific condition, especially this kind of process that have a lot of social issues involved. Again, we back to the beach with all of our team in the studio, our interns, the architects, our friends, some volunteers and some family and everyone build with the community. All of the constructions are designed to do like this, to build together and to learn together on site and to create the bond with the local people in this construction process. After one week, then around 1600 square foot, look like this and we left the beach. The project, it doesn't finished, but we have, but our conditions was that we can go there only one week and the ambitions of this project was very high. The community knows that we are not going to finish the project and when we come back, the project was finished. This is one of the most important reasons for us because we understand on site that participation is not a middle about how pretty is the people who is involved in this process. We don't see participation in a romantic way of involved people. We see participation as a strategy to create, to assume responsibilities and to create these links that we need to make it happen, the projects. And finally, this kind of project has its own life and the community involvement a lot of these years creates a very powerful sense of belonging of these new spaces that year by year we were building during around 10 years, more or less. So what was interesting in that part in this extension of the school that's little by little, year by year, they began to build more and more and more extensions and we create you, you will see in the next pictures you will see this new facility that has a really, really interesting, really interesting geometric form. So after how many years in that moment, I don't know, two, three, four years ago, the knowledge transfer was done. We at that moment was feeling that the transfer of knowledge between the community and us was really, really strong. We are learning a lot about all of the materials over there and the construction techniques that the fishermen knows. And they also was experimenting with different kind of forms with these materials. What's really interesting, what's going on there at that moment in that beach. So again, the project was a success and they call us again. But this time we said we need always to push the limits up. So we decided to create a kind of a school of architecture and talk with them about the new project and give them the lead of the design of the project and we will just stay together with them, facilitate their process, facilitate their designs, create an ambient of discussion to create debates with them. And all of the community began to create this new school, all of the parents and the fishermen who won the park. It was an obligatory. So this is one of the parents and also a fisherman. And what is really nice here for us is that the learning methodology of the school was translate to the design of the new process and was translate to the parents. The parents are designing by motivation because they are building and designing the new facilities for the most younger kids, they are designing the kindergarten in that moment. And what was really amazing for us was the models that they produce, the models have not measures because they don't use rulers or stuff like that. The models have proportion and they don't know how to read and write and this is really interesting because they don't, in that way they don't design with plants, they use their hands because they have this ability. They don't have CNC machines but they know how to build. So their models wearing about form, their models are construction models. And of course this is very true to the structure but it's because they just pick good sticks and began to to type and began to create these spaces and tell us the stories that they want to achieve with this new project. So after one year of open workshop of our school of architecture in the beach they finished the construction and they began to use the spaces, the kindergarten was in the best moment right now. So the school after a few years became the center of the community. They began with this small first intervention in 2009 and now they have a whole campus that works not only as a school because in these remote places in the rural areas and also in the outskirts of the city these kind of facilities the school means the center of the community and works as a community center and is the only one public space in that area. So this is the relationship with the nature with the space, with the houses, with the neighbors, with the people. The next project is again a school and it's again in the rural areas where the time is in Chile. Maybe you are wondering why I'm showing you projects in the outskirts and it's because the outskirts has less regulations and has less interest for the politics, so the money of the governments it's quite difficult to go to these kind of places because they are not interested for anyone. This story began with an NGO a sustainable school the translation of the name is a sustainable school this NGO has the aim to build a network of eco-friendly public schools in Latin America. After a couple of projects in Argentina and Uruguay, they invited us to design the project in Chile and the main condition was to achieve the participation approach that we have in our projects in this kind of process because they are working with a big kind of academy because they work with a cooperative of construction that is not a business of construction it's a kind of association of people that build so they want to try to understand different ways to involve local people in the process because they consider that their project that they are building was enabled to involve more people and we said what if instead of create new projects, new schools we work with projects that are working that have classes because what is more important when you are working in social areas when you are working in projects that try to solve some kind of social issues is try to understand really well the necessity behind your idea or try to understand really well with whom and this is very important, that's why in the beginning I said for what and for whom and in this case we have this group of people when we have a new school like this in really bad conditions specifically the climate performance is really bad and in Chile they have four seasons, in Ecuador we don't have four seasons we are in the middle of the war and our tropical conditions we don't need all of this kind of isolation process and stuff like that but here you need this kind of process but the schools have this big lack of well conditions to create a great environment for a study so we began to do what we always do we try to use as much as there is local resources as possible of course it's easier if we throw down all the schools but we don't understand this kind of this kind of process, we are always trying to keep as much as possible so we kept the structure so we kept the structure and at a greenhouse in the front you can see here the shape of the structure and we had this greenhouse in the front that enables the classrooms area to create a passive climate control and also we create a new pedagogical area for the teachers related to the nature so by this simple strategy of plugging a new space or device we change the classrooms this is the greenhouse and by this action we change this is the original classroom and we change this to this sorry I have no pictures with kids because when we finish the school began to lock down so this is what it is but the area that this school is settled in Chile is part of a big decadent aristocratic beach so what it means or what it means for architecture, what it means for us as an architect or as a designer is that there was a well-known business of the demolition parts of houses so we decided to use recycled material in the main facade with recycled windows in order to bring part of the history of the school in order to bring part of the history of the territory to the school because when we are doing the research on site people of heritage insist a lot that they are losing this heritage because the business of demolition is bigger and nobody wants to go to this beach so this was a kind of a strategy to create this part of to bring this part of history to the kids also in addition this kind of project in the rural areas to create a big commitment with the municipalities and the NGO creates a really strong bond there and we convinced the municipality to throw to throw down the closure to remove the things and open the school to the street because in places like that there is a church and the school and in this school for us for the community right now maybe the next year because now everything is because everyone is in the lockdown but we are thinking that this school is going to transform in the center of the community again this school was chosen because they have many complementary pedagogic projects in this multi-purpose space imagine that these kids have yoga classes and this is a public school in Latin America it's not common this kind of situations this space this space of this multi-purpose space together with the Orca on farm will be the new heritage of the school in less than three months with an open academy of the students that be there one month so a lot of people working together plus the teachers plus the authorities plus the architects and tons of people over there but the necessity to involve so many people is not only to make it possible the project but also to try to spread the work about the eco-friendly low-technique solutions so we hope the next year children can come back to the school and meet the new facilities this is the end of the first chapter so if you have any questions if you want to discuss something with Juan and me we are completely open to the conversation yes wonderful thank you very much David this is I think a super well done first part I think you have brought to the table this hope that means that we can confront the contradictions of our times and also our personal engagement to the project and transform them into arguments to work I think of course your projects are quite focusing some of these complicated topics like inequity or the conditions of life of the indigenous communities I really admire how you don't use any paternalistic position working with this situation or with any romanticism of simplicity so I think it has been quite good for us that you focus your presentation more in the process of the project of decision making and in the results and perhaps this is my first question is processes of results so I think that apparently your work is quite focusing a very specific, very local, very close very particular conditions there is something that can be exported, learned or influential in other places other contexts, other scales and other situations and this is exactly the way you work the process the way you establish this concept of the project, how you think of the project and the questions, what we are going to learn here what can we do, how we will do that and I really would like to know if you are conscious that being so specific and apparently not interested in having this influence you can have it, you can really have a big impact only especially to young academics for example no in the beginning we have zero conscience because I don't know, because we are not expecting to do anything special because we always say that we are facing a reality and trying to answer in the best way that we can answer so in that way we never try to think that we are not designing or we are not facing the projects and that moment understanding the impact the impact not in the project but the impact in other kind of conditions for example like you said in the architect in other kind of architects it doesn't our concerns at that moment and it doesn't our concerns right now because we are thinking that we are trying to understand all of these collateral impacts maybe we don't focus on the main issue that we need to solve sometimes I think it could be a little bit naive but right now we have a clear view of the impact but it's not our problem for us we try not to see the impact, we know that exists sometimes it hit us sometimes it embrace us but we prefer to focus on to solve the solution and try to do the best project in that moment I understand that you are not working for the gallery or for the audience you have your clients and you have your users and I think most of architects try to do their best in this direction but I think you have to be conscious that your apparent pragmatism and looking for the best solution is also full of intuition and this is a word that you use a lot and also innovation that is a word that I know that you don't like to match but I have something a very specific situation is how you blur the traditional division between design and build how in your case not only in your teaching or your workshop also in your everyday life you are designing the construction constructing the design process so of course you start doing a preparatory drawing so materials but there is not this usual change of environment between the designing the design and the construction is that true? you are out of the you are out of the you are out of the you are out of the intuition you began with your first first ideas to our apparent pragmatism it's really well connected with our intuition and maybe more than intuition I like to say common sense and I think it's because we are always try to be aware of all of the lights that we have on site and it's not only if we are designing a public school or single family housing we try to create this environment for everything and maybe this is the difference because we are not pursuing the innovation as well only for innovation but at the same time we are innovating day by day process and always our innovation is come to see come to see backwards for example we have a client we finish the house in January and we are waiting for the photo shoot to December because the landscape is very important the client when we began to talk with him he said I like the nature a lot I really want to create a connection with nature and maybe the house could be a tool to do this and of course I can give you a big window to see the nature but what if it was split the house to create a real connection to the nature when you need to do your daily activities the bathroom is here the shower is over there the bedroom is in other side of the plot and when you need to move to one place or another you need to stay in contact with nature in that moment when we said this in a very conceptual way the guy the mind of the guy blows out what's unbelievable he said oh my god this is possible to split the house and we said yes if you want to live like this yes of course it's possible and then we began to understand because we don't like this kind of images or strategies that I mean the nature but in a picture of the nature no if you are in the nature we are inside of nature and then we began to understand how to build this house and we remember that Pasquale one of the partners always said to us that in the Andean world in the rural areas there is a tree that you cut and just put in the earth and the tree again create roots this is a very traditional way of construction of construction of the Andes and we talked to him and we said you wanna a house connected to the nature what if the columns of your house are alive and he said haha it's possible he said yes it's possible you need to water in your the columns of your house and we do the whole research about this ancient technology there is a few almost nothing information about this kind of construction so we're not pursuing innovation in that way because we don't wanna be innovative we are trying to solve something and we need this spirit to discover the way to create these kind of ideas so sooner or later you will see the the final pictures the trees are getting really good right now and we expect December to do the to have the pictures to explain a better way the project I prefer to explain you your question with the project because maybe it's more clear the ideas or the connections that we have in the process of the design and construction and how since the beginning of the design the construction is present next phase construction is in the beginning and design and construction process are in the beginning and we are trying to do always some prototypes or trying to test some ideas before to the official construction moment good I'm going to read one of the questions that we have in the chat is you mentioned transferring knowledge to the community and from them to others can you talk a bit more about your key takeaways about implementing these methodologies and what you are thinking next on this topic can you repeat you have it in the you mentioned transferring knowledge to the community and from them to others and we are very very very awake about that every place and every person has knowledge or has a specific something to say or has a specific knowledge or has a tradition we are very conscious about this information we are trying to create always an horizontal stage or conditions in order to involve as much people as possible in order to connect all of this information and that's why we always talk about transfer knowledge because we don't we don't erase all of this tradition we add one our layer of knowledge because as an architect we believe we add one layer to the equation the other layer is the local tradition the other layer is the engineering information the other layer is the political issues the culture the territory so we believe that we are only one of the layers that that is that are component the project what are more about these we don't know exactly because the projects at that moment when we are building and very intense in that moment and we discover that the long term projects are better in that case before the short term project that's why we don't produce site-specific installations in the favela because we don't like this kind of approaching these kind of places a site-specific is for a gallery not for a slum and in that in that idea and in that way what don't I can say about the future of how we are moving on with these ideas is trying to find a long-term process and now we are working together with a social responsibility department of a big transnational multinational in Ecuador and we thought it was impossible to work with big companies in bigger budgets but after a long-term negotiation process we are working on the construction of the first part of a project in Guayaquil in the fourth city in Ecuador but always talking about this long process take the time if you are going to involve more people if you want to involve the community if you want all of this support you need to listen up all of the all of the things all of the thoughts all of the ideas good thank you David I think we should jump into the second part we have a couple of questions more perhaps after the second part we can bring them to the floor I give you the the micro again and let's go I have to do something ok chapter 2 chapter 2 chapter 2 is about about something like this where I come from Ecuador and Latin America we don't have open competitions to design the public projects the public facilities all of the hospitals schools and a lot of the stuff especially in Ecuador and in many countries in Latin America there are a few exceptions like Colombia I don't know the rest of Latin America we don't have open competitions we don't have these possibilities to be part of the public construction that's why the most common project for an architectural firm not only the young architects always are private houses so your luck relies on your social network your luck as an architect in order to try to create some projects or design your ideas or build your ideas relies on your social network not in the public competition system but in order to democratize the architectural conditions or democratize the architectural practice so if you are like us a four middle class guys you will realize your ability to discover hidden opportunities and hack the system for example I don't know in the conference we designed as a material storage with a second life in our minds and we transformed this pavilion into a rural housing prototype for the victims of the earthquake after three months of the earthquake in Ecuador three months later it was happening in our city or also we used the construction of a private house like this the house of the flying beds we used the construction process as an open private open pirate construction academy where the structural engineer Patricio and the construction foreman Miguel are the teachers are the teachers of the many technologies that we use in our projects that all of this knowledge is losing for example construction with air adobe, bareque, rammer, etc so we use this this construction site as an open private academy and open to explain the students to work with them on site so we are always trying to find new opportunities we are always trying to discover new ways of work and we are always trying to find what we want to do so one of the most challenging places to push because nothing is more exciting for one student that build your own project at least it happens with us so I decided to show you how for example when Juan talk about the impact we don't when we design this kind of methodology to work in the universities we know it has an impact but for us the transformation of the academy is extremely important in that moment because we need to create a new profile especially in territories like Latin America where all of the theory all of the references are always Eurocentric so we are not creating our references so the first day of class we talked with our students we did this workshop and we said to our students okay guys you can do whatever you want along this semester and they said whatever we want we have a few conditions the final project is built the final review is on site the project is one-to-one scale you need to define an space because we are in an architecture studio and you need to develop a structure because you are an architect and all of the limits are your decision there is no programmatic conditions there are most typology conditions and you just try to find the ways to build it of course when you receive all of this freedom you freeze all of them are frozen in the first day because the students are not used to have all of this freedom in classes happy because you are working in your own personal project and you are going to build your own personal project and there are some interesting things we decide to do to work like this because this university is towards an help from our city from our studio and the students are not from that city and half of the students live in the closer cities so the specific conditions that give us this opportunity to teach give us the opportunity to create this specific approach to design for myself and one of the students you can work alone in groups you have the names in the bottom part one of the students said ok I like paragliding, I have a paragliding club because I come from a city that all of these kind of sports are really common and I live also doing this with the tourists and bring some tourists to the mountain it is possible to create a shelter because when you are up in the mountain you need to wait for the perfect conditions to fly because if you don't wait it is completely unsafe we said yes of course you can build, why not and he built this project and this moment in the head of the students of course you have a big change because you have this idea to create a small shelter in the top of the mountain and then you have the opportunity to have a teacher to stay together with you sustain all of your process and trying to believe that you can do it this is really important for us trying to understand how you can make it possible trying to involve as much people as possible as much friends, much resources as possible they began the construction to transform this idea this conceptual idea into our reality these kind of feelings this adrenaline rush that you have when you are designing and building your project your ideas move us a lot it is the same thing that we have in our studio for example we have a lot of prejudice this is the best example one of these guys is one of our students and the other guys are his cousins when the state jail moves close to his city all of the public spaces transforming very unsafe places together to grab a beer, alcohol and gather in the public space in the streets but now it is not safe to drink in the streets at night you can let to do a project like this to promote these kind of activities but it is not my problem what kind of activity he wants to do he is creating a place together and he is trying to find the best ways to make it happen so he talks with his grandma because the house of the grandma is in the middle of the house of the cousins and he asks for a useful storage area and transform this area only doing this big circular hole in the middle and removing the the ceiling and changing for a glass ceiling because they want to gather but they want to intimacy but they also want to stay in contact with the stars so this for us gives us a lot of energy in order to see how the students deal with all of this freedom and also learn different ways to create the projects this student works his project alone because he has all of the support of his community in the indigenous community and when we talk about the idea to have their own studio in the mountain close to the grandma house all of his family said of course we work together with you of course all of the weekends everyone is going to build the project with you and of course we are going to teach you all of the traditional techniques to build this vareke shelter the hut in the middle of the mountain so what we are creating here is a kind of spirit of challenging themselves in order to trying to explain to them that everything is possible there is a place in the countryside and there is a small river there I like a lot to swim I want my own place there close to the water close to the jungle and he designed this with other friends so this project gives us a big idea about around 50 projects with the students in different locations and give us a real clear view about how important is the motivation to learn and how important is when you face reality and you are trying to understand architecture or studying architecture how you need to deal with all of the complexity so this is a specific methodology for this place, for this university but usually we work in that way in the right corner in the bottom you can see the always Lima or Quito because we are teaching right now in Peru we can teach in Ecuador right now we don't have a master's degree after the law change I teach in Ecuador around nine years but no one of the studios can teach in Ecuador now we are teaching in Lima but the Catholic university opens the in Ecuador our school opens the doors to teach we began to understand the academy as a platform, as extension of development and trying to understand the impact that a group of students can do in a place and how it is possible now we have we are our eighth semester in Lima and it's possible because we have a team of teachers Hannah and Marta and the profile of our teachers in order to create our Alborb de Studi in Lima it's very specific Hannah works with public space issues in Lima and Marta works with participation designed for schools in the jungle of Peru so in the end we are not planning to create a big film of 100 the staff but we work in a different way we understand we believe more in our cells thinking that with the autonomy of this group in Peru we are growing our team because we have them there but they also have their own personal projects we are connected by the university that's the way that we are creating a bigger impact in other places for example this semester we began this project in Chile and it's always the same because it's always the same that's why you can see in the bottom this is it the outskirts of our cities are like this always neglected by the official by the official institutions always neglected by the planning and the way that we are developing these territories is unbelievable and extremely quick our conditions of construction are very very hard what we like of this workshop is that when the students face the reality in a way like this so quick all of the research is validated immediately moves out of the classroom and always they have this back and forward between the design in the classroom and whether they are presenting in the community always is the same always we are talking about this kind of issues and always we are working with participation in this kind of process because let us to understand really well the necessities in a really fast way and as Juan said we don't have a romantic approach of a community we are solving problems and we need to be very pragmatic when the structure was designed like this this is the first model of a community center and one of the big reunions the anthropologist asked about the laborers of everyone the knowledge and only one is a carpenter there but many of them knows welding so immediately the structure of the project is transformed and re-designed and the students create this this kind of process are more complex we have a team with an anthropologist or sociologist depends on the university and also with an engineer and we are creating all of this kind of process of course the students can build together with the community all of the for example things that are made of good because it demands a very specialized manpower but they can explain the project and they can organize all of this part of the construction and the group of the structure has a different relationship that the group of the facade of the furniture and every group at the end we began to create projects like this all of these projects are kind of Frankenstein because they are built with a lot of donations a lot of agency of the communities and the students so there are many different parts there are not a minimal view or final form and all of the projects that's really interesting in time before project we did in the Catholic University in Quito and now since we are working in Peru we are working with younger students so the process is lower what is interesting here is so many layers inside and at the same time we thought that this was a problem to work with younger students and with the process that is lower we have more connection with the community and as I said in the beginning we like long-term process so what we discovered here is that all of this energy and that's why we like a lot this kind of workshops is instead of the final models go to the landfill and the final boards go to the landfill that are transformed in a project for a community where all of these students seek semester take us to build this community center and in the middle of the process we discovered that the community not only needs a place to gather they also needs a place to a memorial for the big teams of the terrorism in Peru that's why we more and more are interested to take our time to develop the projects and to connect with the people in a deeper way because this creates this opportunity to transform the projects in the middle of the development of the projects and I think we always like to work in this learning by doing system with our students because it's quite similar that what we do in the office and what we do in the studio and when you face the reality you need to answer and it's a big push for you to create your projects good let me turn on the lights the sun is here I can hear you okay I think this second part was really amazing and I think this two directions laboratory from the office to reality to the academy I think it's really interesting perhaps my question is how do you feel you can do the way back how can these experiments in the real land with the real people and building real constructions can inform the education in the schools of architecture the education that we do in buildings where we don't build real things how do you think that thinking that these are like pedagogical experiments what conclusions or what materials you get to the change or to inform the usual systems of teaching in the school especially in the introduction of social and political issues in the design processes right in the beginning we thought that everyone should build because we learn what we understand as architecture in the practice learning a lot in the construction site but now I'm really clear that construction process or this kind of exercise are not for everyone you should have the option to choose because these kind of process are really demanding different kind of skills from your social skills to your technical skills it's not for everybody now I'm sure it's not for everybody the best cases the best examples are from the students that they like this idea and for them it was a new door we opened a new window for them but for other students it's hard they don't like it, they don't want to be there because they don't want to go to any kind of site or to the outskirts because it takes more than an hour to arrive to the community and I think always you should choose and for us for me maybe the best academic process, the best learning process always by this motivation and maybe the university is always our focus only our focus on this profile is the creative designer but maybe if we can choose in the university who want to be this creative designer who want to be the best public employee in the municipality who want to be the best research research lab in the university I don't know, maybe it could be awesome but maybe the university open more the profile and when you arrive to the university you can choose this kind of different doors doors of knowledge Yes, there is actually there was a question that could be connected with this say how do you think architects can influence things like government, policy and building codes to allow for more recycling materials and building without plans so I think this is connected with what you were saying, that we need students who want to be not, wants to develop different ways of being an architect and establish bridges between the practice and the administration or the government where you think or how you think that your practice could have some impact in administrations or code the new codes come in especially in the architecture that can be done for these communities or from the administration side I think we have zero impact in our local authorities actually the new Esperanza school the last year in 2019 I don't know the condition right now but in 2019 the government, the Ministry of Education give us a call the school because the school doesn't fit in the conditions of a legal school and the legal school for public education is a school built with a concrete structure and concrete block for the walls and I we don't have any impact with the local authorities and this kind of project like the school works because they have a big sense of self-government self-autonomy and they do whatever they want but maybe we have no options in the inside of our country but outside the situation is completely different for example the last we are Monday, the last week the last Thursday I was in a part of the I was one of the invaders for a workshop that one of these be transnational governmental statements this kind of organization that give give money to different kind of projects to the municipalities and governments they call us like a consultant to talk with the people and the municipalities in Latin America to explain why this kind of process is impossible to build under the orthodox regulation and orthodox policies that we have in our territories so we thought that we don't have any kind of impact with local authorities and we received this kind of call can we talk with these municipalities to explain different ways to create different kind of projects instead of the generic temporary forever school of PBC yeah I heard in the schools in Ecuador in the other countries where you are working how sensitive are the schools like institutions to these indigenous conditions and indigenous communities and the conditions they live they are indigenous students for example I think for example if the indigenous population the biggest one is Bolivia then you have a little bit less in Peru a little bit less in Ecuador and a little bit less in Colombia maybe you have less in Colombia more in Bolivia but we have a lot of indigenous people present in our daily life but they are really relegate we have indigenous students they always are in a big struggle about rights for example the primary school and the secondary school they try to be that the schools will be bilingual, the local language and Spanish and they have not so much presence in the secondary and a little bit less in the university because of the economic conditions also it happens the same with the Afro-American population and the government always have different kind of programs in order to to shrink the gap of these conditions we have a lot bad that are very relegate especially indigenous people in the Andes are in the countryside working in all kind of agriculture and farming activities and do you expect that there will be a bigger community of indigenous architects in the next future having professional practices? I don't think so because architecture is a very I don't know elitist area and I don't think it's not easy to go inside maybe one or two but right now I don't think so it's not or at least in the certain future is not a clear view I don't see any profile for example I don't see any options but maybe maybe it could happen it could change but they have a big problem about all of these technologies that I show with building with wood or bamboo always are seen as materials for poor people all of this vernacular knowledge is not really well accepted by them because the aspirational issue the aspirational architecture is made of glass is made of concrete is made of different materials Yes and one more question I'm intriguing I think your first projects were more in materiality and construction systems more integrated in certain local traditions of construction but the last ones like this one that you have shown now the one you used before they are aesthetically and materiality and especially quite different vernacular constructions or traditional constructions of these communities but they really accept them I think in a very interesting and happy way I don't think it's only because you solve their problems I think they receive a re-description of themselves through your architecture how do you explain this success that these strange constructions for these communities have between them Yes the space is completely different and of course the materiality is completely different and it's because when we are building with the students than when we are building in different cases or scenarios when an NGO finance a project or when I don't know a social responsibility department of a company finance the project it's completely different when we are working with the students we can we are pushing the limits of the students we are assigning our projects our building one project through the students so there's a difference there and I think this is the main difference and then how they receive maybe because they are part of the whole process maybe because we because they are not a spaceship that suddenly landed maybe because they are part of the whole process and see all of the cries and the tears of the students and cook together the food with them and build together and maybe they saw like a symbol of communitarian effort maybe they saw like a symbol of union I don't know but I never asked before how they receive this this kind of strange, ugly, weird Frankenstein sometimes they are very Frankenstein the big ones the communitarian centers I thought about it I think you talk a lot with them you have a lot of information you reorganize all these inputs and data and you give back something that I have the feeling that they understand very well but it's unexpected so it's when you receive something that you never could imagine something like that but they can say this represents me my community spirit in this as you say Frankenstein building so perhaps that is the role finally the role of the foreign architect all around the world the architect who can read the local conditions and give back a proposal that never was expected from the local professional established way of doing a way of making things but the foreign has this the outsider has this option of re-describing the conditions and create something new that means that you are pragmatic or you are solving problems as perhaps you are also creating some magic productions that bring hope for the people don't you listen now David are you trying to talk you are frozen all right we have to start closing so if you want to say last words or maybe one question I don't know one of the questions were related to how you establish the contact with these communities how you start to work I think you have given some clues about that but there are a couple of questions about the connection how you start the conversation with the communities and also if you think that these participatory processes could be could be used in more urban environments and not only in the rural communities I understand that the question is about how the city is more complicated to identify the communities who are going to be the users of the communities the approach to the communities maybe my answer is not going to be what are you expecting but we don't have any kind of previous approach we only receive a call sorry I know everyone wants to know the different kind of approach to the communities but in the beginning we have the the lucky situation that in this school the teacher was the co-sign of one of my partners and my partner used to go to the beach and one day he said do you want to be part of the project and we said why not what happened after that we did the project and tried to publish in a different kind of media 2009 no one published a project in this kind of environment and was extremely successful and was a big hit our daily always said to us it was unbelievable the number of views that the project has and the project became very well known and that gave us a lot of connections and people began to talk with us about how can we work with us and what we do we always try to create the best conditions to do our work it's quite hard if I go into any kind of community and I say I want to work with you it's completely different when someone looking for you so in that case our communication in the office is connected to show the project as well as possible in as many kind of different types of media as possible and suddenly our projects someone show any of our projects to the CEO of the social department of any company or someone for example the Uruguayan Geo call us because when we did a lecture in Montevideo one of our teachers will know really well our project and when the CEO talked with him about he was looking for a new kind of an architectural approach this teacher said I saw these guys in the lecture in Ecuador maybe you like maybe it could fit really well in your project you know what I mean the approach is completely completely different we try to spread the word as much as possible and then for example in Peru they didn't call us I want to teach you approach to my students so can we work or not it's like this the approach and if it is possible to do or not in the city I don't know maybe yes maybe no cities has different kind of problems and now the thesis of our students in Chile we are working in the city because the Dean also again has to work with a group of thesis projects with thesis projects in the city so now we are testing this with our students in Chile but if it's possible maybe it's not possible it's not possible we always have a lot of hope in the countryside because the cities are supposed to be the place of the opportunities but cities in our cities are not the place for opportunities always are pushing out people of the center of the cities and creates a big belt of scarcity so are not the best places to live in our conditions in Latin America for many people that's why we also believe that if we were improving conditions in the rural areas maybe we are creating more opportunities there and maybe less migration to the cities okay thank you very much I think we have spent all the time we had and more thank you for the fresh air and for being so generous with your ideas and working with the work of your office congratulations for you for everything you do and we will know what happens with these urban experiments when you finish the semester thank you David it has been wonderful see you soon thank you to everyone it was really great to talk with you Juan and thank you to everyone thank you to the dean thank you everyone bye bye