#4 VERNACULAR INSIGHTS - What happens if you put community in the centre of your design? Participation as a way to help communities in needs.
- Mar 2
- 6 min read
In vernacular architecture the community has always played a crucial role. The local people are the ones who are building their homes according to the place, climate, culture, beliefs, work and economic status.
By deepening this familiarity with themselves and their surroundings, they are able to live in symbiosis with the mentioned elements.
Sometimes it happens that this bond is lost somewhere amidst changes in the land development, construction trends, or the way of life of the population. This situation may cause problems during climatic events due to inappropriately used techniques, as well as lower living comfort or a lack of identity and lead to moments in which people no longer know what their needs actually are nor how to address them.
The problem is especially visible in the communities that are far away from the bigger economic centers; as a result, they are isolated from help, opportunities to exchange knowledge and the ability to develop. What is more, they very often struggle with depopulation.
Only in recent years has the problem been addressed loudly and actions are being taken, this time not only by the charities, but also by the architects.
One of them is Marta Maccaglia from Asociación Semillas, an Italian architect who focuses her career in Peru, where she arrived as a member of the Civil Service in her first years of practice.
"As a basic principle we believe that where the projects are, we are, and that in order to be able to work and offer a coherent architecture to each place we have to know its people, its culture and its territory in depth. This sometimes makes things a little more complex, but it gives the projects a unique strength and depth."
Maccaglia words about her principals get perfectly to the root of the problem. It is impossible to find a proper design solution for a place without knowing it first. As we mentioned at the beginning of the article, improper land development plans, construction trends used in the wrong place and solutions that do not account for the specific way of life of a particular population will never turn into success. Sooner or later it will turn out that, for example, popular concrete solutions are not accurate in seismic areas, or that plain white design will not be met with satisfaction in cultures in which colors are the main motifs.
When we do not first analyse the community for which we are building, it turns out that after many inaccurate actions, every building deals with maintenance problems. People no longer feel their identity and if the community is small and isolated, they struggle with these problems for years without being seen.
Opposite to this phenomenon stands Maccaglia and her team, who in 2013 moved to the jungle in Peru to work on the Chuquibambilla school project. In order to better understand the place, she works within a system of collaborative work, which means that depending on the needs, they also cooperate with a group of architects, anthropologists, educators, political scientists, engineers, and sociologists. In the school project, they also hired local masters: Elias - a carpenter, and Javier - a builder. This move was very meaningful, since thanks to this cooperation, the architect learns more about the local situation and building methods, and the masters learn how to successfully implement new solutions independently in the future.
This is the strategy they follow in every subsequent project. During one of them, a very interesting one, the Alto Anapati Preschool in a native community in the central jungle of Peru, Maccaglia says clearly:
"Generally in Peru, all architectural projects come from Lima to the provinces, as do all construction companies and materials. In our case, however, we want the community to be part of the construction process, generating jobs and skills locally."
Right next to the participatory aspect, they also promote the use of local materials, they listen to the locals' vision of the project and immerse themselves in local traditions. They fully participate in the community's life.
Thanks to this, they managed to gain the trust of local communities and realized successful projects. Most importantly, they restored the people's sense of identity and value and gave them hope for the better life along with the tools to achieve it.
Speaking of the hope and the strength of participatory work with local people, it is impossible not to mention the famous Gando Primary School project by Pritzker Prize laureate Diébédo Francis Kéré.
The story of the Burkinabé-German architect is more than an inspiration.
Kéré is originally from Burkina Faso, where he grew up in a small village. Due to a lack of schools nearby, the 7-year old Diébédo needed to travel by himself to a city far away from his family to get an education. After facing numerous difficulties with poor school conditions, and the necessity of coping with everything on his own as a kid, as he says himself "he was lucky" to get a scholarship that allowed him to study in Germany.
When he was a penniless student, he knew he could not do anything on his own, so he started to search for help from other people to follow his dream of creating a school in his homeland. Each step of this process, from collecting money to laying the first walls of the project, was realized with people.
Diébédo's philosophy was not to bring a ready-made project with imported materials from Europe and to erect a building with the foreign builders. Not only, as mentioned, did he not have the money for that, but also he knew that doing so would only be a temporary solution. He knew that the key to making an actual change in the region was to show the local community that they are not sentenced to waiting for help from far away, but that they can make that change on their own.
Even though, at first his idea met with a very skeptical approach from the locals and a lack of belief that their own materials and strength can change the conditions of the community, everyone started to work.
"The young men came and stand like that, beating for hours for hours, and then their mothers came and they were beating in this position for hours giving water and beating and then the polisher came. They started polishing it with a stone for hours and then you have this result(...)" - Diébédo Francis Kéré
Kéré, as described above, organized his entire village to participate in the process. It allowed him not only to overcome the difficult economic situation of the region, but also to teach people what they can do themselves in the future. In this way they became more independent, educated and opened. Their sense of value and hope came back.
"(...)and this is the project today, 12 years old, still in best condition and for kids... they love it" - Diébédo Francis Kéré
He sums up. The realization of the school has opened the opportunities for the community to undertake more projects in Gando. All because people believed that their own mud and native techinques, which were previously thought to be ineffective, are not their constraints. When reintroduced, they are sufficient solution to deal with local challenges. One can even say that the only element missing was cooperation and exchange of knowledge.
With these two figures and stories from very different lands we wanted to provoke the readers' thoughts about the role of community, cooperation and participation. We believe that the community value shared by the mentioned architects is also the base of the vernacular architecture. Even though technically "vernacular" means among other things "without an architect", we are convinced that with respectful cooperation, we can help each other develop and learn how to protect and make our heritage last.
Community and context - these are the most important factors in architecture.
To listen and to observe - these are the most important abilities.
Sources:
Would You like to read more about Marta Maccaglia actions? We strongly encourage You to read this article:
Are You interested by the Gando School Project? We recommand to listen to the Kéré's speech:
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