Contemporary Architectures in Amazonia

• In Event: Late modern architecture in Latin America

Abstract

A brief analysis of the ways in which artists, architects and planners are reacting to the challenges posed by an advancing urban frontier in Amazonia is extremely revealing. Five key patterns emerge: they either return to the pre-Columbian, archaeological world for answers and vindicate local material cultures; they build upon a rich tradition of tropical modernism developed in urban centers like Caracas, Rio de Janeiro or San Juan; they focus on the hybrids built by colonos or caboclos, settlers who construct informal mantels by intermixing indigenous practices with urban and rural practices from other geographies; they inspire themselves on ethnographic practices in order to recast them into utopian visions; or last but not least, some pursue the pathway of non-action, of developing an anti-architecture through research practices and activism geared towards instantiating the option of not doing anything as a mode of architectural practice. What is clear in all proposals is that the tropical forest remains the key value, the predominant architecture, and that landscape architecture, ecology, biology and agro-ecology are summoned as key collaborators in the future development of the Amazon. This paper investigates projects that locate themselves at complex junctures of tropical “development,” ask important questions, probe the limits of the discipline, and convene a creative response.

Author

• Ana María Duran Calisto, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)