ANI NII SHÖBO, Acayali, Perú. 2009. Architects: Samuel Bravo and Sandra Iturriaga. Photo: Juan Balazs. Courtesy of Harvard GSD.

The Harvard University Graduate School of Design awarded its coveted 2017 Wheelwright Prize to Chilean architect Samuel Bravo for his proposal Projectless: Architecture of Informal Settlements. His work focuses on the traditional architectures and informal settlements of communities in Chile, Peru, and the Amazonian region. Past projects include organizing community-led rebuilding efforts in earthquake-damaged Chile and designing/constructing a lodge, shamanic center and school for the Shipibo people in the Peruvian Amazon.

What's your background?

I studied architecture in Santiago, Chile. I have worked mostly on my own but have had the chance the collaborate with other architects and with colleagues—the professors and faculty at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. In the beginning, I co-founded a volunteering group of students that addressed the dangers and magnitude of the damage here in Northern Chile, caused by earthquakes. I would say that that sort of rounds up my background and formation.

Can you tell me a bit about the Tarapacá Project?

We were sent there while still studying architecture because the Ministry of Housing was unsure how much damage had been caused by the earthquake. Not much had been done afterwards in terms of what was there and what was lost so we were sent there to survey the damage. Later on, we realized we couldn't possibly recover what had been lost because it was the product of a very long history composed of different people working in traditional dynamics. That was not something that could be re-done through industrial construction and the kind of subsidies that were available at the time. 

We worked out a strategy to recover what had been lost without repeating what we considered to be the failure of the public and private space of the town. We wanted to foster the collective process of the traditional architecture but in a contemporary way, using contemporary materials and constructed systems that provide safety for those living there. What we did was build, in collaboration with the community, a community house culture for the town that was lost in the earthquake. Through this project, we began to build a set of experiences that exemplify these systems and techniques so that we could provide the people with the tools to foster their own collective process of recovery through the participation of the town.

What we did was build, in collaboration with the community, a community house culture for the town that was lost in the earthquake. 

This is a very small town with about only 40 people living there. It is located on a creek and it is a very important place because of its annual parade, which gathers more than a hundred thousand people from all over the Atacama region. Even though the town is sleepy most of the year, when the time comes it is a bustling place. Every possible site is used for camping and for receiving visitors. When there is no more room for vehicles, the roads are closed and people begin walking through the desert and down the creek to get to town. So, the town is a very important place for the region and the Procession of the Saints takes over the streets of town and the square of the Church. This ritual space was lost because it was composed of continuous facades that were destroyed during the earthquake. The base of the town was completely transformed by the earthquake. That was part of the collective nature of the public space that we wanted to recover. 

Was this project funded by government money?

Yes, in part. It was done by competition funds that were available. One was for institutional development and that was funded by the government through the competition. We also worked with the municipality for the district of Tarapacá. They had asked us to use different government funds that we could present in operation with them. They did not have the capability to have the right people presenting to these funds, so we were able to help them out with our background. We achieved funds for completing the project. In the beginning, the construction was led by student volunteers but that did not last through the completion of the project. In the end, we had to go through this public system.

When did you start the project?

What is architecture about: is it about the project or is it about human habitat? 

The idea of the project has to do with the historical sense of architecture, in which the main tool of architecture is a product achieved through the sign, which is ultimately the drawing. When you realize that a significant part of the world are not saved by these traditions of formal architecture, you question what is architecture about: is it about the project or is it about human habitat? 

When you broaden the scope of what it means to work with the human habitat, then you can look at these different paradigms and traditions of shaping the built environment through different dynamics, collective and traditional, that are present from the urban condition. And this is a real problem we are facing. Of course, I would like to abandon the architectural project, which is the way we tend to think about the world. We need to look for strategies and tools that make us available for these important parts of the built environment that are shaped through these various dynamics.

The idea being, that, by documenting, researching, and investigating these informal architecture practices, architects can create a relationship with informal practices and not have this split between everyday informal architecture and architecture with a capital-A that is project oriented and being with the drawing?

Yeah, that goes in the right direction but I would say it is not only about documenting and investigating. The Tarapacá project is an instance of projectless architecture because we didn't want it have its conclusion in a building. What we wanted was to provide the people with the tools so that they could shape the construction themselves through a tool-set and a collective process that was guided by a proven system and strategy. 

Another case is that of the Nii Juinti School in the Peruvian Amazon. The project was about constructing a school for children. We interpreted the features of their traditional architecture and their immediate materials, which seemed well-adapted for climate. We developed a structural system that matched some of the features present in the original architecture. For example, the use of local materials present in the immediate environment could actually be transformed in a well-balanced relation to the weather and the culture. Through this structure, we could invite them to adapt the project to the requirements of the community. So, it was a preconceived idea that could then be transformed through the making process and contact with the community.

Reciprocity is a very good word in this case because you have two worlds that are mostly separated but could benefit from each other. One the one hand, we can try to improve and orient the practices of people, that are outside the reach of formal architecture in terms of slum dwellings and availability of institutionalized construction. On the other hand, we have these wonderful techniques that come from traditional backgrounds and contain strategies for climate, for culture, for local materials, that we could also benefit from within the scope of this project.

So would you say what kind of differentiates this project from something like Bernard Rudofsky’s Architecture without Architects would be that rather than just looking, you are intervening and you are creating relationships with the communities?

In the case of Bernard Rudofsky, that presented for the first time, in a very visible way, the world of vernacular construction. It was a sort of survey on what was outside the reach of traditional architecture and what I am trying to achieve is a method that enables the practice of architecture to both operate and nurture within these paradigms. I don’t want to completely replace them with the intervention of formal architecture. I think we also need to take place in the creation of the built environment that is one of the great problems of the human habitat today in terms of the urbanization of the population, growth of cities, and the transformation of the traditional habitat.

It seems to me what you are kind of suggesting is almost a new role for the architect?

I discovered what I was dealing with—what made these environments different from what I was used to—was the absence of the project. 

Yeah, exactly. Maybe from the case of Tarapacá and the experience in Peru, this new relation has become very visible to me. In the end, I discovered what I was dealing with—what made these environments different from what I was used to—was the absence of the project. These environments were constructed through time in a collective process through shared making and we, the architects, could never achieve that because we operate in a different way. We make the product and leave the task of completion and construction to other people. We don’t relate with the making process in any direct way.

What are you going to do with the Wheelwright money?

First of all, the announcement of the news has begun to create a network of potential collaboration. People are reaching out to me with what they are working on that might be of interest to my research. The first step is to build this network of collaboration that gives insight into each context so that, upon arrival, we are not landing in an entirely new reality where we have to begin from scratch, making new contacts, getting to know the right people, learning the problems of the context. We have to make a planning process that allows us to effectively make contact with each place.

The itinerary I have in mind begins in the Peruvian Amazon and goes through the Ucayali and Amazon rivers through the big cities of the forest, which are Manaus and Belem and Iquitos and up to the Colombian Amazon. What is interesting about the Amazon is this relation between the traditional environments stressed with the growth of the big cities. You can trace the growth of the bigger cities with relation to the smaller settlements that are deeper in the Amazon. People are coming from big cities with these rich backgrounds of traditional construction and are arriving, in a different reality, and they are changing their way of inhabiting. That is what makes this a cultural space that goes from the urban condition to the traditional village and that completes a regional unity. This relationship is what we are going to look through.

What is important is to document the making of these environments that can be found in the vast Amazonian region. If I am able to identify a problem in the Amazonian region, there could possibly be the same condition in the biggest cities in Africa and in the growing cities of Asia. It is a place in which the informal architectures are very prevalent. It is a place that probably hasn’t been solved by the paradigm of institutionalized, industrially-built, formal architecture.

It is a place that probably hasn’t been solved by the paradigm of institutionalized, industrially-built, formal architecture.

From there, we are going to look at inhabiting problems that arise from the informal condition such as sanitation, economical problems, etc. Different problems arise from various contexts although I think it may be a similar phenomenon. In the case of Lagos, Nigeria—one of the fastest growing cities in the African continent—the government is trying to make evictions on the informal settlements placed in different parts of the city, while NGOs and similar organizations are trying to make improvements on the living conditions. There are different visions on how to solve this problem from something that has to be eradicated to something that could possibly be developed. The difference comes from an idea of actually enabling people, maybe through education, maybe through technologies or techniques and to work on. We do not want to replace, but instead, make these informal settlements better places to live and take advantage of the profoundness of the cultural manifestations in all these environments. Why not work with it and make it a tool for a better environment? That is the vision that is the backbone of this proposal.