Unlearning Architecture(s)

Much of an architect´s training occurs by a process of elimination. We must unlearn many things to learn the new ones; in our particular Costa Rican educational context learning to produce correct architecture seems to start with the assumption that most of what we see in our cities is wrong. But when it comes to construction we move between two traditions: the academic one and the informal one. These traditions seem to dismiss each other, an architect would consider the products of informality ingenuous, a person operating within the informal tradition in need of the materialization of the preconceived idea of a house would normally consider an architecta luxury. According to the National Architectural College 23% of overall construction lacked permits in 2014, a percentage slightly higher than the previous year, this nevertheless renders only partial understanding the phenomenon. Which of the two traditions accounts for the majority of what is built in this country? What significant informal knowledge percolates to the present after a much longer presence than formal education and how is it transmitted? What role does representation play in the informal tradition ? are instructions drawn or narrated ?… How do architects unlearn what they do not understand in full? A house designed by the author in the rural North of Costa Rica functions as a catalyst for further investigation on how the upbringing of an architect collides with more traditional ways of building. In a village where, no other architect has practiced before the author discovers several categories of construction, from the temporary huts vendors use to sell fruits and milking parlors, to houses that have been built following traditional “recipes”. The house learns lessons of practicality from these structures and is informed by their aesthetics. It also employs the old“vara” (0.84 m) as the unit of measurement in an attempt to make itself communicable to local builders. In practice, due to the lack of skill for reading formal construction drawings, the instructions to build the house end up being narrated rather than read. This paper will study informal construction in Costa Rica which is symptomatic of Latin America in general particularly in rurality where it occurs the most. It will collect information from specific cases on how decisions where made and how they were transmitted, and will look for ways to hierarchize them in order to identify which are part of a basic set of instructions (or recipe, meaning there can be small creative variations of the ingredients) and which take place as more significant deviations from those instructions. It will also propose ways to convey the graphic implications of this information that is compatible with the inflections that occur in the orality of these particular context, and finally it will put forward a discussion on ways for an architect to learn from and operate within it, anticipating that our built environment takes shape as a trade-off between both traditions.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.Intl.2016.31

Volume Editors
Alfredo Andia, Dana Cupkova, Macarena Cortes, Umberto Bonomo & Vera Parlac

ISBN
978-1-944214-10-4