Andean Ecologies, Cosmologies, and Fictions Advanced Research Studio
Andean Ecologies, Cosmologies, and Fictions was a graduate design-research studio at the University of Colorado Denver. The studio looked at ancient and contemporary sites and practices in the Andes, proposing speculative structures that span a few centuries and which work toward ecological remediation. As the longest mountain range in the world, the Andes run along the western edge of South America and extend across seven countries. These mountains’ complex terrains are characterized by their drastic changes in elevation, reaching more than 16,000 feet above sea level and fostering a wide variety of landscapes, ecosystems, and thermal-floor conditions that sustain some of the world’s greatest biodiversity. Andean civilizations date as back as 15,000 BCE, and include many culturally rich groups such as the Chimú peoples, Aymara kingdoms, Timoto-Cuicas, and the Inca Empires. By considering the divergent geologies, ecologies, and knowledge of different Andean structures and peoples, the students proposed projects that varied in scale, program, and temporality, and responded to environmental degradation and climate unrest. These trans-scalar architectures were conceived through drawings, models, videos, performances, and written stories.
Andean environmental and ecological knowledge has sustained civilizations through extreme conditions: from those that settled on the hyper-arid desert coast of Perú, to the people in cold and wet Chile, to those in Caribbean Venezuela. This is because Andean knowledge relies on contextual-responsiveness, -understanding, and -awareness. Andean peoples, which includes hundreds of different indigenous nations and empires, shared this approach to their environments, gathering information directly from their surroundings, learning about the quality of the soils, the rhythms and characteristics of the climate, the properties of the domesticated plants they harvest, and so on. Meanwhile, today’s advances in technology—including those encompassing architectural and building construction—prioritize homogeneity over embracing local resources. While sustainable building methods purport to minimize a building’s impact on Earth, the materials and ecologies created around new sustainable developments are often at odds with their ecosystems. In a time when the climate crisis pervades our daily lives, what might architecture learn from Andean ancient building, agricultural, economic, political, and survival strategies that could enhance human and non-human livability amidst environmental degradation?
The semester followed a series of projects meant to analyze, interpret, and generate new knowledge by reacting to specific Andean concepts and ecological situations. These projects were distributed across three parts framing the semester: (1) contextual ecologies and cosmologies, (2) geo-aesthetic representations, and (3) trans-scalar fictions. The studio conflated research, design, and invention to address urgent ecological and architectural challenges through alternative perspectives. In this way, the final projects generated political affect and re-envisioned architecture's approach to time, rethinking space and our discipline as political, obsolescent, and already engrossed with nature.
Course Type and Audience Advanced Research Studio Graduate students
Institution University of Colorado Denver
Location Denver, CO
Faculty José Ibarra
Term Fall 2023
Works Displayed Credits Marshall Reilly Logan Ebert Evan Weller Brewster Glascock Will Otten Shay Ramandi Elijah Miller George Grove
