collectively built housing for women in rural areas
what?
We collectively develop and build houses for those wise old women who carry ancestral knowledge - based on experiences, beliefs, spirituality and respect for nature - and share it with their community.
When they share this knowledge, we feel the land they make home and learn from their stories.
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We believe in building healthy spaces as a response to shelter the experiences of such women and we employ architecture as a tool for translating their knowledge into constructive processes towards architectural education.
why?
The routine of rural women in the Global South plays an essential role in providing food and maintaining the domestic spaces of their community.
Despite the major impact of their daily practices on mitigating the effects of global warming, these women tend to be the most affected by climate change.
Furthermore, household activities have always been largely delegated to women, whereas the domestic environment is generally planned and built by men.
how?
We have architecture as a discovery tool for everything that arouses our curiosity - our purest way of working.
We seek to immerse ourselves in communities around the world and, making affection our main methodology, we connect with women, their communities and their knowledge in order to collectively develop self-built housing for women in rural areas.
Our purpose is to cultivate, enhance and spread the knowledge of these wise women to the future generations.
rooted in brazil, built work in uganda and current project in mexico
where?
As architects who have studied in a Brazilian context, we understand that any intervention in space implies in several multifaceted consequences.
As we become aware of the complexity of these interventions, we seek for different ways of thinking, of proposing, of connecting, of reading the space around us.
As a natural consequence, we go to places where we can correlate with some of the complexities we try to read.
Our first built project is in a rural village called Kikajjo, near Kampala, Uganda capital. We are now proposing a project in the coast area of Oaxaca, Mexico, in a village called Escobilla.
we witness, absorb, study, systematize, create, produce - primarily respecting what is natural. our methodology is organized in three work fronts:
the immersion
and the bridge
Through the possibility of meeting e experiencing a specific context, we start our research. We work in immersion, learning the techniques and local culture and documenting the spaces, specificities, symbols and customs of the community.
With permission from those who teach us in field, we build the bridge between the local scale and the world outside.
the design
and the process
We develop technical solutions recognizing the lives instilled in the process.
Both people and materials are not seen as resources, but as active agents of a cyclical development, directing the idea of ​​sustainability not only to the final project, but also to the construction and post-construction process.
the research and
the communication
We understand research as an essential tool to immerse ourselves in any context. Through research we build a critical vision of our impact and also an understanding of the political, social and economic situation in the region where we are working. By absorbing these contents in a theoretical and empirical way, we deem it necessary to share the uncertainties, questions and proposals that arise from this research, in a constant and sincere communication.
