«Learning from Lima»

>>«Learning from Lima» Radical Indigenism Vs. Urban Sprawl

2-7/09/2024

Università degli Studi di Brescia

Dicatam Department

Via Branze 43 - Brescia

Scientific directors

Barbara Angi

Luis Jimenez Campos

Scientific committee

Università degli Studi di Brescia

Barbara Angi

Barbara Badiani

Marina Montuori

Marco Alioni

Irene Peron

Luca Fogliata

Elisa Masserdotti

Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería, Lima, Peru

Facultad de Arquitectura, Urbanismo y Artes

Victor Luis Jiménez Campos

Kenji Franz Medina Cossio

Guillermo José Arévalo Chávez

Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

Juan Manuel Palerm Salazar Palmas

>> ABSTRACT

The International Summer School for Advanced Studies UniBS 2024 extends an invitation to participants to engage in a critical reflection on the relationship between sustainable architecture and the design and construction practices that are currently the most commonly used and “certified”.

The initial concept that arises is that of ‘Lo-TEK’ (Low Traditional Ecological Knowledge – Watson J., 2022), which concerns the utilisation of local technologies in architectural designs, frequently associated with self-building practices and the ‘active’ involvement of individuals. This approach to design could prove pivotal in addressing the contemporary challenges related to climate change in an uncertain geopolitical scenario, and suggests alternative ways to the general concept of “Sustainability of the Common Good”.

This brings us to the second point to consider in the ISS: the role of architecture in addressing the “Common Good”, in its dual nature of ordinariness and sharing. The objective is to attempt to redefine what design tools are still needed outside the regime of market-imposed scarcity (Aureli, Less is Enough: On Architecture and Asceticism, 2010).

The third thought concerns the meaning of dealing with the ordinary in architecture today. The concept of the “in-fraordinary”, as defined by George Perec (1994), prompts reflection on the ways in which the banal, the everyday and the ordinary are often overlooked in favour of the spectacular. By questioning the ordinary, we can begin to engage with places and spaces that are spontaneously experienced and neglected, which can act as catalysts for heterogeneous and often marginal social realities.

In order to stimulate discussion at the ISS, which will be held at the University of Brescia’s DICATAM Department during the first week of September 2024, we have selected the Discrict of Santa Eulalia, situated on the outskirts of Lima, Peru, as a case study. One of the most salient features of this small community is the occurrence of flooding events that devastate the local population every seven years, resulting in the systematic destruction - and rebuilding - of a considerable proportion of the self-built informal settlements.