Making Visible: On waste and resilience with Natura Futura and BUZIGAHILL | KoozArch

One of the internal themes informing the second edition of the Sharjah Architecture Triennial, directed by Tosin Oshinowo, was described as Extraction Politics: framing practices that deal with the serious material, social and political consequences of extraction, and highlighting innovative design methodologies which look towards rehabilitation and reuse. Among those listed within this theme are the Uganda-based initiative BUZIGAHILL and the Ecuadorian architectural practice Natura Futura. We had the opportunity to listen and learn from both, in the interview below.

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Centuries ago, Ecuador’s Babahoyo River and its floating houses were one of the main collection, storage, and rest points on the commercial route between Guayaquil and Quito. Presently, this route has ceased, and the number of floating structures has dwindled from 200 to 25, despite being recognised as an Ecuadorian heritage site. Natura Futura, what brought about the closure of the route and what is the cultural impact in the reduction of these floating structures?

Commercial activity on the Babahoyo River began to decline at the end of the 19th century, with the construction of the new trans-Andean railway in 1872. Although river commercial activity continued during the following decades, it is from 1950 — alongside the first banana boom, the construction of roads and adoption of large, imported trucks — that the use of the river as the main means of commercial transportation declined greatly.

Although commercial activity has faded, its history has left behind customs, systems and a strong culture that lives off the river and inhabits floating systems that live by and for the river. Unfortunately, the governments responsible for its care have not focused their efforts on cultivating and making this culture visible; rather, they have displaced or relocated them to housing complexes, ignoring that such actions potentiate family disintegration, uprooting from productive and geographical activities, cultural destabilisation and negative psychosocial effects on girls and young people. Thanks to the national and international collaborations, we have, little by little, caused governments to turn their gaze towards floating communities; creating public policies that protect them and allocating public investment to improve their basic infrastructure.

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Natura Futura, at your office, architecture is never intended as a self-contained act but rather as a tool, to empower communities and the territory. How does this define the type of projects you decide to undertake and the clients you chose to engage with?

It could be said that a “way of doing architecture” has been established within the studio, but we believe that the Ecuadorian territory is so diverse that thinking about a single project typology is not possible. We believe that the project typologies come from an intense and sensitive reading of the context. Thus, in some way, the streets, the people, the sounds and pre-existing things begin to subtly indicate the path to follow in the design process. The result is due to the context and the stimuli we receive when walking the streets of the territory.

On the other hand, we don't know if we choose the customers or if the customers choose us. But we believe that all collaboration of a social nature starts from a seed that does not contemplate any personal benefit, given that in the studio we manage self-financed model community projects two or three times a year; where we design small prototypes with a small budget. As time goes by, these seed projects begin to bear fruit when they reach the eyes of NGOs or private organisations interested in developing these prototypes on a larger impact scale. In this sense, each project is a constant give and take where everything begins and ends with the intention of helping the city, the community and the human being.

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Source: Making Visible: On waste and resilience with Natura Futura and BUZIGAHILL | KoozArch