Kids Playing in Quechua
Latin American Social Workshop
Colca Valley, Ichupampa village, The Andes, Peru
The Andes is the longest mountain range in the world. It is a continual range of highlands along the western coast of South America. The Andes extend from north to south through seven South American countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. The Colca Valley, located in the Central Andes of Peru, is a colorful Andean valley with pre-Inca roots, and towns founded in Spanish colonial times, still inhabited by people of the Collagua and the Cabana cultures. The local people maintain their ancestral traditions and continue to cultivate the pre-Inca stepped terraces.
The workshop: The Latin American Social Workshop for Architecture Students called «WAWA Pukllay» (which means Kids Playing in Quechua), aims to work directly with childhood challenges from the Andes Mountains in Peru, where children develop their widely skills throughout the game.
The workshop takes into account the historic architecture of Colca Valley, the construction techniques, systems and local materials used by its ancestors over time which constitute a cultural heritage forming a cultural landscape in harmony with the environment where they were located.
During a seven day period, sixty architect students from all over Latin America discussed, understand, projected and built a series of ludic landscapes within the Colca Valley.
The intervention explores architecture and landscape; game and freedom, experimenting with different local materials through self-construction. A new landscape that integrates small pavilions, topographies and games for local kids.
The project is the result of the collaboration between architects (tutors), coordinators of the workshop and architecture students from all over Latin America.
Main Tutors: Ivan Juarez (Mexico) and Hernán Perochena (Peru), Fernando Meneses (Mexico), Daniela Frogheri (Italy), Mariano Ferretti (Argentina), Rodolfo Guzmán (Mexico) and Omar Urday (Peru)
Coordinators: Lucia Muñoz (director) together with more than 30 students from Catholic University of Santa María, Arequipa, Perú
Ichupampa coordinator : Jessica Pastor
