AL BORDE ARQUITECTOS DAVID BARRAGáN, PASCUAL

© Al Borde
AL BORDE Arquitectos
David Barragán,
Pascual Gangotena,
Marialuisa Borja,
Esteban Benavides,
Quito, Ecuador
boos which the local fishermen have been building for generations. A closer examination, however, reveals that the architects have modified the simple volume: the trunks have been
assembled in a new three-dimensional structure which makes
it possible to build diamond-shaped loggias on the sides of the
tent. The internal space has been widened and raised as a way
of better adapting it to the programme: a classroom and library.
And finally, we learn that the school was built together with
the locals, using: “hybrid constructive systems which combine
the traditional with the contemporary and also integrate the
management of social and community energy to carry out their
work.”1
The Global Award is embracing a very young team this year
in the shape of Al Borde, which was created in Quito in 2007.
The original two founders, David Barragán and Pascual Gangotena, are in their thirties and they were joined in 2010 by
Marialuisa Borja and Esteban Benavides, who are 29 and 28
respectively. All are architects who studied at the Pontificia Universidad Católica in Quito where three are now teachers, a role
change which could appear somewhat rapid. But in a country
of volcanoes and earthquakes where the average age is 25 and
the political and economic instability which followed the end
of the dictatorship in 1979 ensures that there is no great sense
of social security, perhaps it is the case that responsibility simply comes sooner than elsewhere. Al Borde, which is largely
devoted to self-development projects, is driven by a strong sense
of the responsibility of the architect. The studio works directly
with local people in order to build schools or other facilities,
which the state fails to provide - or only does so badly.
The village had never had a school and its adults are illiterate.
In 2008, after the country had become relatively stable2, the government launched a programme of educational reform which
incorporated a major school building drive. But Al Borde
explains that, in the provinces, “most of the schools are made
of concrete and have a rectangular shape and barred windows
which make them look more like a jail than a school – as well as
very high truancy rates.”1
The first level of critical intervention of the architect’s counterproject is, naturally, the contrast which it provides with these
mediocre units. At another level, however, it is also part of the
search for an architecture which is appropriate to these communities at this key moment of addressing the issue of development through education - and this explains the above remark
on the failure rate. How does one avoid that the building of
the first school, even if the inhabitants want it, doesn’t lead to
violent change? How does one build a facility which allows a
pedagogical approach appropriate to the circumstances? By,
according to Al Borde, expanding the scope of the project to
sociological and anthropological reflection. And this approach
doesn’t end with the handover of the school because the projects
of Al Borde are not only a local response but also a contribution to the development debate in Ecuador. “School buildings
as educational experiments”, to quote Francis Kéré3, who is
carrying out an experiment in Gando in Burkina Faso which
has much in common with that of Al Borde.
“It was extremely necessary to design the space according to the
principles of an active school. The project had to be intimately connected with the nearby natural environment: A space
where kids can wake up their imagination, their creativity and
“Al Borde is a collaborative and experimental architecture studio that focuses on solving real needs based on the available
material, be this social or physical. The group works with that
which is at its disposal, re-combining the pre-existing in a way
which is basic, logical and simple and causes no damage.”1
Al Borde has realised few projects to date. Some houses as well
as the schools and other small facilities built in the coastal
region for communities who do not seem to be enjoying the
trickle-down effects of the prosperity of the tourist industry …
The remarkable thing upon discovering these projects is the
way in which they combine the notion of the modern facility
with constructional systems and even an architectural tradition
which would be seen as vernacular.
The New Hope School (Nueva Esperanza), for example, which
was built in 2009 for a village in Manabi Province, reinterprets
the typology of the tent on stilts made from branches and bam-
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© Pascal Gangotena
their desire to learn new things rather than a space where kids
feel repressed. The project uses the same materials and building patterns that the community has been using for ever. A
timber platform above the foundation piles, bamboo walls, a
timber structure and a straw roof or “cade”. The difference lies
in the conception and conceptualisation of the space. A place
for education that encourages learning through action.”1 This
action started with the task of building itself. The architects
built small models as a way of showing the locals how to build
a more complex structure than they were used to. Then the
construction process started, with learning phases followed by
more traditional building phases – the building of walls using
bamboo bark, the cutting and laying of thatch …
Al Borde’s approach resonates with those of other Global Award
architects: one thinks of the “architecture of empowerment” of
Carin Smuts or of the workshops of Rural Studio in Alabama,
whose social and ecological experience is condensed by Andrew
Freear into the appealing statement: “Ecology? Ours is a simple
sustainability born of necessity.” To which Al Borde could reply:
it is clear that that the laws of economic necessity and anthropology have come together here under the straw canopy. With an
average project budget below $ 1,000, Al Borde mostly works
outside the market economy.
From time to time we organise this global Global Award scene in
order to polarise exchanges of opinion into cathode and anode:
western countries and those of the new New World, with their
specific view of global challenges and their own debate. By presenting Al Borde today, we are changing the game and bringing
together those architects who, in their work, have chosen to
take the side of the disenfranchised: Patrick Bouchain and the
European Fourth World, Carin Smuts and the South African
townships, Francis Kéré and Al Borde and rural societies. These
architects may be separated by the breadth of the planet but
an impelling similarity brings them together: by developing an
alternative architecture to those models which, no longer able
to ensure that progress trickles down to these populations, tend
instead to crush them, they are reinventing the very profession
of architecture. This new role has more to do with activating a
process than with delivering a product. The task is to establish
a process of acquiring and transmitting knowledge rather than
simply overseeing the realisation of a plan.
The appropriateness of the form of the school to this coastal
village is explained by the teacher, an exponent of progressive
teaching methods, the objectives of which helped to guide the
spatial programming: “In our fishing community, it is a most
beautiful thing to have a school shaped like a boat into which,
every day, kids jump and get ready to sail and discover new
worlds, starting out from their very own cultural world, with all
its knowledge and potential. The children learn science and
technology but also learn to value the life of their village as a
starting point, thanks to the lessons given by the best teacher of
all, nature. (...) A huge change in the children’s learning process
has taken place since the opening of the school. The action of
opening the entrance door is a physics lesson. The space is generous in every way, which allows each kid to finding their own
place and organise their own activities.”1
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© Esteban Ladena
“Before Alborde we wondered if another world
was possible, now that same question motivates
us to keep working.”4
And as part of this process of redefinition, the young team then
took the experiment a notch further at the Second Hope School
(Esperanza Dos), which was realised in 2011 in the same region.
For this larger project, the architects continuously used small
models as they conceived and discussed the development of a
complex structure of pyramids which would make it possible to
build larger volumes. Then they started work on site in the new
role of not being responsible for the building work but only for
the training and the transmission of their new idea. That is to
say, for the integration of a certain number of new ideas into the
vernacular constructive tradition already shared by the locals.
had a specific role in the construction process and involuntarily
became good at it. There then followed the process of perfecting
these techniques which led to the creation of specialists in each
area and the optimisation of processes. Finally, we encouraged
knowledge transfer as a way of benefitting the whole team.
The possibilities of the system allowed building work to pause
whenever the team deemed necessary.
“The sea and the land are the supermarket and the trees of the
forest are the material for building their houses. (...) We decided
to be part of this world, to understand how to solve problems
directly, without intermediaries.
In this situation it is not about making money in order to buy
things and quell hunger. It is about understanding life and
meeting one’s needs with the resources that one possesses: the
mind and the body. The resources that we had were the ones
that defined the project: irregularly shaped materials, fishing and
farming tools. Strong, skilled labourers who don’t understand
accuracy in terms of centimetres. Supported by volunteers from
the city who understand centimetres but don’t know how to
build. And a specific site with fuzzy boundaries. It was clear
that the project would dispense with topographical surveys
and require neither AutoCAD nor Neufert. In this situation,
money is only one resource amongst such others as human and
natural resources. A simple system of minimal complexity is
able to adapt to the unpredictable variables of the land, labour
and materials. The system allows for the design to be discussed
and decisions to be made during the construction. Each person
The construction time was one week. The goal was to establish
a logical process of collective construction and understand the
scope of the system. Once the community had understood the
process, we were no longer needed.
We said goodbye and, when we returned, the community had
already embraced the system. A new wing had been built; spaces
had been modified with hardwood floors and bamboo walls.
Fragments of pottery that people had found on the beach were
arranged on the cornice like a small museum of earlier cultures.
In “Nueva Esperanza”, school children learn to rely on the
group and to fly towards abstract knowledge, to other worlds.”1
M. H. C.
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© Andrea Vargas
Al Borde was created in 2007. Pascual Gangotena (1977), David
Barragán (1981), Marialuisa Borja (1984) and Esteban Benavides
(1985) were born in Quito and studied architecture at the Pontificia
Universidad Católica del Ecuador. Pascual Gangotena stopped
teaching in 2011 in order to devote himself to Al Borde but David
Barragán and Esteban Benavides remain professors of the same
university. Their activities are sustained by building-workshops,
conferences and also performances across Latin America: Peru,
Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina... They have a strong
presence at Latin-American biennials, the last of which took place
last April in Pamplona, Spain. Al Borde was awarded the Schelling
Architecture Prize in 2012.
1. in Projectos - www.albordearq.com
2. The current government, led by the economist Rafael Correa,
was elected in November 2006 following three decades of extreme
instability and economic and financial crisis.
3. Francis Diébédo Kéré, winner of the Global Award for Sustainable
Architecture 2009, www.kerearchitecture.com
4. Interview of Al Borde by M.H. Contal – March 2013
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