Humour, Wit and Resolution:

In the main street of a town, there was a large pot­hole that made sig­nif­i­cant imped­i­ments to pass­ing cars. This gen­er­at­ed long queues and a wait of at least 20 min­utes. Rather quick­ly, the neigh­bours real­ized that they could cre­ative­ly appro­pri­ate the incon­ve­nient sit­u­a­tion. Sud­den­ly, shops around the pot­hole start­ed to appear: fruits, drinks, cell phone acces­sories, prod­ucts that dri­vers could buy while wait­ing. One day, the town elect­ed a new may­or who decid­ed to fix the pot­hole. To his sur­prise, the neigh­bours strong­ly opposed its repair as it would mean the end of their busi­ness. With­out alter­na­tive, the may­or accept­ed that the pot­hole should remain.[2] The sto­ry told by Argen­tinean pro­fes­sor, colum­nist and busi­ness admin­is­tra­tor Clau­dio Zuchovic­ki, sum­ma­rizes what hap­pens when pre­car­i­ty ignites prac­tices of social pro­duc­tion. It exem­pli­fies a com­mon phe­nom­e­non in the Glob­al South, where things hap­pen spon­ta­neous­ly around moments of dis­rup­tion. The quick reac­tion to fig­ure things out pro­duces unex­pect­ed net­works of exchange, unique spa­tial con­fig­u­ra­tions and, when it comes to build­ings, dis­tinct typolo­gies of details. These details work with what is with­in reach, not accept­ing mate­ri­als for what they are sup­posed to be, but for what they could be. They sal­vage and devel­op shrewd and cun­ning use of what they can from the residue of mass mate­ri­als. In con­trast to a regime of indus­tri­al­ized sup­ply chains, these oth­ered details see mate­ri­als as part of an at-hand ecol­o­gy. These diverse forms of mak­ing archi­tec­ture show an alter­na­tive way of relat­ing to the envi­ron­ment and ben­e­fit­ing social con­nec­tions of a place. In Argenti­na, a par­tic­u­lar expres­sion is used to refer to such situations—sticky and with no log­i­cal or appar­ent solu­tion: ata­do con alam­bre: ​‘fixed with wire.’ This com­mon say­ing indica­tive of cul­tur­al every­day-life prac­tices is employed also by archi­tects and non-archi­tects to refer to deci­sions made at con­struc­tion sites and design devel­op­ment phas­es. To solve a predica­ment with ​‘wire’ is to keep it work­ing for anoth­er day, and when that day comes, a bet­ter solu­tion will present itself. Some­times, that day nev­er comes, or as in the case of the sto­ry, when a solu­tion appears anoth­er may have already become a bet­ter oppor­tu­ni­ty. Each act of res­o­lu­tion under such par­a­digm, is char­ac­ter­ized by a per­son­al touch of cre­ativ­i­ty and a sur­plus sense of pride and effec­tive­ness. Often, these fab­ri­ca­tions and res­o­lu­tions are cul­tur­al­ly rec­og­nized as wit­ty and humor­ous due to their grace­ful exe­cu­tion and uncon­ven­tion­al prag­ma­tism. Such prac­tices, high­ly present in self-built domes­tic con­struc­tions and repairs, are not unique to Argenti­na. All across the globe, as scarci­ty and pre­car­i­ty grows, more and more details of this form of inge­nu­ity pop­u­late urban and sub­ur­ban built envi­ron­ments, offer­ing not just
solu­tions, but char­ac­ter and unmapped cas­es of prac­ti­cal wis­dom. Sim­i­lar­ly, for­mal­ized archi­tec­ture design prac­tices are often faced with eco­nom­i­cal and logis­tics con­straints that con­tribute to an atti­tude towards think­ing astute­ly in order to get the most out of the least. ​“Poor archi­tec­ture” as Lina Bo Bar­di explained in 1984, is not about pover­ty, but about the capac­i­ty to express the max­i­mum through minor means.[3]

Forty years have passed since archi­tect and edu­ca­tor, Mar­co Fras­cari pub­lished the influ­en­tial essay, ​“The Tell-The-Tale Detail”, in which he argued that details are gen­er­a­tors of archi­tec­tur­al knowl­edge through the mir­rored activ­i­ties of con­stru­ing and con­struct­ing.[4] Fras­cari reflect­ed on the role of details as pro­duc­ers of archi­tec­tur­al the­o­ries and prac­tices, able to demon­strate mean­ing and nar­ra­tives of cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance. Fur­ther­more, he the­o­rized that the detail is a prac­tice of sig­nif­i­cant social action: ​“In the details are the pos­si­bil­i­ties of inno­va­tion and inven­tion, and it is through these that archi­tects can give har­mo­ny to the most uncom­mon and dif­fi­cult or dis­or­der­ly envi­ron­ment gen­er­at­ed by a cul­ture.”[5] Build­ing details then, con­tain valu­able data to assess social, cul­tur­al and mate­r­i­al mat­ters con­cern­ing built envi­ron­ments. Thus, study­ing and becom­ing exposed to the sen­si­bil­i­ties attained in the con­struc­tion of details with those who build, can be extreme­ly fer­tile for archi­tec­ture ped­a­go­gies. The dif­fi­cul­ty per­haps becomes, what details to study and what do these details teach us. When Bernard Rud­of­sky pub­lished his well-known work in 1964, Archi­tec­ture With­out Archi­tects he prob­lema­tized the edu­ca­tion of the archi­tect by say­ing: ​“Archi­tec­tur­al his­to­ry, as writ­ten and taught in the West­ern world, has nev­er been con­cerned with more than a few select cul­tures.”[6]

In last decades and gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, archi­tec­tur­al dis­course in the Glob­al North around details has been pulled in sev­er­al and not sur­pris­ing direc­tions both in prac­tice and in acad­e­mia. In prac­tice, excep­tion­al archi­tec­ture stu­dios with small scale projects con­tin­ue to grap­ple with the lux­u­ry of time, mon­ey and use of the best crafts and mate­ri­als. With excep­tions, larg­er stu­dios, in close col­lab­o­ra­tion with indus­tries, strug­gle to fit with­in a project’s bud­get and time the atten­tion need­ed to be inven­tive with details. BIM, codes and reg­u­la­tions com­pli­cate mat­ters even more and built solu­tions become high­ly repet­i­tive and stan­dard­ized from project to project. In acad­e­mia, thoughts and exper­tise on sus­tain­abil­i­ty tend to frame the study of details and mate­ri­als through design for dis­as­sem­bly and cir­cu­lar economies strate­gies, life cycle assess­ment, reuse, recy­cle and in some cas­es, the poten­tial use of bio­genic mate­ri­als. For bet­ter or for worse, a great dis­con­nect con­tin­ues to exist between what is taught at schools and what is built by prac­tices. Fur­ther­more, there is an even greater dis­con­nect between academia/professional prac­tices and the built pro­duc­tion that is admin­is­tered and exe­cut­ed by non-archi­tects, what Rud­of­sky called, the pro­duc­tion of the ​“com­mu­nal ver­nac­u­lar”.[7] The pro­duc­tion of the com­mu­nal ver­nac­u­lar today is not as pret­ty, orga­nized and slow-made as Rudofsky’s exam­ples. It is also not very present in afflu­ent coun­tries. Where it hap­pens, it is messy, pre­car­i­ous, some­times humor­ous and wit­ty [ 1 ] [ 2 ]. Most­ly found in the Glob­al South, where eco­nom­ic issues and less inva­sive indus­tri­al sys­tems exist, exam­ples of the com­mu­nal ver­nac­u­lar and its influ­ence to archi­tects has much to teach us.

In her opin­ion piece, ​“Build. No Excep­tions” Bil­lie Fair­cloth poised: ​“If we are going to wres­tle with the role of the built in archi­tec­ture and archi­tec­tur­al ped­a­gogy, then I pro­pose we begin where Howard Davis did: begin with all that is built.”[8] All that is built does not just belong to archi­tects author­ship, it is also what your neigh­bour did when some­thing in her house broke and what the neigh­bour of that neigh­bour built when he need­ed to add an extra room in his house. Fair­cloth insists that we look at the built to avoid, for exam­ple, forms of archi­tec­tur­al excep­tion­al­ism that exists when fac­ul­ty in uni­ver­si­ties are des­ig­nat­ed as either design­ers or tech­ni­cians.[9] Fur­ther­more, to look at the built, is to look at cul­tur­al prac­tices that own their every­day life in the best way pos­si­ble, with the means avail­able, which are very often scarce, a tech­no-social realm that is often dis­re­gard­ed in acad­e­mia. How­ev­er, as Fair­cloth states: ​“The built is an essen­tial source for the trans­for­ma­tion of ped­a­gogy and prac­tice.”[10] Under such per­spec­tive, this paper presents the work, through built details, of three archi­tec­ture stu­dios that prac­tice, teach and look close­ly at spa­tial prac­tices of every­day life. By under­stand­ing socio-eco­nom­i­cal sit­u­a­tions they make the most out of the least. With­out rais­ing loud polit­i­cal, envi­ron­men­tal or dis­cur­sive flags, emerg­ing prac­tices in South Amer­i­ca offer alter­na­tive ways of working—and teaching—in times of glob­al crises. More­over, as an archi­tect, teacher and researcher myself, I believe that I can make space through my priv­i­leged access to aca­d­e­m­ic pub­li­ca­tions to make vis­i­ble the work of archi­tects and teach­ers that are less known in the Glob­al North.

Vagueness

At the recep­tion of the Debut Award of the Lis­bon Archi­tec­ture Tri­en­nale of 2022, Anna Juni from vão, an archi­tec­ture prac­tice from São Paulo, Brazil starts their lec­ture by explain­ing the name of their office, which in Por­tuguese lan­guage means both: a span and some­thing vague. Exem­pli­fy­ing what vão is with images of Lina Bo Bardi’s MASP (Museo de Arte de São Paulo), Anna recalls that their office embod­ies both, the engi­neer­ing and struc­tur­al efforts of what it takes to make a span, and also the pos­si­bil­i­ties of free occu­pa­tion gen­er­at­ed by the space Bo Bar­di allowed to exist below the gen­er­ous con­crete span­ning struc­ture sid­ing Aveni­da Paulista [ 3 ] [12] To be vague, they argue, is to allow archi­tec­ture to be expe­ri­enced in a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of forms. Vão’s vague­ness is also present in how they work and orga­nize their stu­dio: they teach, they col­lab­o­rate with artists, they look at each project as an indi­vid­ual enti­ty, they col­lab­o­rate with builders and acknowl­edge their skills, they research… While vague­ness is often asso­ci­at­ed with lack of pre­ci­sion, it can also be asso­ci­at­ed with acts of won­der­ing, mov­ing slow­ly, being atten­tive.[13] I’d like to con­nect this form of won­der to what his­to­ri­an Car­o­line Walk­er Bynum, in her stud­ies on medieval notions of won­der explained: ​“won­der was a response to some­thing nov­el and bizarre that seemed both to exceed expla­na­tion and to indi­cate that there might be rea­son (sig­nif­i­cance-not nec­es­sar­i­ly cause) behind it.”[14] In con­ver­sa­tion with Anna Juni, Enk te Winkel and Gus­ta­vo Delonero, the archi­tects explain: ​“When we talk about our work, we like to talk about process­es. We don’t like to show the work as a great idea that emerged from nowhere. Ideas emerge from pos­si­bil­i­ties and impos­si­bil­i­ties. Ideas emerge to jus­ti­fy and to enable that some­thing is done, they don’t emerge from an aes­thet­ic dream detached from a real­i­ty.”[15]

In their ear­ly win­ning project Sub­solanus (under the sun) from 2016, co-authored with Mari­na Can­hadas and real­ized at the archi­tec­ture gallery LIGA, Espa­cio para Arqui­tec­tura in Mex­i­co City, the archi­tects pro­posed to bring nat­ur­al air from the rooftop of a build­ing, where the asso­ci­a­tion held con­fer­ences and meet­ings, to its ground floor where a small exhi­bi­tion space exist­ed. The built instal­la­tion on the exist­ing build­ing designed by Augus­to Álvarez, stretched 30 meters high [ 4 ]. The com­pe­ti­tion call was enti­tled Geometrías Invis­i­bles and asked for an instal­la­tion piece at the very small gallery. With­in the con­straint of small­ness, the archi­tects imag­ined instead a large, yet minor inter­ven­tion full of air that would acknowl­edge the area winds and the invis­i­bil­i­ty of such move­ments into the lit­tle room while con­nect­ing to the rooftop activ­i­ties. Such idea, they explained, came from a set of acci­den­tal and known ref­er­ences that con­nect­ed with São Paulo’s every­day urban life and their stud­ies from archi­tec­ture school. Inspired by sit­u­a­tions they nor­mal­ly would encounter in the city, the project emerged from two sit­u­a­tions: a humours arrange­ment of dis­card­ed mate­ri­als ran­dom­ly found on the street [ 5 ] and the com­mon prac­tice of dry­ing clothes at metro ven­ti­la­tion open­ings by house­less peo­ple [ 6 ]. These encoun­ters made them recall Rudofsky’s pub­lished pho­tographs of the wind struc­tures from West Pak­istan[16] and they relat­ed these ref­er­ences to the air and winds con­di­tions of Mex­i­co City. Because the gallery was so small, the only pos­si­ble inter­ven­tion to them seemed to fill it up with air. The project was real­ized with very lit­tle mon­ey, 2,000 USD, and a lot of courage as they remem­ber. Sil­ver tapes, plas­tic mem­branes and min­i­mum steel struc­ture brought not just air to the small gallery but pub­lic atten­tion and vis­i­bil­i­ty due to its unimag­ined scale [ 7 ] [ 8 ]. The effort was pos­si­ble due to a lot of men­tor­ing, con­sul­ta­tions and inter­ac­tions with engi­neer, Rui Fur­ta­do, the con­struc­tor Bonifácio López, and a for­mer pro­fes­sor, Mar­ta Bogéa. 

Vão’s light, humor­ous way of work­ing can be found in many of their built projects where a sense of wit and joy sur­rounds their deci­sions. This form of knowl­edge appears to rely on both, their for­mal edu­ca­tion and the diverse con­di­tions they encounter in their every­day life which con­fronts them with socio-polit­i­cal and eco­nom­i­cal strug­gles and a con­stant vibran­cy in the cul­tur­al prac­tices of mak­ing ends meet. When asked about how this form of sen­si­bil­i­ty can be trans­mit­ted to archi­tec­ture stu­dents, Anna, who teach­es 1^st year stu­dents at Esco­la da Cidade in São Paulo reflects: ​“We have to be atten­tive to pro­pi­ti­ate exchanges among stu­dents. Diverse thoughts among the same issues trig­gers bet­ter projects.”[17] She explains how impor­tant it is to gath­er mul­ti­ple ideas in one room to cre­ate dia­logue and to cre­ate cross­ings in the imag­i­nar­ies of what archi­tec­ture could actu­al­ly become. Like­wise, plac­ing at the same lev­el the pro­duc­tion of every­day life details found in the city as well as the pro­duc­tion of high details found in archi­tec­ture mag­a­zines expands on the pos­si­bil­i­ties and sen­si­bil­i­ties of a project prospec­tive. Acci­den­tal dis­cov­er­ies, new rela­tion­ships and diver­si­fi­ca­tion of points of view are at the core of her ped­a­gog­i­cal approach to teach­ing archi­tec­ture. One on hand she is inter­est­ed in how stu­dents can appro­pri­ate the ideas that they research, but also how can they incor­po­rate ideas that emerge in col­lec­tive dia­logue, dis­cus­sion and dif­fer­ence with oth­er peers in the class­room. ​“Ideas do not belong to any­one”, she says, and makes a com­par­i­son with the­atre rehearsals: ​“when one or two actors or actress­es rehearse a sit­u­a­tion, there is a con­struc­tion in the col­lec­tive act­ing, we call it ​‘stair effect’, act­ing togeth­er makes a plot evolve and ​‘climb up’ to an unex­pect­ed devel­op­ment. I think the same occurs in debates and exchanges, things grow. This is also how we work in our office.”[18]

In the project of cri­tiquing mod­ernism, the 1980’s philoso­pher Gian­ni Vat­ti­mo pro­posed that ​‘weak thought’ is a foun­da­tion­al prin­ci­ple for learn­ing, design­ing and think­ing. The philo­soph­i­cal propo­si­tion sug­gests a focus shift from can­nons and ide­olo­gies (as much as pos­si­ble) with an inten­tion to encounter a viable way for think­ing where inter­pre­ta­tion – hermeneu­tics – is at stake in the pres­ence of the thing itself, in oth­er words, the ​‘itin­er­ary of thought’ emerges from that which the minds think with as it expe­ri­ences it.[19] Weak thought also con­sid­ers prac­tices and events that are seem­ing­ly insignif­i­cant and thus it becomes a pow­er­ful tool to address a range of top­ics that are out­side the field of the ​‘impor­tant’ with­in the archi­tec­tur­al dis­course, pro­vid­ing in exchange, the alter­na­tive emer­gence of new ideas. Anna reflects that stu­dents some­times go through a sense of anguish because they want answers. To ease this, she finds that a con­stant re-cir­cu­la­tion and won­der­ing of vague ideas is fruit­ful. How­ev­er, she remarks, ​“we need to also trust empti­ness, we need to trust lack. This may help dimin­ish the anguish about hav­ing to fill up every­thing.”[20]

Differential Thickness

The Argen­tinean grillers—parrilleros—that occu­py city side­walks to sell sausages and meats have a par­tic­u­lar tech­nique to attract cus­tomers. They place in the fire a small lump of fat to increase the reach of the smoke with the hope to catch more clients with­in a larg­er radius of impact. Some­thing local becomes expan­sive by increas­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of how far it can stretch. Spa­tial prac­tices as such, are impor­tant to Juan Pablo Berbery, archi­tect and teacher work­ing in Buenos Aires. Juan Pablo’s stu­dio is called OTRO (oth­er) and he is a mem­ber of the col­lec­tive, Dis­pos­i­tivos Nómades, that stud­ies and doc­u­ments urban nomadic devices such as those that grillers and oth­er busi­ness­es build and move around cities. His inter­est in urban and sub­ur­ban socio-cul­tur­al arti­facts and built con­di­tions man­i­fests also in the way he teach­es and prac­tices the discipline. 

The project Casa Yar­aví in Moreno, exem­pli­fies his approach to prac­tic­ing and teach­ing. Moreno is a city bor­der­ing the cap­i­tal of Buenos Aires that Juan Pablo asso­ciates with the guaraní term: ​‘yeré.’[22] Yeré, he explains, is some­thing that sur­rounds and pro­tects some­thing else. A ​‘yeré’ can be a good friend or a gallery around a house to pro­tect it from winds and heat. He con­sid­ers Moreno to be this bor­der­ing struc­ture of the Cap­i­tal, want­i­ng to have a bit of the cen­ter but always remain­ing in the periph­ery. The project is locat­ed in a mod­est mid­dle-class neigh­bor­hood and he was com­mis­sioned to essen­tial­ly make a ​‘yeré’, an open garage for one car on one side of the house and a gallery for drink­ing mate or sim­i­lar out­door activ­i­ties on the oth­er one. The project min­i­mal bud­get entailed that most mate­ri­als had to be found and labor was con­duct­ed by the archi­tect him­self togeth­er with his cousin. 

Left­overs from anoth­er con­struc­tion site deter­mined the mate­ri­als to begin the work. More than 200 hun­dred French roof tiles were trans­formed into two columns, one in the front, one in the back. The archi­tect propo­si­tion was to inter­fere as lit­tle as pos­si­ble the ground floor to max­i­mize the use of space, and if need­ed, to push the bound­aries of the garage that tight­ly could fit two cars if need­ed for a vis­it­ing guest. Garages in Argenti­na are extreme­ly ver­sa­tile spaces, a birth­day par­ty, a Sun­day bar­be­cue lunch, a gym class orga­nized among neigh­bors… any­thing can hap­pen in such space. The garage embod­ies a space qual­i­ty that Juan Pablo likes to call ​‘dif­fer­en­tial thick­ness.’ The columns to allow room for such spaces were then made by stack­ing the French tiles with cement mor­tar, try­ing to erase as much as pos­si­ble their iden­ti­ty [ 9 ]. Two holes were made on each tile to tide them struc­tural­ly with rein­forc­ing bars, a lit­er­al exam­ple of ​‘ata­do con alam­bre’ [ 10 ]. The two columns sit on small, non-vis­i­ble, con­crete bases. On the top, they receive a steel beam that con­nects with a flex­i­ble joint to allow for dis­crete move­ments due to wind and oth­er fac­tors. The beam is helped by a steel cable that con­nects with the col­umn foun­da­tion on one end and with the exist­ing house roof on the oth­er. From this beam, two small­er ones are hanged per­pen­dic­u­lar­ly on one side and on the oth­er side they rest on the par­ty wall of the lot [ 11 ] [ 12 ] [ 13 ]. The new garage and gallery cov­er­ings are made by a sim­ple steel frame with a cor­ru­gate met­al sheet. The wit­ty, seem­ing­ly frag­ile struc­ture light­ens up the entrance and back side of the house, allow­ing max­i­mum space and response to the clients’ needs with min­i­mal use of materials. 

In his engage­ments with teach­ing, both at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Buenos Aires (UBA) and at the Nation­al Uni­ver­si­ty of San Mar­tin (UNSAM), Juan Pablo also teach­es in the 2^nd year of archi­tec­ture school. Ped­a­gog­i­cal­ly, the archi­tect believes in the need to build an ana­lyt­i­cal and crit­i­cal the­o­ret­i­cal body of the non-hege­mon­ic pro­duc­tion of cities. Espe­cial­ly in Latin Amer­i­ca, it seems fun­da­men­tal to him to be able to inves­ti­gate and build sol­id argu­ments about behav­iors and dynam­ics of their ways of liv­ing. He explains: ​“our cities, com­pared to Euro­pean ones, are prac­ti­cal­ly young and need a the­o­riza­tion of alter­na­tive prac­tices to what is cur­rent­ly known in acad­e­mia.”[23] Juan Pablo thus expands the cul­tur­al her­itage of hab­it­abil­i­ty by attend­ing to for­got­ten, unrec­og­nized and invis­i­ble prac­tices that tend to be lost or are in dan­ger of not being known because they are minori­ties and per­form out­side aca­d­e­m­ic cir­cles. To address this, he expos­es stu­dents to forms of unspo­ken build­ing details such as the ones made by peo­ple mak­ing urban nomadic devices or those found in work­ing class neigh­bor­hoods made by non-archi­tects. When it comes to design­ing build­ings, Juan Pablo’s approach encour­ages the accu­mu­la­tion of par­tial frag­ments. Stu­dents begin projects by under­stand­ing dif­fer­ent spa­tial sit­u­a­tions that involve peo­ple, phys­i­cal com­po­nents and their per­for­mance to make ​‘life’ hap­pen. He insists on express­ing to them that things have weight, they break, they can be asso­ci­at­ed and can be lived. With­in this vibrant intel­lec­tu­al posi­tion, frag­ments, pieces, devices can respond to dif­fer­ent prob­lems and in their mate­r­i­al and struc­tur­al accu­mu­la­tion can cre­ate new spa­tial pos­si­bil­i­ties. Dif­fer­en­tial thick­ness is a con­cept that he employs to expand on what per­haps Lucy A. Such­man called ​“sit­u­at­ed action.”[24] Such­man elab­o­rates on this notion to explain that ​“the course of action depends in essen­tial ways upon the action's cir­cum­stances. Rather than attempt­ing to abstract action from its cir­cum­stances and recon­struct it as a ratio­nal plan, the approach is to study how peo­ple use their cir­cum­stances to achieve intel­li­gent action.”[25] The anthro­pol­o­gist gives agency to par­tic­u­lar actions to indi­cate that, just like Fras­cari posi­tioned details, frag­ments and small­er units of exe­cu­tion are deter­mi­nant of larg­er plans (or designs) and not just sub­or­di­nates. Dif­fer­en­tial thick­ness is then the space of archi­tec­ture to embody many places, reach out far and near, trans­form thin mate­ri­als into thick ones and the capac­i­ty of exer­cise intel­lec­tu­al per­mu­ta­tions that shuf­fle and recom­bine known things into unex­pect­ed and sur­pris­ing ones. Such strat­e­gy to address issues of mate­r­i­al and social sus­tain­abil­i­ty seem fun­da­men­tal to archi­tec­tur­al edu­ca­tion, yet, it can only be imple­ment­ed by kin­dling a new set of sen­si­bil­i­ties and engage­ments with built practices. 

Opportunism

While oppor­tunism can be asso­ci­at­ed to moral­ly self­ish acts, in archi­tec­ture can also be a form knowl­edge that finds chances among defined sys­tems or seem­ing­ly use­less mate­ri­als or con­di­tions. When I inter­viewed Agustín Berze­ro at his house in Cór­do­ba, the cap­i­tal of the homony­mous province in Argenti­na, I encoun­tered, through his built work, forms of pos­i­tive oppor­tunism at many scales. When I asked for exam­ple, about the kitchen table in which we were seat­ing at, which is a con­crete slab, he respond­ed that he had made it with a pre­vi­ous table which he did not like and to give it a pur­pose, he used it as a form­work to cast the one that he now uses. The house he built for him­self is most­ly made out of exposed ther­mal bricks, a com­mon and inex­pen­sive mate­r­i­al pro­duced in Cór­do­ba that defines most­ly low-income con­struc­tions done by non-archi­tects [ 14 ]. He used this mate­r­i­al in a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of ways. As load bear­ing walls but also as a thin screen in the front facade that pro­vides secu­ri­ty and pri­va­cy to the house. The way in which he cre­at­ed the screen was by cut­ting, at the con­struc­tion site, the ther­mal blocks into three parts each. By thin­ning the bricks, he light­ened up the weight of the screen and max­i­mized the use of the mate­r­i­al. The house, which is full of details made with re-used parts and a wit­ty used of mate­ri­als is a mod­ern mon­u­ment to oppor­tunism. Agustín believes that each project is indeed, an oppor­tu­ni­ty to do some­thing grace­ful, joy­ful. Instead of repeat­ing solu­tions from project to project, each exer­cise is a chance to inves­ti­gate mate­ri­als dif­fer­ent­ly. In two recent projects, he has been explor­ing how to artic­u­late brick bond­ings so all the infra­struc­tur­al sys­tems of plumb­ing and elec­tric­i­ty can be built up con­cur­rent­ly with­in the wall sec­tion. To make this hap­pen, in the Tres Casas project, he devel­oped a bond­ing typol­o­gy that works ver­ti­cal­ly, leav­ing lin­ear ducts to embed the var­i­ous tubes and pipes need­ed to sup­ply the house [ 15 ]. Work­ing close­ly with con­struc­tion work­ers, they test­ed the bond­ing detail on site which proved to work well. The brick walls work simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with con­crete columns and slabs that give alto­geth­er pro­vide sta­bil­i­ty to the entire spa­tial sys­tem [ 16 ]. Agustín self-chal­lenge to find a way to make a wall sec­tion that con­sid­ers simul­ta­ne­ous­ly aspects of struc­tur­al and infra­struc­tur­al res­o­lu­tion is dri­ven by sev­er­al fac­tors. One of them is the desire to hon­our the crafts­man­ship of brick lay­ers by avoid­ing any post-demo­li­tion to embed pipes on the walls. Anoth­er fac­tor is the desire to reduce the use of mate­r­i­al by avoid­ing any ren­der­ing or plas­ter­ing of the wall, to attain this, the wall res­o­lu­tion must be done in the tidi­est, most well-craft­ed way. And a third aspect, is the con­cur­rent plan­ning of work­ers’ sched­ule, both brick­lay­ers and plumbers and elec­tri­cians, so they can all work in the most effi­cient way as the walls come up. The resource­ful han­dling of work­ers time reduces cost for the client while pro­vid­ing the work­ers with a clear under­stand­ing of the project’s log­ic, which they appre­ci­ate as they are not faced with sur­pris­es that hap­pen when tasks are dis­con­nect­ed for each other’s field of expertise. 

In the Casa Cerámi­ca, anoth­er exper­i­ment with brick walls hap­pens. In this case, the use of ther­mal ceram­ic blocks, which are thick­er than reg­u­lar bricks, opened up the oppor­tu­ni­ty for the archi­tect to imag­ine with its hol­low­ness [ 17 ] [ 18 ]. The ver­ti­cal lib­er­at­ed cav­i­ties are obtained by mak­ing strate­gic cuts to some of the blocks where the need­ed ducts need to go through the wall. Again, the deci­sion is made with the desire to avoid any post-demo­li­tion of the wall to fit in infra­struc­tur­al ele­ments. For Agustín the premise of work­ing with scarci­ty in the most grace­ful way is man­i­fest in all the works he embarks. 

When it comes to teach­ing, he explains that he is part of a 2^nd year stu­dio as well, where cur­ric­u­lar plan­ning does not deal direct­ly with build­ing details but more with struc­tur­al prin­ci­ples and over­all under­stand­ing of spa­tial con­se­quences. How­ev­er, he express­es that some of the same log­ics that he employs when build­ing details enter in the over­all teach­ing approach he guides. To him, mod­el mak­ing is at the core of archi­tec­tur­al ped­a­gogy, always under­stand­ing that all ele­ments in the mod­el have weight and struc­tur­al prin­ci­ples. Stu­dents don’t work with mass­ing mod­els but mod­els made out of struc­tur­al com­po­nents and dis­cus­sions about spans, weight, mate­r­i­al qual­i­ties. Through this method, dis­cus­sions about details and mate­r­i­al com­po­nents poten­tials imme­di­ate­ly emerge in pin­ups and tuto­ri­als. For Agustín the most pow­er­ful tool of ped­a­gogy is con­ver­sa­tion about and around projects. To con­verse, lit­er­al­ly means to him: ​‘to turn around with’, to make turns around the same sub­ject in order to elu­ci­date and dis­cov­er, as words, con­cepts and mod­els are seen from dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives. The prac­tice of turn­ing around, just like the ata­do con alambre expres­sion, has its own for­mal­ized sig­nif­i­cance in Span­ish: bus­car­le la vuelta, which means, to look for the right ​‘turn’ so some­thing can work, so some­thing can fit well. In the con­stant move­ment of search­ing for some­thing through con­ver­sa­tions around mod­els, stu­dents real­ize and dis­cov­er struc­tur­al and spa­tial qual­i­ties of dif­fer­ent archi­tec­tur­al com­po­nents. This prac­tice res­onates with the work of Argen­tinean archi­tect Rafael Igle­sia, who saw archi­tec­ture in con­stant poten­cy towards new arrange­ments and oppor­tu­ni­ties. Speak­ing about his work, Ana María Rig­ot­ti explains that Igle­sia under­stood archi­tec­ture com­po­nents as ​“objects that assert them­selves in their auton­o­my and mat­ter and refer to play­ful, child­ish expe­ri­ences, to the sim­ple log­ic of sup­port and bal­ance of wood­en blocks, puz­zles, chop­sticks, play­ing cards (…) always out of tune with the log­ic of codes and recon­sid­er­ing the ele­ments as inter­change­able pieces to assem­ble.”[27] The play­ful nature of Iglesia’s approach of archi­tec­ture is embod­ied in Agustín method­ol­o­gy towards teach­ing and prac­tic­ing architecture. 

Unconcludingly…

Humour, in the most sim­pli­fied def­i­n­i­tion means ​‘state of mind,’ expres­sion which also extends to one’s emo­tion­al state. Cul­tur­al­ly, we gen­er­al­ly relate good humour with joy and laugh­ter and bad humour with anger. In South Amer­i­ca, humour, both good and bad, is very much part of every­day life. Unsta­ble economies, socio-polit­i­cal tur­moil and the recent incre­ment of envi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ters make life dif­fi­cult.[29] Yet, good humour, despite all crises, acts as a cop­ing mech­a­nism to keep afloat, to find mean­ing in the most dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions, to fig­ure things out. More­over, humour becomes a thriv­ing force for cre­ative co-exist­ing with every­day life’s unex­pect­ed events. The knowl­edge pro­duc­tion that this approach to life gen­er­ates when it comes to mak­ing build­ings demon­strates an aspect of archi­tec­ture that is rarely dis­cussed: under which cir­cum­stances and mood, do archi­tects and non-archi­tects design and make build­ings? While glob­al crises do not just affect the Glob­al South, but as we see dai­ly, they per­me­ate in everyone’s every­day life, it seems rel­e­vant to look close­ly at prac­tices of cop­ing that act and sit­u­ate their actions in par­tic­u­lar con­texts and with a great degree of wit and joy. Smil­jan Radic, archi­tect prac­tic­ing in Chile quotes Hen­ri Berg­son in his book Habitaré mi nom­bre who speaks of ​‘good sense’ as being a non-pas­sive atti­tude of the spir­it. Good sense, Berg­son explains, requires an awak­en atti­tude, an adap­ta­tion that nev­er ceas­es to renew itself in face of always chang­ing sit­u­a­tions.[30] Bergson’s good sense def­i­n­i­tion could be relat­ed to his inter­est in the com­ic and laugh­ter. In 1900, he pub­lished in French three essays under the title: Laugh­ter: An Essay on the Mean­ing of the Com­ic. Berg­son was inter­est­ed in under­stand­ing the role of laugh­ter for human imag­i­na­tion and said that a com­ic spir­it ​“has a log­ic on its own, even in the wildest eccen­tric­i­ties.”[31] For the philoso­pher, the com­ic spir­it con­sti­tut­ed a social activ­i­ty in which adap­ta­tion and play­ful­ness can bring about new thoughts and rela­tion­ships. He expressed:

If new build­ing details, are emerg­ing and being devel­oped all around the world due to the many dif­fi­cul­ties and con­straints of our times, clos­er atten­tion to their res­o­lu­tion and sto­ries may help prac­tices and aca­d­e­mics to grasp, dis­ci­pli­nar­i­ly, cop­ing mech­a­nisms that care for the built envi­ron­ment grace­ful­ly and joy­ful­ly. In the very polar­ized world we inhab­it, seek­ing oth­er ways to dis­cuss and learn archi­tec­ture through prac­tices more than ide­olo­gies seems urgent. I believe humour can offer an expand­ed alter­na­tive to such effort.