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For Tom Gimbert, architecture is creativity and movement.
Constant adaptation.
The same uses cane, bamboo and donkey excrement to build a hotel in a small resort in northern Peru, as stone, mud and reeds to build a shelter on the shores of Lake Titicaca.
"I think it's more challenging and fun to build from the materials I find in the area, than to do it the other way around, like the vast majority," says Gimbert, a French architect who for more than a decade has been promoting a small and paradisiacal beach district in Peru, a construction approach that takes advantage of local materials and ancestral construction techniques to create sustainable houses, hotels and schools that are in harmony with their surroundings.
Gimbert is an admirer of the Colombian architect Simón Vélez and his “vegetarian architecture”, an approach that considers that there is currently an overdose of minerals (concrete, steel, glass and plastics) in the construction industry, especially in developing countries. development, and that it is necessary to involve agriculture with the construction industry.
"The idea is to promote a more balanced approach to construction, mixing mixed materials and structures for construction and design, together with the incorporation of more natural materials," explains Gimbert from the sustainable hotel that he has built on the shores of the Ocean. Peaceful.
A house designed by architect Tom Gimbert.Nicolas Villaume
For Gimbert, however, his philosophy goes beyond creating eco-friendly architectural projects, with a very low carbon footprint and a natural aesthetic typical of the area.
His purpose, as he himself defines it, is to promote massive replication of this construction approach in Peru, generating new local economic dynamics and harmonious spaces and infrastructures, which encourage pride and appropriation of citizens with their territory and their past.
“I think that a country like Peru, the conditions are right to generate a trend that promotes this type of structure at all levels and in all types of infrastructure.
Not only do they have all the local resources for construction such as iron, concrete, mud, earth, stone and wood, but they also have a very good workforce and, at the same time, little machinery and construction industry.
This means that they have absolutely everything to be a productive and self-sustaining country in terms of construction materials”, says the French architect.
To understand how revolutionary Gimbert's proposal is, it is necessary to take an X-ray of the current construction in Peru.
According to the
Mapping and Typology of Urban Expansion in Peru
report, carried out by the Grade expert group, in the last two decades, Peruvian cities have expanded by close to 50%.
Of this growth, 90% of new homes are informal.
However, far from presenting different approaches to construction, this overflowing urban expansion has had its main protagonist in concrete.
According to the Peruvian Chamber of Construction, in 2019 Peru consumed an average of 350 kg of cement per inhabitant, ranking third in the region in
per capita
consumption of this material, well above the 258 kg average for South America.
The exterior of a school in which a structure was built with bamboo.Courtesy
Faced with this reality, Gimbert proposes to implement public policies for sustainable construction.
“In the end, unlike other projects, a sustainable construction should adapt to the natural materials available in the area and its standard measurements, and not the other way around.
Only when we know what materials are we going to use, and the measures that are easiest to obtain, do we begin to draw and design the project.
Clearly it is an extra effort of inventiveness and creativity, but on the other hand it is a much more stimulating job, which allows you to create unique projects, with local personality and much cheaper than using concrete, iron and industrial bricks”, comments Gimbert, who believes that this type of architectural approach will end up being imposed in the region, just as it is happening in Europe.
Gimbert is right.
Four months ago, in France, his native country, the new Sustainability Law was approved, which obliges builders to use 50% sustainable materials in new public buildings, such as wood, straw or hemp, which represents a first step towards the goal of the French government to become a country "0% carbon emissions" in 2050. Along these lines, both France, Switzerland and Canada have approved laws that require new buildings to be partially covered by solar panels or green roofs.
Against cement bunkers
Although Gimbert's proposal is still innovative in a country like Peru, there are organizations that have been promoting sustainable architecture in projects with a public focus, such as schools, for years.
The architect Marta Maccaglia is the director of the Asociación Semillas de Desarrollo Sostenible, which develops infrastructures and materials according to the local idiosyncrasy and territory.
Maccaglia has a particular idea regarding what is architecture and sustainable construction.
“It is very common to associate sustainability only with zero carbon emissions, certifications and other factors that are results of the capitalist machine that responds to sustainability within the concept of the city.
My idea of sustainable construction has more to do with designing structures that are in accordance with the place, the ethics and spirit of each society and each community, and this must be a response to the available resources.
Wood, earth, stone and even cement when necessary and in accordance with the local economic and social reality of each place”, reveals Maccaglia, who believes that it is necessary to reflect on the diversity of contexts and territories that exist in Peru.
The Chuquibambilla school, designed by Marta Maccaglia in conjunction with Paulo Afonso, Ignacio Bosch and Borja Bosch.Paulo Afonso
“Peru is a mainly rural territory, it has other base logics, of urban congregation.
We need to change the construction approach that starts from the city.
Today, the aim is to provide replicable, modular, almost copy-paste responses to resolve impacts at the level of numbers and always short-sighted.
I believe that it is a mistaken idea, and that what is needed is to promote an intervention model that considers a different architectural response, according to the conditions of each territory", comments the architect, who does not explain the current construction policy of social housing undertaken by the Peruvian State.
“They are building 30 square meter houses in communities where families usually have four or five children.
Somehow, with this model of massive and modular construction, we are saying to thousands of communities: 'The way you live is wrong.
You should live like this: locked up, in a windowless cement bunker with curtains,” Maccaglia says helplessly.
View of the Pamplona Alta neighborhood, on the outskirts of Lima (Peru), on January 18, 2023. PILAR OLIVARES (REUTERS)
Unlike what is happening in Peru, for Maccaglia the rest of the countries in the region seem to be beginning to embrace new construction ideas, more linked to organic and sustainable aspects.
“I find what is happening in Ecuador very interesting, where there is a generation of young architects who are working with a focus on sustainability, in the sense of using sustainable and natural materials.
In addition, the concept of architecture 'of doing a lot with little' is being promoted.
But not understood as 'I do a lot and spend little', but as respect for resources and to build only what is necessary and coherent”, explains the architect, who also highlights the culture of artisanal brick production, which is already a tradition in the country, and Chile's efforts to promote the use of wood in infrastructure through various regulatory reforms.
The Jerusalem School of Miñaro, designed by Martha Maccaglia.
PERU, JANUARY 2023. - Photographs provided for the América Futura report on vegan architecture by architects Martha Maccaglia and Tom Gimbert. ELEAZAR PICTURES
“In Peru, on the other hand, it is very contradictory that there is no regulatory or local development support.
Although there are regulations on the use of bamboo or land, they do not support the idea of building public buildings with this approach.
I have seen schools in the jungle that use grass that arrives from Lima in a truck, which is a metaphor for what should not be done”, comments Maccaglia, who reveals that although there are various architectural projects developed with sustainable approaches, at the time of the execution, and following this model of replicability of
packs
in which the same company makes 100 schools, the projects are distorted and end up appealing to the same techniques and materials as always.