The Sumak Kawsay Collective at San Luis, Ecuador | Masters Design Project on Regenerative Architecture

Site Context

San Luis is a city in Ecuador located between the Andean highlands and the pristine Amazonian rainforest. Due to its proximity to the equator, it experiences year-round intense sunlight and frequent downpours. The PHCCS is a Chinese state-company of an energy generation project that utilizes water from the Quijos and Salado rivers at the point where they converge to form the Coca River. 

As a result of its operation over time, the river’s sediment content changed, causing erosion of the riverbank, ruptures in oil pipes, and ultimately the disappearance of San Rafael Waterfall, the largest waterfall in Ecuador. The environment, health, way of life, and cultural customs of indigenous communities in the Amazon have all been adversely affected by oil spills in severe and varied ways.

Design Process

In order to create sustainable rural settlements that can jointly develop their own infrastructure to become self-sustaining and regenerative, the project aims to re-democratize the use of land in the rural realm. This will facilitate the development of a local identity and allow for the sharing of space and resources.

The Sumak Kawsay neighbourhood collective is intended to cultivate bamboo for local consumption, harvest and prepare it for construction, and promote the material’s use to improve local communities’ socio-economic benefits.

Final Outcome

The intervention aims to let the ecosystem regenerate itself, while the proposed layout seeks to eradicate all traces of the rigid hierarchy and restore social equality. By empowering them through a democratic building system, the collective regains power. The project poses the following question by combining traditional Chinese and Ecuadorian building practices with indigenous architectural techniques: How can we rebuild rural communities, restore local identity and replenish the exhausted natural landscape?

The proposal aims to stabilize the eroded soil and protect it from further landslides. A gabion wall is implemented to retain the soil as well as provide landscaping features. A controlled bamboo forest is planted for erosion control, windbreaks, environmental remediation and carbon dioxide sequestration. The project takes a bold decision to take over the land from the former San Luis workers camp operated by the Chinese state company.

The idea is to bring humans and nature together in a symbiotic relationship between the pristine forest and the scarred land. It is more crucial than ever to explore coexistence strategies and ways to restore the devastated landscapes due to the dangerous levels of continued exploitation of the rural environment.

Conclusion: The project emphasizes the need for sustainable practices, democratized land use, and the development of local identities. By fostering communal resource management and self-sufficiency, the project serves as a model to regenerate damaged landscapes and build resilient rural communities.

[This Academic Project has been published with text submitted by the student]