Atarraya Studio ORO Editions

Country: Ecuador Universities: Munich University of Applied Sciences, MUAS; Portland State University, PSU; University of Tokyo, UT; University La Salle Oaxaca, ULSO.

Professors: Lorena Burbano and Sebastián Oviedo in association with other faculty.

Operation: 2017–20

Studio timeline: Research, fundraising, design, and work plan, three months; Construction, five weeks.

Students: Forty students over four academic semesters.

Location of the projects: Ecuador and Mexico.

Non-academic organizations: Opción Más, Campo A.C., Municipality of Chamanga, communal, ejido, and municipal authorities of Santa Catarina Quiané. Donors and financial support: Students, communities, organizations, universities, municipalities.

Awards and honors: Chamanga Cultural Center, Shortlist Fibra Award 2018/19. Stuttgarter Leichbaupreis 2018. Panamerican Biennial of Quito 2018. Selected, National Prize, Social Habitat and Development Category. SEED Award 2018, Winner, excellence in Public Interest Design; Deutsches Architecture

Atarraya Studio is the name of the action and research studio of Ecuadorian architects and Professors Lorena Burbano and Sebastián Oviedo. It is intended to collaborate with social organizations, public bodies, and educational institutions, and is aimed at fostering participatory processes of habitat production, together with communities, collectives, and movements across Latin America. Between 2017 and 2018, they worked with the Chamanga-based organization Opción Más, Portland State University, the University of Tokyo, and the Munich University of Applied Sciences to develop, design, and build a cultural center with students in the community of San José de Chamanga, a fishing village seriously affected by the earthquake that Ecuador suffered in 2016. During 2018 and 2019, they taught at the Munich University of Applied Sciences—under the direction of Professor Ursula Hartig—to manage, design, and build with students a center for culture and ecology in association with the community of Santa Catarina Quiané, in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Each of these projects received an average of twenty students who worked as a team with faculty, advisers, and community leaders to manage resources, design the cultural centers, and build them in two phases.

Museum 2020. Quiané Center for Culture and Ecology, Panamerican Biennial of Quito 2020. Finalist, World Prize, Social Habitat and Development category. Special Mention, Fritz Höger Award 2020.

In the first year, American, Japanese, and German students traveled with professors to Ecuador, and in the second, German students and professors traveled to Mexico, where they joined local students. On both occasions they lived with the communities during the construction period, combining local techniques, available materials, and curricular knowledge. The new buildings have simple, welcoming, and permeable geometries and spatialities.

The name atarraya (meaning “cast net”) refers to fishing culture, and is a metaphor for the fabric of relationships that constitutes social and spatial interventions. In its courses and projects, Atarraya Studio addresses all project activities including management, design, and construction. It works with organizations whose political approach is based on the contributions of different types of knowledge and actions, trying to demystify academic knowledge as the only truth.