Paths, Sounds, Ruins: Imagining Architecture in Candelaria

Jorge Silvetti / Erika Naginski

Paths, Sounds, Ruins: Imagining Architecture in Candelaria

Spring 2014/15/16

Studio Report

Jorge Silvetti / Erika Naginski

Paths, Sounds, Ruins: Imagining Architecture in Candelaria

Paths, Sounds, Ruins: Imagining Architecture in Candelaria

Studio Instructor Jorge Silvetti

This publication showcases designs and writings inspired by a vast aquatic territory in Argentina, where the extant ruins of a group of Jesuit missions in the middle of the subtropical jungle make tangible the colonial encounter with the GuaranĂ­ people and their language, culture, and territory.

Taught in conjunction with a seminar on the concept of the ruin, the last and conclusive studio highlighted three themes as drivers for an imaginative architecture: paths, or the threading together of points in space conjuring up mnemonic itineraries and journeys; sounds, alluding to the intangible elements (music, song, poetry, and myth) that are integral to culture; and, finally, ruins themselves as generators of architectural form.

2014 Seminar Instructor Graciela Silvestri 2016 Seminar Instructor Erika Naginski Students 2014 Justine Ala, Timothy Carey, Rufoan Chen, Duncan Corrigall, Natsuma Imai, Ruo Jia, Andreas Nikolovgenis, Joshua Schecter, Sophie Shin, Ashley Takacs, Juan Pablo Ugarte (TA), Jessica Wilcox 2015 Joshua Feldman, Paul Fiegenschue, Arianna Galan Montas, Mazyar Kahali, Christian Lavista (TA), Patrick Mayfield, Thien Nguyen, Carolina Yamate, Jeronimo Van Schendel Erice, Haoxiang Yang, Yufeng Zheng 2016 Nathalia Camacho, Collin Cobia, Elena Hasbun, Olivia Heung, Hana Makhamreh, Niki Murata, James Murray, Jing Ng, Konstantina Perlepe, See Hong Quek, Juan Sala (TA), Xuezhu Tian

Territorio Guaraní Jorge Silvetti

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Paths, Sounds, Ruins

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Studio I: Spring 2014 In the Land of Ñandutí: Following the Lines, Threads, and Figures of the River

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Selected Projects: Juan Pablo Ugarte, Jessica Wilcox, Natsuma Imai, Ruo Jia

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Studio II: Spring 2015 In the Land of Chamamé: To the Beats of Intangible Rhythms of the Voice of Guaraní

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Selected Projects: Christian Lavista, Jeronimo Van Schendel Erice, Joshua Feldman

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Studio III: Spring 2016 The Architecture of Living Cultures in Candelaria

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Selected Projects: Konstantina Perlepes, Olivia Heung, Juan Sala, See Hong Quek, Collin Cobia, James Murray, Hana Makhamreh

The Ruin Aesthetic: Episodes in the History of an Architectural Idea Erika Naginski

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“Columns gnawed by the light...”

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Bibliographies

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Excerpts from the Jury

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Appendixes

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Contributors

Territorio GuaranĂ­

Jorge Silvetti

This studio report is more than an account of the work done in an option studio and a history/ theory seminar held in concert at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD).

The report is also the story of a pedagogical experience like no other: one that follows the intellectual journey undertaken by many protagonists, some continuously, others periodically, few occasionally, yet all of them guided by this writer and architect over the course of three years. Whatever role each protagonist played along the way, the journey led us all—students, scholars, and designers—into the depths of the cultural and natural strata of Territorio Guaraní, a remote aquatic territory and vast sub-Amazonian area covering contiguous regions in Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay across the fluvial systems of the Paraná and Uruguay rivers (fig. 1). As with most adventures, new paths of inquiry were forged and unexpected discoveries were made.

More startlingly, the still-untapped richness of Territorio Guaraní soon branched out into thick, exuberant lattices of meandering lines, not unlike those etched in regional geographies by the trajectories of seemingly infinite water courses pouring into tributaries and flowing into major rivers, marshes, lakes, and estuaries. Unexpected

choices presented themselves at every juncture; bifurcations made periodic changes of course the norm rather than the exception.

Our journey began in Spring 2014 with the option studio “In the Land of Ñandutí: Following the Lines, Threads, and Figures of the River”—its title already as much a description of the studio’s constitutive elements as a graphic image of the field of work. Embarking on this studio, I was fulfilling a longstanding and deeply personal desire to focus on themes related to the immense patrimonial wealth offered by the regional ensemble of the extant ruins of the Guaraní Jesuit missions (1609– 1767) (inside cover, figs. 7, 8, 12–15, 17–18). I first developed an interest in these ruins during my school days in Argentina in the 1960s, but I never quite succeeded in consolidating an organized and sustained research effort. What crystallized this interest into action was a cumulative, albeit circumstantial, convergence of events that led to the establishment of an intellectual context in which such research could flourish, hence convincing me of the possibility of success.

In 2013, the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) at Harvard University announced that Graciela Silvestri

Previous spread: La Cuenca del Plata (The River Plate Basin System).

Opposite: View of the Paraná River.

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Paths, Sounds, Ruins

and waterfalls, and the different urban centers currently in a rapid process of transformation due to major infrastructural work that is changing their landscapes and their residents’ lives.

Within this remarkable institutional framework, I would like to specifically acknowledge two individuals whose dedication and enthusiasm for our project made the difference in elevating a successful academic activity into a memorable intellectual and human experience. I am grateful for the sustained, unflagging support and efforts of Carlos Fulco, architect, assistant manager of EBY, and lecturer in regional landscape and planning issues at the local university, not only for his valuable contributions to our understanding of what currently is at stake in this part of the world, but also for his capacity to organize, manage, and deliver the services, complicated itineraries, and multiple diverse activities in Paraguay and Argentina, which assured the effectiveness and quality of our time in Territorio Guaraní. Special thanks to Professor Esteban Snihur, a native son of the area and local historian, whose detailed and profound understanding and knowledge of the multilayered structure of the territory of our studies allowed us to go beyond books and maps and “sense” the intertwined human and natural histories that weave the dense and rich fabric of Territorio Guaraní.

Paths, Sounds, Ruins

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was selected as the Robert F. Kennedy Visiting Professor, and would be in residence in Spring 2014 at the GSD in the Department of Urban Planning and Design. An architect and historian on the faculty of the Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP) in Argentina, Silvestri’s scholarship focuses on the history of Latin American landscapes. At the GSD, she continued her current research on aquatic landscapes and conducted a seminar on related topics by concentrating on the three distinctive largescale landscape typologies of South America.1 One of these was the sub-Amazonian region of the Guaraní and the defining role that the Jesuit missions played in the physical, productive, and ultimately cultural makeup of this vast territory.

In parallel, I was working on obtaining a possible sponsorship for still-undefined work to be produced at the GSD from the Entidad Binacional Yacyretá (EBY), an international agency that operates the largest hydroelectric dam on the Paraná River between Argentina and Paraguay.

Our work would be part of a very ambitious program of cultural activities that implemented EBY’s remediation policies following the social and environmental impact produced by the construction and operation of the dam.

The conjunction of these favorable academic conditions at the GSD, the potential support the Harvard DRCLAS would provide, and the interests of EBY pointed to the sponsored studio format as the best way to test the partnership.

Eventually, as the results of the studio surpassed expectation, this program multiplied into many other cultural and academic activities: two more sponsored studios at the GSD,2 one international workshop at the GSD in 2014,3 a major international conference that took place in Posadas, Argentina, in May 2015,4 and a special issue of the Harvard DRCLAS magazine, ReVista.5 What follows are the accounts and assessments of the remarkable academic experiment at the GSD by both principal faculty protagonists, Erika Naginski and myself.

I must specifically acknowledge the participation of Harvard DRCLAS, which partially funded the students’ international air travel during the first two studios with their CourseBased Field Trips grants, and provided support for the first Territorio Guaraní workshop. In Argentina, the studios would not have been possible without the in situ assistance of EBY. They provided accommodation in Asuncion in Paraguay, and Posadas, Esteros de Iberá, and Iguazú in Argentina, as well as water and land transportation to the confines of the subtropical jungle, their spectacular marshes, wetlands,

The seminar taught by Graciela Silvestri, the 2014 Robert F. Kennedy Visiting Professor, was offered by the Department of Urban Planning and Design in Spring 2014. See Appendix 1 for the course description.

2 In the sections that follow, I expand on the content, pedagogy, and results of the three studios.

3 The workshop, entitled “Territorio Guaraní: Culture, Infrastructure, and Natural Resources in the longue durée,” took place at the GSD from April 10 to 12, 2014. It was a nonpublic working gathering of scholars and professionals who discussed the possibilities of a broad, interdisciplinary research program centered on topics and areas concerned with Territorio Guaraní.

See Appendix 2 for a list of participants.

4 The second workshop, “Territorio Guaraní,” was a public international gathering of scholars, designers, and professionals, which took place over three days in Posadas, in the Misiones province of Argentina, at the heart of Territorio Guaraní, from June 3 to 5, 2015. It was sponsored by the Entidad Binacional Yacyretá (EBY), the Universidad Nacional de Misiones, the Government of the Province of Misiones, Universidad Nacional del Nordeste (UNNE), Universidad Nacional de Itapúa (UNI), Universidad

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Nacional de Asunción, Paraguay (UNA), Universidad Católica de Santa Fe (UCSF), and Universidad Gastón Dáchary (UGD).

See Appendix 3 for program content and participants.

“Territory Guaraní,” ed. June Carolyne Erlick with coeditors Graciela Silvestri and Jorge Silvetti, special issue, ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America (Spring 2015).

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Jorge Silvetti

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In the Land of Ñandutí: Following the Lines, Threads, and Figures of the River

“In the Land of Ñandutí: Following the Lines, Threads, and Figures of the River” was conceived as an ambitious design investigation of a strictly architectural nature. I was intent on reasserting the potential power that a single localized point intervention could have in the transformation of an extensive spatial and cultural domain. In simple terms, the assignment could be understood as the proposal to build a harbor on the Paraná River, thereby inserting the missing link in the historical trail that once connected the 30 missions; today, this trail is severed by two international boundaries and spread over three different countries (fig. 3).6 By reasserting connection in architectural terms, we sought to reestablish a continuity promoting the creation of cultural and ecological circuits along what is an extraordinary ensemble of urban nodes embedded in the subtropical South American jungle.

More profoundly, though, the aim of the studio was to immerse students in the experience of the thickness of culture, its multilayered composition as well as the different time lines Fig. 2: A fragment sample of ñandutí.

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Jorge Silvetti Studio I: Spring 2014

Fig. 3: Map of the 30 Jesuit missions.

experiences. So much is made today of the power of 3-D digital modeling as the definitive design tool. As a result, what has almost disappeared is the power and importance of the line in both our real experiences and in the speculative abstraction necessary for the conceptualization of the world. The loss of the line from modern consciousness is made vivid by the work of Tim Ingold and others, whose anthropological studies, experiments, and writings have emphasized its importance in human cognition and experience more generally.7

To give a proper title to the studio, I chose the term ñandutí, a Guaraní vocable referring to a traditional craft that developed in the region after the arrival of the Spaniards in the 16th century. Ñandutí, a lace and embroidery technique, is the national craft of Paraguay; like the Guaraní language itself, it is strongly associated with national identity. The technique begins with a single cotton thread—a line—that is skillfully manipulated by female hands to weave complex figures inscribed in perfect circles.

Each singular rendition of these so-called soles represents a natural, man-made, or imagined component of the complex cultural universe of the Guaraní: flowers, fruits, insects, animals, utensils, buildings, and mythical beings all find a perfectly geometrical corresponding sol, a representation that, in turn, constitutes a unit of the

In the Land of Ñandutí

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in which those layers develop and operate.

Geology, religion, history, language, agriculture, rituals, arts and crafts, and social formations, as well as economy and politics, are all part of the tapestry the studio sought to incorporate, articulate, and transmit. These elements not only converged in the project, but also emerged as the protagonists whose real interaction impacts the lives of the Guaraní people and the destiny of the places they occupy—a daunting task for a 13-week studio! An extensive bibliography, special lectures, and the requisite activities-packed field trip to relevant sites, events, landscapes, and buildings in Paraguay and Argentina informed the methodology that activated the design process.

Central in all this was the proposition to engage the use of the line in the process of design thinking and making—that is, the line as graphic mark, as description of an itinerary, as delineator of forms, as thread that interweaves with other lines to form fabrics and textures, as index of movement, and as image of the inexorable passage of time. The line became the explicit technical, pedagogical, visual, and graphic element that served as privileged design tool for students, as well as aid to spatial conceptualization and key for the interpretation of human

Fig. 4: The “alphabet” of ñandutí.

impassable peripheral frontier. To be sure, what stood at the heart of the studio’s inquiry was the implementation of regional policies contributing to the preservation of the Jesuit missions, and therefore part of our charge was to locate and design a harbor in order to connect two of the most remarkable of these missions.8

Yet with regard to the site from which to operate, there was intentionally no physical adjacency or visual connection to the missions in the area where the students worked. It helped that the missions were always, and for pragmatic reasons, located in relation to water courses, yet a few miles away from them (on higher ground).

As a result, alternative locations for the harbor were necessarily removed from the site of the ruins and contextual relationships could unfold only at a conceptual level.9 The monuments were thus present in the minds of students only as outcomes of their individual research, their observations in situ, and their conversations with others. In short, they were present in our architectural imagination, which was precisely where I wanted them to be.

The theme of the harbor brought the theme of water to the fore, which is the natural element that defines the environmental condition in which the local culture had flourished over millennia. Water had served, and continues to serve, as the efficient medium absorbing, combining, and diluting all foreign influences. Yet by the same token, water is always a problematic medium for architecture; it is that which is not firm and has no form, that which moves and has different rules of static equilibrium. In order to highlight this condition, the harbor, which was materially situated at the edge of land, was also to function as a cultural harbor that included two distinct elements: first, a small museum of natural history (an amenity for visitors displaying local zoological and botanical species); and second, the mooring site of the floating Magic Barge, the anchor of an itinerant vessel containing a library that would sail along the Paraná River, stop at different locations for periods of time, and provide vital educational and recreational resources to an impoverished region.

This was the subject of our first short design exercise.

In parallel to the studio, Silvestri’s seminar on aquatic landscapes and the public lecture she gave at the Harvard DRCLAS became de facto perfect complements to the studio. Moreover, even if I did not initially promote the idea that all my studio students should enroll in her seminar, some alert minds did, and as time passed, more studio participants sat in as auditors. The mutual

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Jorge Silvetti

alluring alphabet of ñandutí (figs. 2 and 4). As the palpable and visible product of the cultural hybridization of Spanish and Guaraní craftwork, a single physical line—a cotton thread—emerges as the potent formal and constitutive element playing a foundational role in the narrative of a culture and a territory: an autonomous cursive writing without any other material support. Ñandutí became the metaphorical synthesis, the imperative figure, inspiring the students; it condensed in a single word and in a potentially infinite number of formal configurations what the studio was about. Inevitable, this was the referential term of choice for our discourse.

I mentioned earlier that the main functional ingredient of this particular studio was its specific programmatic requirement: a small harbor on the Paraná River devoted to the operation of passenger ferries crossing the international border between Argentina and Paraguay. The harbor thereby serves as a point of connection between the two countries and breaches the artificial political frontier that, since the 19th century, had dramatically reversed the significance of the river from having been the center of gravity for social and economic life to become an

Spring 2014 studio site visit to Jesuit mission ruins in San Ignacio.

weight to, and validated as the defining concept of what would become an ambitiously multidisciplinary research project.12 Important for its methodological consequences, the term became a much richer theoretical concept than its narrower geographical meaning might suggest. Its pertinence to our research was tied to the fact that “territory” is arguably more comprehensive than “culture,” as it includes the natural environment as an autonomous, interactive component rather than simply part of an ideological cultural construct. As a representation, “territory” is ultimately a more accurate and engaging term for the many design interests, disciplines, and scales represented at the GSD. By the end of that academic year, it was clear that we had traveled along only one segment of what began to emerge as a major expedition into unexplored geographies and regions of knowledge.13

In the Land of Ñandutí

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pull between the two courses became an irresistible draw.10 The studio pedagogy was further strengthened by Salmaan Craig’s direct participation in the studio and field work in Argentina and Paraguay. Craig, lecturer in environmental technology and research associate at the Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities at the GSD, was visiting faculty at the school during the semester. An expert on materials science, energy, and building physics, Craig brought to the studio and to the field a fresh and invaluable perspective to help us look, interpret, and design for the particular environmental conditions and resources of Territorio Guaraní.

Thus the studio and the design thinking it spawned, together with Silvestri’s seminar and the first international workshop on the topic, entitled “Territorio Guaraní: Culture, Infrastructure, and Natural Resources in the longue durée,” stood as confirmation of the region’s richness.11 This pedagogical context gave us a good grasp on what was unique here: an aquatic personality, a multilayered cultural nature, and the identification of “moments” corresponding to diverse historical periods (both human and natural). Out of all this emerged the notion of territory, which we elaborated, gave

semester, we realized that we were both dealing with topics, themes, hypotheses, and areas of knowledge that exceeded our particular projects, and could warrant a more structured and well-planned strategy of expansion. Thus, with the support of the Harvard DRCLAS, we organized the first workshop on Territorio Guaraní, which took place at the GSD from April 10 to 12, 2014, and included a small group of international participants who discussed ways to expand the disciplinary and institutional scope of a theme. See Appendix 2 in this publication.

12 See note 5.

13 For a more developed argument on the pertinence of the concept of “territory” to our studies, see: “Guaraní Territory,” by Jorge Silvetti and Graciela Silvestri, and “Territories and Territories,” by Carlos Reboratti, both in ReVista (Spring 2015).

For a discussion and interpretation of the Jesuit Guaraní missions from this conceptual perspective of “territory,” see: “Vestiges of Cities without Evil: The Case of the Territorio Guaraní,” by Graciela Silvestri and Jorge Silvetti, in Manifest 2: Kingdoms of God (Fall 2015).

Fig. 5 (above): The selected harbor sites in the vicinity of Mission San Ignacio Miní.

Following spread: Spring 2014 studio on an excursion in the Iberá Wetlands, Argentina.

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Jorge Silvetti

6 What was once a continuous string of integrated functioning missions is now a set of isolated ruins. They are either in the middle of the jungle, under current urban developments, or underwater. 15 of these missions are in Argentina, eight in Brazil, and seven in Paraguay. They are separated by the Uruguay River between Argentina and Paraguay, and by the Paraná River between Argentina and Paraguay.

7 Tim Ingold, Lines: A Brief History (New York: Routledge, 2007).

8 These are the ruins of Mission San Ignacio Miní in Argentina and Mission Jesús de Tavarangue in Paraguay.

9 Part of the students’ assignment during the field trip was to identify, select, and survey four different locations in the geologically diverse Paraná River coastline associated with Mission San Ignacio Miní. See figure 5.

10 I also counted on Silvestri’s generous participation in the studio activities, among them special lectures and participation in some of the students’ reviews.

11 From this originally unplanned but effectively steady collaboration throughout the

Juan Pablo Ugarte

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Selected Projects: Studio I

ITED ISO

Exploded axonometric of barge detailing a system of flotation, partitions, and louvered enclosure.

23 Perspectives of the barge within its context along the river.

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Selected Projects: Studio I

Jessica Wilcox

1/8� = 1’ Tangible Intangible Jessie Wilcox

Plan of the harbor showing access to the river via decks guided by parallel walls.

25 Elevations addressing the slope of the site and the thatching construction of the guiding walls.

Selected Projects: Studio I

26 Detail axonometrics explaining the process of wall construction.

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Jessica Wilcox Site axonometric expressing the circulation through the walls and along the platforms and terraces of the harbor.

Natsuma Imai

FLOOR PLAN

FLOOR PLAN

A

A

B

B

C

C

D

SCALE: 1:200

D

SOUTH ELEVATION

WEST ELEVATION

SCALE 1:200

SCALE 1:200

Top: Plan of harbor which extends its terraces into the landscape and draws the ferry to the interior.

Bottom: Elevation along the axis perpendicular to the water shows the terraces and the angled roof pitches.

Selected Projects: Studio I

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E

SCALE: 1:200

29 EXPLODED AXONOMETRIC

Exploded axonometric illustrates the assembly system for the concrete walls, columns, beams, and folding roof panels.

SECTION B

SCALE: 1/16” = 1’

Selected Projects: Studio I

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Ruo Jia

Plan of a harbor utilizing a pinwheel organization for a museum centered around a theater.

31 Top: Section cutting through the riverview deck.

Bottom: Section revealing the theater centered by the library and museum.

Selected Projects: Studio I

32 Axonometric views of structural framing and paneling construction systems.

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Ruo Jia Top: Walls of the harbor continue out into the site to frame the landscape for extended public use.

Bottom: Elevated from the ground, a lookout for museum-goers to watch the sunset and await the next ferry.

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In the Land of Chamamé: To the Beats of Intangible Rhythms of the Voice of Guaraní

I soon began to prepare the next installment in order to advance our immersion into what became the name that best described the scope of our research and design work: Territorio Guaraní.

Within this extraordinary conglomerate of components, one particular attribute of cultural phenomena stood out as particularly poignant and challenging for architects who are so accustomed to think in terms of society’s material products and physical settings. What we encountered was in fact the opposite: the vast array of culture’s intangible products that surround, inhabit, merge, and coexist with those artifacts produced by men. This question of intangibility not only inserted itself seamlessly within current debate in cultural studies, but it was also particularly relevant to architecture’s lively polemics redefining the institutional mission of the cultural museum. I decided that a museum of the Territorio Guaraní could be the ideal theme for a second studio, one that would engage all the intellectual and material tension inherent in the original proposition and produce a material setting for the display of the Fig. 6 (previous spread): Spring 2015 studio group arriving at the site in Candelaria.

Opposite: The musical instruments of Chamamé.

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Jorge Silvetti Studio II: Spring 2015

Fig. 7: The Candelaria Mission, from José Manuel Peramás, La Republic de Platon y los Guaraníes (Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores, 1946).

along with the vestiges of its foundations would serve as a symbolic anchor or intellectual support for the museum rather than as real foundations for a structure. It was a “clean site” (or so I assumed on my first preparatory visit) on which to erect a significant building that would stand on the intangible memories of a historically significant occupation. After all, Mission Candelaria had been the most important of the 30 missions, for it had served as the administrative capital of these true heterotopias, to use Michel Foucault’s term.15 As the largest and richest of the missions, it was located at the center of the group, which made it a choice target during the 19th-century wars of independence and, eventually, the victim of total destruction in those wars. However, the assumption that this was a clean site—principally due to its inaccessibility at the time of my initial exploratory visit (during which I could assess its qualities only from a distance behind a fence)—was inaccurate. This misapprehension proved not only productive, but, in the end, inspiring, as it added an unexpected twist to the studio and catapulted our investigation into yet another direction.

The site was chosen and the programmatic charge was established as the Museo del Territorio Guaraní. I decided to continue using a Guaraní vocable that referred to a local cultural

In the Land of Chamamé

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immaterial. This was something for which I was well prepared, as I had been directly involved in this type of project in previous years.14

To be coherent with the theme, I felt the site would probably be more difficult to select than in the previous studio, as it needed to be more precise in its attributes. I decided to look for it myself. What I needed was a historically relevant site that possessed the authority of a heritage location but could safeguard us from the inescapable visual weight of the imposing stone ruins of the missions—a burden and temptation that I wanted, for methodological reasons, to avoid in the studio. I found the site a few kilometers away from our previous location in San Ignacio: the area of the now-disappeared Mission Candelaria.

This was an ideal place because of its inherent ambiguity; we would be operating in a culturally charged site in which the physical presence of the buildings that had made it so was mostly erased (fig. 7).

The precise location was easily identified as a large plot immediately adjacent to the edge of the urban fabric on what would have been the northwest angle of the vanished mission—meaning that the “memory” of Mission Candelaria

trees, brush vegetation and wild grasses, climbers, fallen debris, and mounds of soil envelop and hide from view the significant stone structures of the original mission—specifically, the remnants of the outer cloister of a religious complex that somehow survived destruction more than a century earlier (fig. 12). Quick close-up checks on Google Earth on the very evening of our discovery revealed the vestiges of column foundations and additional walls outlining the unmistakable layout of the complete two outer sides of the mission’s second courtyard adjacent to the main church where workshop and storage were generally located. Their identification was made easier because the typical plan of the compound and the disposition of its elements, which we knew well, was strictly adhered to by all the Jesuit missions. All kinds of new information surfaced as we made further inquiries, which confirmed that no archaeological survey of the ruins existed. Yet some of the residents in Candelaria and older people in the region knew of their existence and even owned photographs (taken at a time when the ruins were still visible) as well as other, more tangible mementos (that they probably should not have had in their 39

Jorge Silvetti

practice and could serve as emblem for our second design excursion: Chamamé, the name of the most popular local musical genre. This form of song and dance amalgamated sometime at the turn of the 20th century as a hybridization of various international cultural musical traditions and linguistic motifs that had converged in the region. Drawing on the rhythmical sources of central European polka and waltz, integrated into Guaraní melodic structures, played on the accordion, the violin, and the Spanish guitar, using lyrics freely combining the two official local languages (Guaraní and Spanish), Chamamé is a dance with coordinated, marked steps performed by couples.16 This was the ideal “intangible” and an integrative illustration for our studio, entitled “In the Land of Chamamé: To the Beats of Intangible Rhythms of the Voice of Guaraní.”

In what proved to be a consequential move, this culturally oriented studio introduced the most important defining cultural element of all: language. A living pre-Columbian language, Guaraní is widespread in South America as the mother tongue of approximately eight million people; it is now the official language of the Republic of Paraguay as well as the two Argentinian provinces of Misiones and Corrientes.

Notably, it is the only pre-Columbian language spoken by the general population of the region rather than exclusively by an ethnic group (as is more typical of the Andean and Mesoamerican regions, where ancestral languages persist only in the speech of their descendants). As the indisputable yet immaterial element of culture, language would not abandon us and would instead later reappear in the third and last studio, reinforcing our commitment to emphasize architecture as a cultural practice and fuel speculation about the relationships between tangible and intangible components.

Once the semester began, we were ready for a well-organized field trip (most logistical difficulties and unknowns were sorted out in the previous year after we developed the perfect itinerary and programs). Yet what was unplanned—what changed our studio experience completely—was the appearance of an uninvited and decisive protagonist: the actual ruins of Mission Candelaria. Indeed, these were akin to a veritable apparition. On our first visit (for which we had obtained the necessary permits as the site is normally closed to the public), in situ inspection revealed that what had seemed from a distance to be an impenetrable grove of trees in the middle of a neat grassy field turned out to be a dense, messy mix of nature and culture. Scrub,

Fig. 8: The sketch survey by Esteban Snihur.

bling was the way in which the newly revealed conditions of the site were placing center stage that most tangible and immovable of material realities—that is, those stone walls—into a project that was intended to focus on the intangible.

Either way, and no matter what difficulties those extant masonry vestiges posed, their sheer presence and ineffable aura asserted their status as both the main protagonists in the story that the projects wanted to narrate and the principal interlocutors with which the new architecture of the Museo del Territorio Guaraní would have to engage; in short, they became the requisite referents that would condition design interventions on the site. Ruins would once again assert their claim on visibility and intervene in any new project where architecture established contact with them—just as ruins have been doing in the western architectural tradition ever since the Italian Renaissance.

Every single project in the studio felt the pressure of the ruins, and student work responded in earnest and with ardent imagination. What resulted was thus more an investigation of how to address the ruins as part of the Museo del Territorio Guaraní than a proposal for a cultural museum of the intangible. Such an objective would have to wait for a future studio. While the original intention of the second studio was not ultimately pursued, the impact of the ruins in Candelaria launched associated research, visual experimentation, and creative design processes that resulted in a set of highly accomplished proposals. Equally important, the studio revived the pedagogical potential that buildings’ remains might have in the process of architectural creativity.

Fig. 9: Sketch survey drawing by Joshua Feldman.

Fig. 10: Site sketch by Paul Fiegenschue.

In the Land of Chamamé

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possession!); the ruins had simply been forgotten by locals and ignored by scholars.17 The closest thing to a survey we could obtain was a rough yet invaluable hand-drawn plan of the northwest corner of the mission made by Esteban Snihur, a devoted local scholar whose reconstruction was based on his own visual inspection of the site as well as the community’s oral knowledge (fig. 8).

Snihur’s plan includes the location of the church (under present-day residential constructions) and the second courtyard, and some of the eastern residential quarters.

We were ready for a new and unexpected chapter of our journey. Without either much discussion or the proper instruments, yet with much determination, the studio participants set themselves to the task of producing a proper survey. There were three or so stimulating days of arduous measuring, photographing, and sketching under extreme subtropical summer conditions (figs. 9–12). The onsite work of our improvised yet highly efficient team was followed by intense evening discussions and collective speculation at our lodgings in Posadas. The studio thus produced a first set of drawings of reliable information, which brought these significant ruins back to life. It was inevitable that they would become major characters in our design work.

Back in Cambridge, the intended direction of the studio swerved inexorably into uncharted territory. Unforeseen in the original brief, the ruins began to either assume a dominant role in the conception and design of the museum or force some to move their projects as far away from the ruins as possible in order to minimize their impact (all the while remaining within the boundaries of the site). Perhaps most trou-

Fig. 11 (above): Survey of the extant ruins in Candelaria made by students of the Spring 2015 studio.

the immediate vicinity in Candelaria lie the ruins of three other missions (Santa Ana, Loreto, and San Ignacio Miní), all of imposing scale and detail, where it is possible to sense the large scale of the whole complex, the richness of its program, and their exquisite ornamentation and architectural detail (figs. 15 and 17) together with adequate accessibility, visitors services, and guided support—all attributes and amenities missing in the few inaccessible extant walls remaining in Candelaria, which by comparison appear meager and secondary, and to this day remain unexplored with no veritable survey.

Fig. 12 (following spread): Spring 2015 studio participants’ site visit to the “rediscovery” of the ruins in Candelaria.

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14 As partner of Machado and Silvetti Associates, I was in charge of programming and designing the project of the Museo del Territorio Guaraní for the government of the Misiones province, to be located on the new waterfront over the Paraná River in the provincial capital of Posadas. The complete schematic project was presented to the authorities in October 2014.

15 Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias,” trans. Jay Miskowiec, Diacritics 16, no. 1 (1986). Originally published as “Des Espaces Autres,” in Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité 5 (1984): 46–49. Foucault chooses the Jesuit Guaraní missions as the key example of heterotopias—spaces/other which, as different from utopias, are precisely located, formally limited, and tangible, and provide a “major source of imagination.”

16 See Eugenio Monjeau, “Chamamé for Dummies,” in ReVista (Spring 2015): 36–39.

17 The oblivious generalized attitude toward what are undisputable cultural treasures could perhaps be attributed, among multiple converging factors, to the fact that in

Site Plan 1’=1/16”

Studio II Site Plans

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In the Land of Chamamé

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Site Plan 1

Top, left to right: Carolina Yamate, Arianna Galan Montas, Jeronimo Van Schendel Erice.

Bottom, left to right: Haoxiang Yang, Paul Fiegenschue, Christian Lavista.

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Jorge Silvetti

Parana River

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site plan

Joshua Feldman

Candelaria

Top, left to right: Patrick Mayfield, Mazyar Kahali, Joshua Feldman.

Bottom, left to right: Thien Nguyen, Yufeng Zheng.

Selected Projects: Studio II

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Christian Lavista

Site plan of the museum along the newly developed urban street extension.

Site Pl

47 A view of the approach from the city in Candelaria.

Selected Projects: Studio II

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Third Floor 1:150

Plan of the museum’s main gallery level and atriums.

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Christian Lavista A perspective from the gallery looking down into the entrance.

Selected Projects: Studio II

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Jeronimo Van Schendel Erice

Site plan of the dispersed pavilions stitching the landscape together.

51 Serial sectioning to express the various methods the museum follies integrate with the slope of the site.

Selected Projects: Studio II

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Joshua Feldman

Site plan orienting the museum as an extension of the neighborhood block.

53 50 100

150 200 250

First-floor plan and section framing the ruin within the museum’s entrance.

Finlay the visitor is brought to the last gallery which similar to the first gallery space houses typical museum pieces, however with small, personal, rooms built into the thickness of the wall. In this space the visitor descends as they conclude their passage. A convenience store is located at the end of the path allowing for the sale of small curios and local crafts. At ground level, this courtyard allows for the collection of water in a small depression. This reminds the visitor of the importance of the Parana River and the strong connection that the Guarani people have with water.

Joshua Feldman

section perspective Top: The view of the courtyard completed by the new museum.

Bottom: Cutaway section perspective of the main open-air auditorium.

Selected Projects: Studio II

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view south

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Joshua Feldman

gallery

Interior perspective of the gallery.

Continuing With the journey through the museum, the visitor may encounter a large auditorium space for the performance of local dance and rituals. Here the museum caters to both local visitors who may be interested in witnessing a regular festival or a tourist who may arrive for a special event put on by the museum. In this space the roof permits the rain to enter allowing an intimate connection with the elements. After passing through the auditorium, the visitor has the option of veering off into the permanent collection where surrounding 31 missions will each have a artefact on display.

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The Architecture of Living Cultures in Candelaria

The original plan was always to conclude the studio sequence with a final iteration focusing on the infrastructural projects that are radically transforming most of the threads that constitute the physical, cultural, and economic fabric of the Territorio Guaraní.18 We had agreed with a local sponsor on an exercise that would consider the socioeconomic consequences of the imminent construction of a major infrastructural intervention in the area—the new hydroelectric dam of Corpus Christi on the Paraná River—as an opportunity to imagine and design a future for the impacted areas (fig. 16).

Yet the results of the Chamamé studio—the appearance of the ruins, the excitement of discovery, the rigorous survey, the tense programmatic forces put into play, the sheer physicality of the past—foregrounded the power that such a physical portent still generates in designers a source of design ideas. The students were confronted with the unequivocal commitment to explore uncharted territories requiring them to operate strictly within the realm of buildings and architecture. Their enthusiasm Fig. 13 (previous spread): Spring 2015 studio group surveying the ruins of Candelaria.

Fig. 14 (opposite): Ruins of Mission Candelaria as found.

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Jorge Silvetti Studio III: Spring 2016

Fig. 15: Fragment of the Music Indians Frieze, at Mission Trinidad, Paraguay.

of architecture’s past in order to imaginatively propose a future intervention.

At this juncture, the symmetry inherent in any tripartite scheme—the premise of a trilogy—played itself out almost like clockwork.

A member of our faculty, architectural historian Erika Naginski, was planning to teach a seminar focused on the ruin as an aesthetic idea with a complex history.19 We were convinced that having students simultaneously participate in both courses would create the conditions for a potentially unprecedented design experience.

As opposed to typical thesis research or the serendipitous moments of synthesis that a course of study over a period of years can produce, the concentration on a topic from the standpoint of design processes on the one hand and historical and theoretical assessments on the other would intensify the students’ efforts as well as foster a synchrony of perspectives rarely possible at the GSD. The pairing of the studio and the seminar would guarantee, in our view, sustained and structured attention on a topic so as to confer both design intensity and intellectual depth onto the work. To make this a purposeful pedagogical combination, the seminar became a de facto requirement for those wishing to enroll in the studio. To our knowledge, this had never been implemented before at the GSD, which acknowledged the novelty and approved

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brought me to serious reflection: they were willing to veer away from what are currently the prevalent modes of inquiry in architecture—in other words, the appeal to external disciplines, discourses, and protocols, as well as to a reduced field of interpretive tools. Theirs was a reasoned conclusion drawn from broad exposure to the rich fabric of Territorio Guaraní and the wealth of intellectual threads that weaves through its multifaceted context.

In the view of this architect—as a maker invested in architecture’s creative processes and relationship with its own history—the palpable energy that the vestiges of the past unleashed in the students was a revelation. The response brought to the fore the appeal of deploying the ruins in a more controlled and strategic way. The Chamamé experience presented the opportunity to update our thinking about pedagogy at a moment when I, and many others in the field, are confronted with a lack of investment in the intellectual dimensions of practice. Student enthusiasm was refreshingly new, and I was ready to revise and update the trajectory of the course. The studio brief was forced to reverse the direction of its generative forces, becoming instead an exercise engaging the remains

disquieting feeling settled in on us as we realized that we were confronted with a conundrum. For two years, and for sound pedagogical reasons, we had carefully avoided contact with the ruins; we banished them from the scene until they burst in uninvited of their own accord to become unavoidable and imposing. Their power reversed our course as they became the force that would change our pedagogy. Yet at the very moment when they were posited as the central focus, they became remote and unavailable. Students would now be put to a stricter, purer architectural test by having to work with the images of the ruins, with associated ideas, and with the narratives of third parties. Just as daunting, the complexity inherent in a theoretical framework embodied by the concept of territory would not have the support of a literal territorial immersion. Were we set for failure?

Because the studio and seminar had already begun, we could not change course again, so we confronted the conundrum with the hope that it was in reality a paradox—a seemingly illogical and self-contradictory proposition that, upon careful scrutiny, might prove sound, coherent, even productive. The answer was not immediate, 61

Jorge Silvetti

our experiment. If the three studios were bookended by two history/theory seminars, the sequence of all five courses could now also be understood as linear, directional, and intentional. The third installment of Territorio Guaraní at the GSD was not only the expected conclusion—a summary and synthesis of two years of work—but it was also a new pedagogical situation based on cumulative knowledge and distillation, whose economy of means resulted from maturation and sobriety, and whose reflective nature stood as a sign of clarity and assuredness: the depth of the design process.

Once the direction had been established, the reconfiguration of its content and methodology set, and the expansion of student involvement with related empirical and intellectual themes assured, the studio did not seem to require as before an emblematic name or linguistic expression of its task and content. This time, the ruins themselves—their aura and obdurate presence— constituted the symbolic core of the studio.

Hence the premise of turning back onto itself as a generative move was complete; the last studio of Territorio Guaraní, which originally was going to conclude by opening itself up to the input of other fields such as planning, landscape, urban design, and economic development, reversed course and became self-reflective—digging into the profundity of architecture’s own substrata of disciplinary layers and historical density. The transformative logic of the process also shifted the role of language from the title of the studio to its intensely programmatic content. Students were asked to design, at the site of the extant remains of Mission Candelaria, the campus of the Institute for the Living Cultures and Language of Territorio Guaraní.

And so it sailed. Yet, as it turned out, the third studio would still need an extra bit of drama to further distinguish itself from the previous studios. At its most vulnerable moment it suffered a setback that painfully helped to delineate the crisp intellectual armature and austere methodological protocols that would define our pedagogy. On the second day of classes, as visas were being obtained and travel plans to Candelaria finalized, we were notified by the sponsor that their funds had been frozen by the newly elected government authorities.

Our field trip was canceled until further notice.

The problems piled up quickly; “further notice” was of little help for a studio that depended on an early field trip to launch its design process.

Adding to the inevitable disappointment and frustration, we were truly dumbfounded by uncertainty as to how we might proceed, and a

Fig. 16: The locks at the existing Yacyretá hydroelectric dams.

That space provides room for interpretation and artistic experiences, and in our case, it had been exacerbated by the unexpected turn of events.

First, the proverbial distance between ruins and the original compound was a given, for the ruins were a partial representation of the once real totality of the mission compound. Second, there was the distance between Cambridge and Candelaria (with all its spatial, temporal, and existential consequences), along with the essential appearance of graphic representations of the ruins as the only evidence; at this point, the students were twice removed from an almost mythical referent and an immense void needed to be filled in. It is precisely in this vacuum that the coordinated studio/seminar format, which doubled the time of involvement and dedication, inserted itself and unleashed fresh energies.

The void was filled with ideas, images, and metaphors; with dimensions, structures, and materials; voids and solids, air and shadows, sounds and stories, all in a process freed from sentimental attachment to a personal experience. This was our fruitful paradox: it is found, in a first moment, in the ruin as a discovered, incomplete vestige that, in name and appearance, conjures up images of decay and death; then, the ruin becomes an artifact of study—be it in archaeology, literature, architecture, painting, history—only to morph into something like a well-functioning machine that produces not only knowledge but, more importantly, inspiration for hitherto unimagined things.

Paths, sounds, ruins: these three nouns represent the in situ evidence that helped us intervene with architecture in Territorio Guaraní. Paths refer to the task of threading, basting all those points in space, creating itineraries, journeys, trails, lines. Sound was used to emphasize, in the conception of a new kind of cultural museum, the intangible elements integral to any culture: music, song, poetry, speech, myth and tales, etc.—all these elements a potential critique of the conventional museum and its exclusive emphasis on the containment of physical artifacts. Finally, there were the ruins themselves, this time as generators of new architecture. These three terms include the dimension of time, and even in the proposition that the ruins of architecture can generate new architecture, ruins can be taken as generative metaphors and not simply as abject remnants of a past whole.

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but as time passed, the joint venture—with the studio and seminar taking place steadily every week in Cambridge—proved that the contortions we had been subjected to and the deep stress that had been placed on our modes of inquiry had given the students a fresh, energizing direction. They were uncluttered, unfettered, clinical in their approach, undisturbed by circumstantial or anecdotal experiences, and utterly shielded from a scaffolding with which to indulge in personal nostalgia. We replaced direct contact with in-depth intellection and creativity—and we soon saw the exquisite results. We also detected some interesting side effects; here we were, operating with variables that had rarely been encountered in the context of architectural work with ruins.

This offered us an opportunity to test the active designer’s motivation when direct experience was replaced by knowledge, mediated information, and the solitude of creative work.

A single question remained: what ensured a seemingly impossible proposition—that is, asking young designers to conceive of an architectural event that had its intellectual foundations planted on the remains of historical buildings yet failing to expose these same students to their tangible existence and site—would be successful? Undoubtedly, the intensity resulting from a semester spent in a focused intellectual vigil was meant to help decipher the universe to which those ruins belonged: the dense fabric of Territorio Guaraní. The reverberations between the studio and the seminar multiplied opportunities to interpret the ruins, their multifaceted significance in historical as well as spatial terms, and to conceive their relevance not only as artifacts but as active components of the future of the territory itself. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays were inevitably riddled with a constant exchange of perspectives on the topic of ruins and design. By the same token, an abundance of time was spent addressing the infrastructural and logistic support of the work but not necessarily the intimate creative mechanisms involved in the task at hand. An abundance of time was a necessary, quantifiable ingredient in our success, but this does not in and of itself sufficiently explain the unflagging commitment on the part of the students, for their productivity was remarkable.

I believe one special condition added distinctiveness to this mode of operating. It was precisely the physical and mental space created by the distance that separated the active subject from the ruins—a space that any act of representation, whether narrative, visual, palpable, or auditory, creates between itself and its referent.

Above: Spring 2016 studio final review, May 2016.

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18 For the third studio, we originally selected another important historical site, the modern town built around the remains of the ruins of the Jesuit mission of Corpus Christi, where Argentina and Paraguay plan to jointly build a new major hydroelectric dam. The focus was to be the impact of such major intervention on a number of neighboring and seriously underdeveloped and underserviced areas.

19 See “‘Columns gnawed by the light . . .’” in this report.

Fig. 17 (following spread): Detail of cherub at La Santísima Trinidad de Paraná, Paraguay.

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Studio III Site Plans

Top, left to right: Jing Ng, See Hong Quek, Niki Murata.

Bottom, left to right: Olivia Heung, James Murray, Nathalia Camacho.

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Jorge Silvetti Top, left to right: Elena Hasbun, Collin Cobia, Juan Sala.

Bottom, left to right: Xuezhu Tian, Konstantina Perlepe, Hana Makhamreh.

Selected Projects: Studio III

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Konstantina Perlepe

Hybrid drawing showing the arrangement of pavilions along paths.

69 A curation of perspectives along the paths connecting the ruin with the institute with the river.

70

Selected Projects: Studio III

Olivia Heung

Axonometric series illustrating the variety of roof and terrace systems ordering the institute.

71 Plan of the mission ruin beginning an atlas organization for the future growth of the institute and its landscape.

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Selected Projects: Studio III

Juan Sala

Top: Elevation evokes a bedrock style to make one believe the new architecture was excavated underneath the ruin.

Bottom: Aerial perspective glimpsing the roof entrance of the institute and a view of the surrounding landscape.

73 Top: Exploded model of the institute’s levels detailing the gabion wall structure.

Bottom: Model photograph showing the architecture energizing from the ground underneath.

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Selected Projects: Studio III

See Hong Quek

Sketches of the arrival from the city in Candelaria and the various roof types of the institute.

75 Roof site plan of the institute completing the courtyard of the mission.

Selected Projects: Studio III

76 Top: Section cutting across the courtyard with the two flanking classroom areas on either side.

Botttom: Section through the ruin as a bridge between the two institutional functions.

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See Hong Quek First-floor plan showing the orientations of the rooms under the roofs.

78 Top: Model photograph of the entrance view to the institute.

Bottom: Longitudinal section expressing the entirety of roof pitches and spatial arrangements.

79 Top: Detailed model photograph of the careful connection between the ruin and the new institute.

Selected Projects: Studio III

80 Profiling drawing highlighting the variety of structural framing for the roof types.

81

See Hong Quek Top: Interior view from within the new light wooden structure inhabiting the ruin footprint.

Bottom: Perspective from just outside the auditorium’s low-hanging roof glancing back at the completed ruin framing the background.

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Selected Projects: Studio III

Collin Cobia

Site plan showing a compressed institute just off the axis of the ruin.

83 An exploded worm’s-eye axonometric drawing illustrating the layering and the decomposition of architecture from mass to wall to plinth.

Selected Projects: Studio III

84 Top: Section cutting through the plaza completed by the ruin and the shadow of the institute.

Bottom: Section across the large auditorium balancing the suspended mass of classrooms above cut by stairs and skylights.

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Collin Cobia Ground-floor shadow plan revealing the connection to the ruin as a monolithic architecture disintegrates over time with the movement of the sun.

Section perspective channeling BoullĂŠe depicts a massive architecture that absorbs the heat of the tropics and carved in order to create rooms, circulation, and access to natural light.

Selected Projects: Studio III

88 Top: Axonometric composition pulling the major circulation carvings out of the institute designed down to the window.

Bottom: Isolated axonometric highlighting the wall fragments on the ground floor acting as the ruin walls yet composed to bear the megalith above.

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Collin Cobia Second-floor plan showing the grain of the classrooms in relation to the spaces marked by the ruin fragments.

Selected Projects: Studio III

90 Composed interior view expressing the sublime weight of the megalithic architecture held up by the floating walls of the auditorium.

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Collin Cobia Above: Another sublime perspective of the sunlight guiding the visitor up the staircase within a darkened interior.

Following spread: A shadowy interior welcoming visitors a chance to escape the heat of the sun.

Title

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Firstname Lastname

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Selected Projects: Studio III

James Murray

Site plan positioning the ruin as one wing of a crossing mark indexing the various geological and cultural strata.

95 Exploded axonometric illustrating the site’s many past and future layers of land use, with the perpetual extrusion of the ruin lasting the longest.

Selected Projects: Studio III

96 Aligned elevations expressing the subtle similarities and differences between each of the new wings and the arm of the ruin.

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James Murray The new institutional marker inverts the courtyard typology’s desire to frame a singular landscape to become an inertial point from which to measure topographic quadrants all around.

e

W-E SECTION

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N-S SECTION

Top: Sectional axonometric cutting through the wing of the ruin reanimated by a flat open-air roof which differentiates it from the pitches of the rest.

Bottom: Sectional axonometric in the opposite direction revealing a lookout at the center point between an auditorium and archival research.

Selected Projects: Studio III

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z

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James Murray

z

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FRAGMENT AXONOMETRIC

Above: Exploded fragmented axonometric showing the distinct character of the four wings within the system of ground, walls, frames, and roofs that define them.

Following spread: View from the observation deck simultaneously glimpsing the mission’s interior and Candelaria’s frontier.

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Selected Projects: Studio III

102 Top: Site model projecting new quadrants of land use marked by the ruin of the institute.

Bottom: Model that expresses the quality of the four closest quadrants of land with a sensitive roof armature.

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James Murray Fragment model that highlights the reoccupation of the ruin covered with a new roof.

Above and following page: Views from the four quadrants looking back at the institute. As the living history of the land use changes from archaeological to civic to agricultural to imaginative, the architectural frame demarcates its inertial position.

Q3 _ ORGANIC MATTERS

Selected Projects: Studio III

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Q1 _ IMAGICAL REALISM

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James Murray

Q2 _ CULTURAL PRESENCE

Q4 _ LIVING HISTORY

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Selected Projects: Studio III

Hana Makhamreh

Site plan illustrating the extended institute connecting the endpoint of the ruin with the path to the river.

107 Final model revealing the building’s negotiation with the sloping topography.

Selected Projects: Studio III

108 Model photograph showing an entrance to the building.

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Hana Makhamreh Structural exploded axonometric drawing of walls, ramps, stairs, screens, and louvers.

Selected Projects: Studio III

110 Perspective looking back from the river at the various lines of history.

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Hana Makhamreh Above: Framed views along exterior path of institute, which begins at the ruin.

Following spread: Resting for a moment from an elevated balcony with a view to the river.

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Selected Projects: Studio III

114 Perspectives along sloping public paths within and outside the institute.

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Hana Makhamreh Above: Interior view of auditorium.

Fig. 18 (following spread): Aerial view of the ruins of Mission JesĂşs de Tavarangue, Paraguay.

Title

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The Ruin Aesthetic: Episodes in the History of an Architectural Idea

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“Columns gnawed by the light . . .”1

In the first place, what sparked the thought of teaching a graduate seminar organized around the theme of the architectural ruin was a passage I found particularly arresting in the first book of Michel Serres’s so-called foundations trilogy. It is not so gentle a passage.

In Rome: The First Book of Foundations (1983), the philosopher proposes that ruins point directly to a tragic rift between action and stability, war and peace, brutal aggression and protective contemplation, and even murder and metaphysics. Serres writes: The same rocks serve for stonings and slings, violence, and for pediments, construction. The barbarian demolishes the edifice in order to bring the stone back to its function as projectile; wisdom [sagesse] builds in order to immobilize the stone, to appease the hatred, for protection. Why then do you think that walls, cities, and temples exist, when we can sleep under the stars and prostrate ourselves before the horizon?

Previous spread: Ruined Column, Désert de Retz Park, Chambourcy, France, 2010.

Opposite: Louis Kahn, Temple of Apollo, No. 3, Corinth, Greece, 1951.

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Erika Naginski Seminar: Spring 2016

All hinges on the pendulum that swings between architecture’s destruction and construction.

Yet Serres is not indulging here in a series of nostalgic meditations over some totality now irretrievably lost to the passage of time. Instead, he is gesturing toward the ubiquity of the ruin as a condition, as a given, which is why his final question—“Why, everywhere, ruins?”— authorizes us to reflect more broadly on a phenomenon that encompasses everything from the stratigraphic urban spectacle of Ancient Rome and the miserable fate of Palmyra to Aldo Rossi’s image of the assassination of architecture and the endless feasting on Detroit’s splendid decay (by the photographer Andrew Moore among so many others). Artifacts, fragments, vestiges, rubble, debris, detritus, wreckage: all this has fueled a venerable body of writings and objects that work the metaphor of ruin into anything from a template for the Sublime (sleeping under the stars) to a mechanism for iconoclastic violence (demolishing the edifice).

The challenge to my mind, of course, had always been how one might best organize a pedagogy around this vast subject. And as I think back on the evolution of the seminar—in fact, “The Ruin Aesthetic: Episodes in the History of an Architectural Idea” was the very first seminar I offered at the Harvard GSD after joining the faculty there in Fall 2008, and I have led several iterations of it by now—I have come to realize how much the subject stems from the interconnectedness of matters crucial to the history of architecture. These include the vexed legacy of the classical tradition well into the modern and postmodern periods, changing attitudes toward past and patrimony, colonial remnants and collective silences, the relationship of architecture to archaeology and to the environment, the adaptation and adaptability of design through and despite time: what it might mean to, as it were, be forever “building on ruins” (as Frank Salmon titles his book on early 19th-century English architecture). 3 The subject also stems from a modern theoretical discourse on ruination and architectural form, which was inaugurated by thinkers such as the German sociologist Georg Simmel. As he underscored in a classic essay published in 1911: “The ruin strikes us so often as tragic—but not as sad—because destruction here is . . . the

realization of a tendency inherent in the deepest layer of the existence of the destroyed.”4

Faced with insurmountable breadth and imposing existentialist statements, where to start? This is what I pondered in the earliest configuration of the seminar, well before any thought of collaboration with a design studio. First, there was the question of curricular expectations. I knew that what I would ask of the students pursuing postgraduate degrees (such as MDes, DDes, and PhD) would be more or less conventional: that they complete assigned readings, that they write short responses to those readings and share them with their colleagues, that they participate in discussions in order to ensure the liveliness of our weekly threehour meetings, and that they land on a topic they found inspiring enough to warrant an oral presentation of a proposal and a 15- to 20-page paper of solid rumination and argumentation.

But where students in the professional programs were concerned, the seminar would certainly benefit from a rethinking of the nature of the work they might produce; the summation of a semester’s intellectual labor in a scholarly research paper was not necessarily the best option (unless this was specifically what they wanted to pursue). This held especially true of the architecture students (as well as those joining us from landscape architecture and urban design) turning up in advanced history/theory seminars, because they were typically well past the core sequence and so likely pondering potential thesis topics.

It was a happy coincidence that curricular rethinking was made possible at around this time by the chair of our department, Preston Scott Cohen, who was concerned to strengthen the entire thesis process as well as to encourage the imbrication of design culture and history/ theory; he proposed allowing students in the pre-thesis semester to enroll in advanced seminars linked in some way to their interests and to use what that intellectual environment provided to draft a thesis proposal. This remained an optional choice, for students could still enroll in an independent study with a potential advisor—yet for some, such a structure still meant floating for an entire semester in the ether of uncertainty and dead ends. The repercussions of this curricular option were quickly made clear: the deliberate inclusion of design students in the seminar format was how a far more immediate conversation in the pedagogical context began to unfold between young practitioners and historians at the school—this is what would ultimately make possible, well

“Columns gnawed by the light . . .”

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. . . The builder’s plan hardly counts; the architectonic ideal is only there only for representation; the essential thing is for the projectiles to be immobilized. Why, everywhere, ruins?2

Fig. 1: Robert Adam, “Geometrical Elevation of the CryptoPorticus or South Wall of the Palace, and the Elevation of the Same Wall as it Now Remains,” Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro in Dalmatia (London: Printed for the author, 1764), pl. VIII.

to the incompleteness of the ruin, that incompleteness all by itself was suggestive, and that partial objects were potentially projective entities rather than inchoate, silenced forms.

This vantage allowed us to consider a range of examples from Giuliano da Sangallo’s depiction of ancient Roman central plan temples in the Codex Barberiniano (artfully gutted to reveal the perspectivally rendered inner sanctum of architecture) to the imagined journeys—the pathways through different times and places— evoked in the plates of 17th-century antiquarian treatises. The larger aim was to delve by way of these examples into what might be cast as an early modern mentality that was tied to an understanding of bodies whose longevity rests on renovation, change, accumulation, strata, and a necessarily composite character—and perhaps most interestingly, on a constructive wrestling between imagination, memory, and history.

Here the assertions of early modern philosophy were helpful. “Imagination,” as Giambattista Vico concluded in the third edition of the New Science (1744), “however, is nothing but the springing up again of reminiscences, and ingenuity or invention is nothing but the working over of what remembered.”6

This first set of case studies dovetailed to some degree with the book project on which I was working at the time, The Architecture of Retrospection, which was focused entirely on that period from the 1670s to 1800, when the architectural ruin emerged in a polemic over the concept of history that resulted in the encounter of two realms: architecture and archaeology. Inspired by the great classical historiographer Arnaldo Momigliano and the premise of the “historical pyrrhonism” of the Republic of Letters, I was especially interested in highlighting the role of architecture in antiquarian treatises that sought to place emphasis on visual and material culture as evidence.7 With this encounter as a starting point, I was keen to trace how the visual turn in the late 17th century paved the way for the ensuing incur-

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Erika Naginski

before I knew it, the kind of coalescence of interests between Jorge Silvetti’s studio on imagining architecture in Candelaria and a seminar on ruins and ruination. Furthermore, it allowed for students in the pre-thesis stage to formulate an intellectual context for their design research, and what they produced in the end was a hybrid—a preliminary, because exploratory, design work sequence set alongside an informed yet concise manifesto bolstered by a selected bibliography.

The second and even more important issue was how to frame the seminar content. My goal had always been to find a synoptic as opposed to comprehensive approach to the theme, to insist on a certain nimbleness and interchangeability that could nevertheless remain moored to a chronological progression; allowing for new topics seemed important if the course was destined to be something more than a one-off.

I am not a modernist by training, and so I knew I wanted to begin by thinking with the seminar participants about architecture and the vision of the past in the early modern period. The footing we needed for the first three weeks of the seminar was provided by the literary scholar and art historian Leonard Barkan’s premise that the Italian Renaissance experience of discovery, its “recovery of ancient art, enabling it to arrive out of the earth with almost autochthonic independence . . . offers us a glimpse at a set of creative acts with quite particular valences.”5

What was useful for the students, then, was the idea that encountering ruins need not be automatically equated with mourning, loss, and trauma, that this was perhaps a postwar stance (although arguably germinating in the Romantic movement), and that all to the contrary “creative acts” might also be the appropriate response

Fig. 2: Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, “The Ruins of the City of Palmyra,” Entwurff einer historischen Architectur in Abbildung unterschiedener berühmten Gebäude (Leipzig, 1725), pl. XIII.

ruin. As we struggled to strike a balance between primary and secondary texts, we explored modernity’s various versions of the ruin motif.

This sequence of readings brought us to the last segment of the course in which the contemporary moment offered us a landscape of thought marked, among other things, by Martin Heidegger’s concept of Ruinanz, the architectural confrontation with industrial ruins, and the brutality of terrorist iconoclasm (leaving us to consider, for example, Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach’s fictionalized rendition of the ruins of Palmyra with renewed intensity) (fig. 2). We also discussed contemporary architectural encounters with ruins such as Rafael Moneo’s Museum of the Roman Theatre (2008) in Cartagena, Spain (an especially evocative project given Moneo’s storied and ongoing presence at our school) (fig. 3). It has been rewarding, over the years, to see the wide range of research topics that students have undertaken as a result of the seminar’s tripartite pedagogical structure. Examples have included: the poetic response to the Great Fire of London in 1666, the Surrealist rediscovery of the broken column house at the Désert de Retz, the Spanish law of historic memory (2007) in confrontation with collective forgetting of the vestiges of the civil war, the memory, planning, and the reconstruction of Warsaw (1945–1949), Italian architects Carlo Aymonino and Constantino Dardi’s Mirano psychiatric hospital project (1967) as a manifestation of what Manfredo Tafuri has described as the productivity of “fragments and unrealized intention.”9 This is merely a sample.

After years of discussion over a possible pedagogical collaboration, it was in Fall 2015 that Silvetti and I finally cemented our plan to

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sion of architectural knowledge into historical method in the context of the European fascination with antiquities. From Claude Perrault’s parsing of the Pillars of Tutelle in Bordeaux to Robert Adam’s reconstruction of Diocletian’s Palace in Split, the epistemological specter of material evidence in situ had continually fueled the architectural imagination (fig. 1). And it was exactly this epistemological specter of material evidence, I would later learn, that served as the foundational elements for the paths, sounds, and ruins inspiring the design interventions emerging from Silvetti’s studio on Territorio Guaraní.

In initial versions of the seminar, what we had come to construe as the early modern projective stance—the emphasis on the ruin as a potent generator of form—likewise allowed us to confront the radical counterpoint presented by the cult of the ruin in modern contexts and, most notably, how ruination has come to shape notions of nostalgia and dystopia in the 19th and 20th centuries. This brought us to a second set of themes and case studies. We began by asking ourselves how curious it was that Immanuel Kant’s analytic of the Sublime did not, in fact, address the ruin—for here, surely, was an exemplary encounter between the subject and nature’s destructive forces. What the cultural historian Karen Lang in this context has suggestively termed the “dialectics of decay”8 was a perfect means of setting the stage for a thorough reading of John Ruskin’s picturesque, Alois Riegl’s modern “cult” of monumentality, and Walter Benjamin’s interpretation of historical nature as a

intellectual experience the seminar hoped to provide needed to step in not as a replacement for an experience in situ (this was unthinkable), but, instead, as a parallel creative universe, that is, as a site of reflection in which informed geographical and historical imaginaries might inform the design process through which students were being led in the studio context. I then turned with even greater focus to retooling the syllabus so as to insert sections directly relevant to the history and design of the Jesuit ruins with which the students were grappling as well as a broader historical understanding of the relationship between conquest, colonialism, and the propagande fide in South America. Hence, I inserted sections on “Colonial Ruins” for which we read Octavio Paz’s remarkable essay, “The Conquest and Colonialism,” as well as those writings on the Guaraní culture and history that emphasized how difficult it was to reconstruct, through testimony, the historical encounter of

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offer in tandem the studio and the seminar in the following Spring term. This was no straightforward operation: studio funding needed to be secured for a third iteration of the Territorio Guaraní project, meaning the formulation of a new premise that nevertheless offered a seamless continuation from the two preceding studios; course scheduling needed to be worked out (not an inconsequential detail); the option studio lottery needed to yield a group of students invested in the intellectual yoking in which we were invested; and perhaps most daunting, the school registrar underscored that it was impossible to require the professional students to take both courses simultaneously. We forged ahead anyway, and to our joy—and with the exception of one MArch student who had already taken it—all the studio participants enrolled in the seminar.

Yet when the impossible happened—the canceling of the trip to the site—Silvetti and I quickly realized, with some trepidation, that the

Fig. 3: Rafael Moneo, Museum of the Roman Theatre, Cartagena, Spain, plan and section, 2008.

Thought and emotion move into a new dimension where every drop of sweat, every muscular movement, every gasp of breath becomes symbolic of a past history, the development of which is reproduced in my body, at the same time as my thought embraces its significance. I feel myself to be steeped in a more dense intelligibility, within which centuries and distances answer each other and speak with one and the same voice.11 Fig. 4: Jorge Silvetti, Untitled (Tristes tropiques), 2016.

For Silvetti, these words exposed the vivid palimpsest of intersections between geology’s deep time and the ephemerality of culture, between the swift passage of historical events and the bodily apprehension of depths of human experience. It was his hope that architecture could intervene as a manifestation of these intersections.

For the final seminar project, we tailored what we asked of the studio participants: to offer a critical description of their architectural intervention at the site of the ruins of the Jesuit/ Guaraní mission of Candelaria. The point here was both to explain the design decisions that they had made as well as to address how these decisions rendered manifest one or more of the thematic approaches elucidated in the sites and readings debated over the course of the term. In other words, we wanted the students to narrate their design thinking, to explicate how their project expressed a specific attitude or set of attitudes toward the ruin as a category of the architectural imagination. We proposed that it might be appropriate, for instance, to elaborate the ways in which: a) the proposal was an original proposition and why; b) the position derived from one studied during the semester; c) the approach emerged from an adherence or an opposition to a particular aesthetic treatment of the ruin; and, finally, d) how this was a contemporary response based on current societal values, technologies, and/or needs. This kind of articulation is required for any project, but in this case, we asked for a response that was explicitly connected to the histories and themes treated in the seminar.

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the Jesuits with native populations.10 I also asked the students to choose between a close reading of Italo Calvino’s novel Invisible Cities (Le città invisibili, 1972) or Pablo Neruda’s poem The Heights of Machu Picchu (Alturas de Macchu Picchu, 1947) so as to confront the fictional journeys proffered by the ruin.

It was in this context that Silvetti visited the seminar and exposed everyone to his own very real journey of discovery (fig. 4). One of the most moving aspects of the presentation was the parsing he offered of a passage from Claude Levi-Strauss’s memoir, Tristes tropiques (1955), in which the author recounts a moment of epiphany. In one of his explorations, Levi-Strauss was confronted with two separate geological strata made contiguous by the slippage of the terrain’s fault, which paired two shell fossils of different geological ages separated by tens of thousands of years. The anthropologist described his reaction as follows:

The results were remarkable, and I offer two examples here. First, See Hong Quek, who entitled his project “Structures of Memory.

Unconscious Ruins in Candelaria,” asserted how: The courtyard building as historical form, [which] desires to be complete. However, to breathe new life into the ruin and the whole, it is necessarily fragmented, only to be completed by the imagination. It remains defiantly incomplete its solidity and monumentality disrupted. . . . Through collage, the ruin is perfected, homogenized and crowned. Its fluid ability to be at once an archetype (a working standard for reference), an epitome (the best of the existing examples), and an ideal (an imagination of the Jesuit mission) supports the easy ‘consumption’ and ‘conservation’ of structures, ruined or new.

The reformation and deformation of this constructive approach to ruins will examine the orientation and trajectory of a body of work that toggles between, on the one hand, mapping the forces and layers of the geological landscape and, on the other, translating this composting reintegration of the ruin within the emergence of an interior for storing, consuming, and producing artifacts of living culture—a culture that demarcates its inertial position in time in order to frame an animated ground and its past, present, and future histories.

In both projects, the layering of geologies, histories, memories, and ephemeralities was 127

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The midterm sketch he presented, hand drawn, stitched together as shimmering overlays plans of the courtyard and perspectival elevations of structural units in a boisterous circularity— the arrangement of pictorial fragments not

as disparate floating entities but, rather, as elements reinforcing the thematic of collective gathering that the courtyard element necessarily and programmatically instigates (fig. 5).

Meanwhile, James Murray’s “Living History: A Non-Jeffersonian Approach to Ruins” was characterized by a geologically and infrastructurally inscribed logic boldly posited as a monumental cross-form (fig. 6). As he put it:

Fig. 5: See Hong Quek, “Structures of Memory.

Unconscious Ruins in Candelaria,” sketch, 2016.

Fig. 6. James Murray, “Living History: A Non-Jeffersonian Approach to Ruins,” orthographic section, 2016.

designers who, through rigorous encounters with visual representations, archaeological artifacts, historical narratives, poetic evocations, aesthetic philosophy, and the designs of their studio predecessors, productively placed their faith in the discoveries afforded by a journey of the mind.

“Columns gnawed by the light . . .”

128 achieved by thinking the ruin as a projective device for design.

Despite his general disappointment at the sight of the ruins of Rome in comparison with the grandeur of the Piranesian evocation, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe remarked that the Cloaca Maxima was one of the few structures that “was even more colossal than Piranesi’s designs had led me to expect.”12 I would like to think that something like this moment of revelatory apprehension was experienced by those studio participants who actually made it to the site, who witnessed material things firsthand. Yet I am also convinced that for those who were not able to be there as material witnesses, there was a profound experience of a certain kind of informed freedom to roam. In other words, these were the young

Octavio Paz, “Hymn Among the Ruins,” trans. William Carlos Williams, in Early Poems, 1935–1955 (New York: New Directions, 1973), 95.

2 Michel Serres, Rome: The First Book of Foundations (French ed. 1983; London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), 54.

3 Frank E. Salmon, Building on Ruins: The Discovery of Rome and English Architecture (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000).

4 Georg Simmel, “The Ruin” (trans. David Kettler), in Kurt H. Wolff, ed., Georg Simmel, 1858–1918: A Collection of Essays, with Translations and a Bibliography (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 1959), 263.

5 Leonard Barkan, Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), xxxii.

6 Giambattista Vico, The New Science of Giambattista Vico, Translated from the Third Edition (1744), trans. Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), 264.

7 Arnaldo Momogliano, “Ancient History and the Antiquarian,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 13/3–4 (1950): 285–315.

8 Karen Lang, “The Dialectics of Decay: Rereading the Kantian Subject,” The Art Bulletin 79/3 (September 1997), 413–39.

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1

9 Manfredo Tafuri, The Sphere and the Labyrinth: Avant-Gardes and Architecture from Piranesi to the 1970s (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), 13.

10 Octavio Paz, “The Conquest and Colonialism,” The Labyrinth of Solitude (New York: Grove Press, 1985), 89–116.

We found Frank Salomon, “Testimonies: The Making and Reading of Native South American Historical Sources,” The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), vol. 3, pt. I, 19–95, especially thought-provoking and useful.

Other readings included excerpts from Matthew Restall, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Hélène Clastres, The Landwithout-Evil: Tupí-Guaraní Prophetism (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995); Marc André Bernier, Clorinda Donato, Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink, eds., Jesuit Accounts of the Colonial Americas: Intercultural Transfers Intellectual Disputes, and Textualities (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014); and Barbara Ganson, The Guaraní Under Spanish Rule in the Rio de la Plata (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003).

11 Claude Levi-Strauss, Tristes tropiques, trans.

John Weightman and Doreen Weightman (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1978), 68–69.

12 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Italian Journey: 1786–1788, trans. W. H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer (London: Penguin Books, 1970), 492.

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Bibliography: Territorio Guaraní

Latour, Bruno. “An Attempt at a ‘Compositionist Manifesto.’” New Literary History 41, no. 3 (Summer 2010): 471–90.

———. Templos Jesuíticos—Guaraníes. Buenos Aires: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UBA, 1999.

Ullán de la Rosa, Francisco Javier. “Jesuitas, omaguas, yurimaguas y la guerra hispano-lusa por el Alto Amazonas. Para un posible guion alternativo de ‘La Mision.’” Anales del Museo de América 15 (2007): 173–90.

Wilde, Guillermo. “De las crónicas jesuíticas a las ‘etnografías estatales’: realidades y ficciones del orden misional en las fronteras ibéricas.” Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos. Last accessed March 2017. http://nuevomundo.revues.org/62238.

———. “Imágenes, sonido y memoria. Hacia una antropología del arte missional.” Histoire de l’art et anthropologie. Paris: INHA/Musée du quai Branly (“Les actes”), 2009.

———. “La ritualización del espacio en las misiones jesuíticas del Paraguay.” In XI Jornadas Internacionais sobre as Missões Jesuíticas. Porto Alegre: 2006.

———. “Orden y ambigüedad en la formación territorial de Río de la Plata a fines del siglo XVIII.” Horizontes Antropológicos 9, no. 19 (July 2003).

———. Religión y poder en las misiones de guaraníes. Buenos Aires: SB Editorial, 2009.

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Jorge Silvetti

Walter, Martin. “Explaining the Emergence of Transboundary Groundwater Management: The Case of the Guaraní Aquifer System.” PhD Diss., Northwestern University, 2013. Last accessed March 2017. https://ssrn.com/abstract=2256045.

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Excerpts

Juror Comments from the Final Reviews for the Territorio Guaraní Studios

Angelo Bucci Professor, Universidade de São Paulo Founder, spbr arquitetos, São Paulo Visiting professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Iñaqui Carnicero Assistant professor at the Cornell University School of Architecture Principal, Iñaqui Carnincero Architecture Office, New York and Madrid

The seminar and studio led by Erika Naginski and Jorge Silvetti together pose the question, what is the future of our past? It is a meaningful question for any practicing architect, after the modern movement removed precedent as the source of the project and replaced it with the idea that the future should guide design proposals. Moreover, we learned from those architects that cultural heritage is not an absolute but a matter of personal or societal choice at a given time and place. Thus, as we coexist today with the ruins of Candelaria, we are asked to intervene as architects to highlight the aspects of their present ruinous existence that could best shape, define, inform, and orient our tomorrow.

And on that, the students’ proposals in this studio brought a lot of hope to the future of the past.

It was fascinating to observe the structure and methodology the students followed during the semester, which started by getting deep into the Guaraní’s culture to achieve a good understanding of the territory. Studying and mapping the remains of the Jesuit ruins gave them an interesting restriction to incorporate into the design necessarily by developing a personal and critical position toward the value of the ruin. This constraint, instead of limiting design approaches, offered and anchored in terms of scale and materiality ways that made the projects absolutely realistic and appropriate for the site.

It was especially rewarding to observe the meticulously developed site plans that, besides revealing the beauty of the territory, demonstrated very different strategies to incorporate nature into the building.

The studio was the perfect demonstration that typological innovation, formal exploration, and material experimentation can be achieved in very creative and diverse forms by studying an ancient culture, analyzing the complexities of the territory, and reinterpreting the historical remains that still exist today in the site as an alibi for the creation of an extremely interesting contemporary architecture.

Above: Spring 2016 final studio review.

Following page, top: Spring 2015 final studio review.

Bottom: Spring 2014 final studio review.

Living in an era of simple truths, the increasing disregard for critical discourse that values genuine ideation, and a growing infatuation in many parts of the world today with a more divisive political ideology that threatens the very fabric of our diverse and multicultural planet, it’s quite timely and apropos that one of the foremost leaders in our profession is committed to exploring the often complex affiliation found between cultural identity and architecture.

Offered as magical journey into the subtropical jungle region of northern Argentina, the studio sought to challenge this next generation of architects to consider the role of mythos, the fragility of memory, and the power of place as essential attributes for an architecture of enduring presence. Set in dialogue with the beautifully eerie ruins of the 17th-century Guaraní Jesuit missions, each of the studio projects in their own ingenious way infused the site with a deep sense of poesis giving rise to the ineffable spirit of a bygone era.

Camilo Restrepo Ochoa Coordinator of Urban Strategies at Escuela de Administración, Finanzas y Tecnología (EAFIT) University in Medellín Founder, AGENdA, Medellín Visiting design critic, Harvard GSD Giving voice to “las misiones,” as a topic that is able to join the great narratives of architecture history, is not only relevant for the architecture discipline itself as a new source of documentation, information, and adaptation, but it also gives voice to a culture that can only survive in this networked culture by its exposure as a pragmatic and ambiguous nature. The studio tackles with accurate precision questions of identity, materiality, and preservation without being nostalgic or moralistic.

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Evan Douglis Dean of the School of Architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Principal, Evan Douglis Studio, Troy, NY

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Appendix 1

The Forms of Water: Aquatic Landscapes in South America Spring 2014 Seminar Graciela Silvestri, Arq. PhD Robert F. Kennedy Visiting Professor

Course Description South America can be analyzed as an aquatic territory: the three major river basins (Orinoco, Amazonas, and the Plata), ground waters such as the Guaraní Aquifer, wetlands such as the Pantanal, and immense southern ice fields claim the attention of global environmental policies, which today are focused on water. However, the economic and social advantages offered by development plans of regional integration, largely based on these resources, seem to be in conflict with ecological and cultural issues in a subcontinent with isolated communities and territories practically untouched by western civilization. These unsolved oppositions force us to reconsider the usual ways we understand and transform the world—establishing barriers between technology and nature, space, and time.

Water does not know about these frontiers. It forces us to reconsider diverse scales of intervention; to dig into the deep past to understand the present; to face the continuity between “human” and “nonhuman” events; to rethink our notions of permanence and change. In this perspective, South America can be considered as a test case.

Throughout this seminar, we will link the theoretical questions that water poses with concrete cases, connecting the diverse fields in which design is involved. We will deal with the big dimension of fluvial infrastructure—one

of the principal aspects of the current regional initiatives—and consider debates, projects, and executions throughout the last two centuries.

The analysis will bring together “civilizing ideals” and socioecological impacts; cartographic representations and technical improvements; geopolitical considerations and changing sensitivities. This part of the seminar is linked with the South America Project, the transcontinental research network organized by Felipe Correa and Ana María Durán Calisto.

From this broad picture, we will move to what was once known as the “Jesuit Republic,” the most renowned example of heterotopia that flourished between the 17th and 18th centuries.

The fluvial region, under the hegemony of the Tupi-Guaraní people when the conquest began, was deeply transformed by the Jesuits and became a virtual theater of war after the expulsion of the Fathers. The particular hybrid culture that stemmed from this experience has remained in different ways, playing a central role, for example, in the Brazilian avant-garde movement.

The area can also be considered in terms of its energetic potential and its natural monuments, such as the Iguazú Falls. Jorge Silvetti’s concurrent option studio will focus on similar issues and deal with interventions in this same region.

Next, we will consider the Portuguese and Spanish cities and ports, which commanded

Assignments/Assessments This is an experimental course: the material straddles the boundaries between humanistic, scientific, and design disciplines. This gives us a chance to consider new conceptual directions on environmental issues, facing symbolic dimensions in particular, not usually considered. It is expected that the papers the students submit at the end of the course reflect this challenge.

Students will present an empirical or historical case to make their point. It is important, but not mandatory, to read in Spanish or Portuguese. We will have a few guests discuss particular points or present their work in the areas we have chosen to help us in our cases.

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the whole process of territorial control. Today, around 80 percent of the population of South America is urban: the contrast between the virgin earth of the subcontinent and the enormous metropolis, like Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires, growing shapeless along the rivers, is a key element in our discussion. Besides, the ways these metropolitan areas developed, from their beginnings to the moment when the idea of urban planning renewed illusions of territorial control, pose important questions about the proper nature of what we continue to call “the City.”

The last case concerns the South of this South: the iced Patagonia and Antarctica.

Through the “frozen continent,” we fully enter the global world. Patagonia has been inhabited for 15,000 years, but Antarctica can be considered the last no-man’s-land, “without” human history. However, there is a history—one made by travelers moving without paths, scientists and industrial explorers living in bunker-like stations, and tourists searching for the last untouched marvels. Patagonia and Antarctica are still framed under the topics of the Sublime—vastness, infinity, monotony, the awe of pure white. As Charles Darwin wrote about his experience in Patagonia, these last limits on human knowledge, frozen in time, transform the deep past into present. These issues are not merely about aesthetics—talking about the Sublime is talking about Power.

Appendix 2

Territorio Guaraní: Culture, Infrastructure, and Natural Resources in the longue durée A DRCLAS-sponsored workshop Cambridge, Massachusetts April 10–12, 2014

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Participants

Lia Colombino, director of Museo de Arte Indígena in Asunción, Paraguay

Graciela Silvestri, PhD, 2014 Robert F. Kennedy Visiting Professor of Latin American Studies, Harvard University; Profesor Titular at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina; Investigadora Independiente, CONICET, Argentina

Felipe Correa, associate professor of urban design and director of Urban Design Degree Program, Harvard GSD; principal of SOMATIC, New York and Quito

Jorge Silvetti, Nelson Robinson Jr. Professor of Architecture, Harvard GSD; principal of Machado and Silvetti Associates, Boston and Buenos Aires

Farès el-Dahdah, DDes, professor of architecture and director of the Humanities Research Center, Rice University, Houston

Oscar Thomas, executive director of Entidad Binacional Yacyretá, Posadas, Argentina

Anita Berrizbeitia, professor of landscape architecture and chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture, Harvard GSD

Carlos Alberto Fulco, architect and landscape architect; member of the Executive Council of Entidad Binacional Yacyretá, Posadas, Argentina Adrian Gorelik, PhD, professor of art history and director of the Center for Intellectual History, Universidad Nacional de Quilmes; Investigador Independiente, CONICET, Argentina

Guillermo Wilde, PhD, professor of anthropology, Universidad Nacional de San Martin; Investigador Independiente, CONICET, Argentina

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Appendix 3

Territorio Guaraní Temas Workshop 2 Posadas, Misiones, Argentina June 3–5, 2015

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Schedule in Spanish as provided to the workshop participants

Día 1: Miércoles 3 de junio de 2015 Lugar: Campus de la Universidad Nacional de

Misiones (UNaM), Argentina

Milda Rivarola, Universidades

Católica y Nacional de Asunción (UCA), Paraguay

09:00 hs. Discurso Inaugural—Recepción Oficial

15:30 hs. Guerra y Territorio en la Región Guaraní Pablo Camogli, UNaM, Argentina

10:00 hs. Conferencia Inaugural: Proyecto

“Territorio Guaraní” Jorge Silvetti, Graciela Silvestri 11:30 hs.

Apoyo Institucional y Académico: Rectores y Decanos Universidad Nacional de Misiones (UNaM), Universidad Nacional del Nordeste (UNNE), Universidad Nacional de Itapúa (UNI), Universidad Nacional de Asunción, Paraguay (UNA), Universidad Católica de Santa Fe (UCSF), Universidad Gastón Dáchary (UGD)

Tema I: Territorio y Humanidades

14:00 hs. Misiones: La construcción histórica de

una territorialidad sustentada en una

estrategia de control de los recursos hídricos

Esteban Snihur, UNaM, Argentina 14:45 hs. Participación de los pueblos indígenas

en la Guerra del Paraguay. Sus efectos

16:15 hs.

Sobre equilibrio ambiental, dueños, propiedades y otras disquisiciones Ana María Gorosito Kramer, UNaM, Argentina

17:00 hs. La Construcción de la Hidroeléctrica

Yacyretá y la relocalización de los

indígenas Mbya Guarani del Mbaepú Marlín Rehnfeltd, UCA, Paraguay

Conferencia Magistral 1

19:30 hs. Territorio es cultura, cultura es ter-

ritrio: Tekoha’ÿre ndaipori teko

Bartomeu Melià s.j.

Lugar: Cámara de Representantes de la

Provincia de Misiones, Posadas Día 2: Jueves 4 de junio de 2015 Lugar: Central Hidroeléctrica Yacyretá 08:00 hs. Salida desde el Hotel Posadas Urbano

hacia Ituzaingó (Provincia de Corrientes)

09:00 hs. Visita al Centro de Visitantes de Ituzaingó 10:00 hs. Visita a la Central Hidroeléctrica Yacyretá

Tema III: Territorios de la Sensibilidad

09:30 hs. “Agenciamientos de lo Contemporáneo:

el espacio del arte en el territorio” Juan Eduardo Kislo, Facultad de

Artes Oberá, UNaM, Argentina

Tema II: Territorios del Agua

14:00 hs. La invención del Acuífero Guaraní Martín Walter, Banco Interamericano

de Desarrollo, Washington, DC, USA

10:00 hs. El Museo del Barro de Asunción del Paraguay Lia Colombino, Museo del Barro,

UNA, Paraguay

14:45 hs. El Acuífero Guaraní y la importancia

de los acuíferos transfronterizos en

América Latina Ofelia Tujchneider, Universidad

Nacional del Litoral, Santa Fe, Argentina

10:30 hs. Música y Teatro en las Misiones Jesuíticas

Emilio Rocholl, Dir. Gral. Coro y

Orquesta, Centro del Conocimiento,

Misiones, Argentina

15:30 hs. Biodiversidad, Integración y Hábitat en

el Territorio Guaraní

Jorge Tezón, Consejo Nacional de

Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Argentina

11:00 hs. “Un mapa del Chamamé”

Eugenio Montjeau, UBA, Argentina

16:15 hs.

Turismo: una industria para el desar- rollo con Identidad Cultural Sergio Dobrusín, Ministerio de Turismo de la Provincia de Misiones, Argentina

17:00 hs. Planeamiento y Urbanismo de remediación Alfredo Garay, Universidad de

Buenos Aires (UBA), Argentina 17:45 hs. Hidroenergía y Desarrollo: presente y

futuro de la región Carlos Fulco, Entidad Binacional

Yacyretá–Universidad Nacional

de La Plata, Misiones, Argentina 18:15 hs. Experiencias de la Harvard University

en el “Territorio Guaraní” Jorge Silvetti 19:00 hs. Panel de Discusión: Taller del Grupo de Trabajo

Coordinación: Graciela Silvestri, Jorge Silvetti

11:30 hs. Los lugares de la imagen o la imagen del sitio

Ticio Escobar, UCA, Paraguay 13:00 hs. Territorios de la Gastronomía Gunther Moros, Especialista en Arte

Culinaria y Alta Cocina, Misiones,

Argentina; Almuerzo preparado por el

Chef Gunther Moros

09:00 hs. Discurso de Bienvenida

Presidencia de la Cámara de

Representantes de la Provincia de Misiones

Tema IV: Los registros del Espacio—Taller

14:30hs. El Proyecto Ñandutí Hernán Cazzaniga, UNaM, Argentina 15:00 hs. Estudios territoriales a través de la

cartografía, la iconografía y las técnicas digitales Farès el-Dahah, Rice University,

Houston, TX, USA 16:30 hs. Panel de Discusión: Taller del Grupo de Trabajo

Coordinación: Graciela Silvestri,

Adrián Gorelik

Día 3: Viernes 5 de junio de 2015 Lugar: Cámara de Representantes de la

Provincia de Misiones

Conferencia Magistral 2

Conferencia Magistral 3

18:00 hs. Las Repúblicas Misioneras y el

Escándalo de la Ilustración, 1750-1831

Brian P. Owensby, Univeristy of

Virginia, Cororan Department of

History, Charlottesville, VA, USA

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Contributors

Jorge Silvetti Jorge Silvetti is the Nelson Robinson Jr. Professor of Architecture at the Harvard GSD, where he has taught since 1975. He was chair of the Department of Architecture from 1995 to 2002. He is also founding partner of Machado and Silvetti Associates. He teaches design studios (which have included “The National Archives of Argentina,” “A Project Along the River Bilbao La Ria de Bilbao,” “La Reserva Ecologia of Buenos Aires,” and “Cordoba”) and lectures on history, contemporary theory, and criticism (“Architectural History I: Buildings, Texts, and Contexts from Antiquity through the 17th Century”).

Erika Naginski Erika Naginski is professor of architectural history at the Harvard GSD. Her research interests include Baroque and Enlightenment architecture, early modern aesthetic philosophy, theories of public space, and the critical traditions of architectural history. In addition to teaching modules in the Building, Texts, Contexts sequence, she offers seminars and lecture courses in architectural history and theory, including “The Shapes of Utopia,” “The Piranesi Effect,” “Versailles to the Visionaries,” and “The Ruin Aesthetic: Episodes in the History of an Architectural Idea.”

Colophon

Paths, Sounds, Ruins: Imagining Architecture in Candelaria Instructors Jorge Silvetti Erika Naginski Report Design James Murray A Harvard University Graduate School of Design Publication Dean and Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design Mohsen Mostafavi Assistant Dean and Director of Communications and Public Programs Ken Stewart Editor in Chief Jennifer Sigler Associate Editor Marielle Suba Publications Coordinator Meghan Sandberg Series design by Laura Grey and Zak Jensen ISBN 978-1-934510-58-2 © 2017 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without prior written permission from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

Text and images © 2017 by their authors.

Acknowledgments The studios and their associated activities were made possible by the financial support of the Faculty Grants from the Harvard University David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, and the Entidad Binacional Yacyretá of Argentina and Paraguay. In addition, we express our thanks to the Museo del Barro in Asuncion, Paraguay, and the Universidad Nacional de Misiones in Argentina for their support with staff guidance and the use of educational spaces during our field trips to the area.

Image Credits Cover, inside cover, and pages 18, 20–21, 34–35, 42–43, 56–58, 60–61, 64–65: Juan Pablo Ugarte Page 118–19: Lionel Allorge Page 123: From Robert Adam, Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro in Dalmatia (London: Printed for the author, 1764), pl. VIII Page 124: From Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, Entwurff einer historischen Architectur in Abbildung unterschiedener berühmten Gebäude (Vienna, 1721), pl. XIII Page 125: Courtesy Rafael Moneo Final review photography: Justin Knight Inside cover: Spring 2015 studio participants visiting the ruins of the church of Mission Trinidad in Paraguay.

The editors have attempted to acknowledge all sources of images used and apologize for any errors or omissions.

Harvard University Graduate School of Design 48 Quincy Street Cambridge, MA 02138 publications@gsd.harvard.edu gsd.harvard.edu

Studio Report Spring 2014/15/16

Harvard GSD Department of Architecture

Students 2014: Justine Ala, Timothy Carey, Rufoan Chen, Duncan Corrigall, Natsuma Imai, Ruo Jia, Andreas Nikolovgenis, Joshua Schecter, Sophie Shin, Ashley Takacs, Juan Pablo Ugarte (TA), Jessica Wilcox 2015: Joshua Feldman, Paul Fiegenschue, Arianna Galan Montas, Mazyar Kahali, Christian Lavista (TA), Patrick Mayfield, Thien Nguyen, Carolina Yamate, Jeronimo Van Schendel Erice, Haoxiang Yang, Yufeng Zheng 2016: Nathalia Camacho, Collin Cobia, Elena Hasbun, Olivia Heung, Hana Makhamreh, Niki Murata, James Murray, Jing Ng, Konstantina Perlepe, See Hong Quek, Juan Sala (TA), Xuezhu Tian ISBN 978-1-934510-58-2

9 781934 510582