7 minute read
What we build together
material expression of ritual and care in southern Chile
Brittany Giunchigliani
Water, an omnipresent element within our bodies and the environment, holds a wealth of dynamic and collaborative qualities that are often overlooked in architecture and landscape architecture. In this line of work, the mechanics of water is inherently entangled with our material choices but is often over-simplified and undervalued. Critical geographer Jamie Linton argues that our perception and understanding of water has been reduced to a measurable unit – H2O, stripping away its inherent connection to bodies and the environment. Within spatial design, this process of modernising water has led to a rigid and impermeable built environment.
Beyond the abstracted understanding of how water affects the world around us lies an opportunity to reconceptualise the ways in which water shapes us. It degrades. It brings life. It is scarce. Its behaviours are versatile. If we give more attention to the movement, dissolution, transformation and interactions of water, the body and our environments, if we embrace a notion of wateriness in practice, might our work become more flexible, nimble and intentional? Thinking this way challenges the prominent western paradigm of self sufficiency, individualism and excess as we look to watery logics for inspiration. This inquiry invites us to look beyond our profession and explore strategies of artisanal fishers who intimately work with and in the sea.
In February 2023, I conducted field research in small coastal towns within the Los Ríos and Los Lagos regions of southern Chile. There, I had the opportunity to engage with a diverse group of artisanal fishers who rely on the sea for their livelihoods. From seaweed harvesters to crabbers to fisherpeople, each person’s relationship to the water was illuminated through different strategies of ritual and care. These were often shaped by wisdom passed down through generations within their close-knit communities and the specific demands of their respective trades. Consequently, this interweaving of knowing a place and professional necessity manifested in deliberate and meaningful material expressions along the shoreline.
Working with water has its own temporality - a diurnal and seasonal rhythm that requires one to be responsive with intention. Within these two rhythms there are different rituals: daily routines such as harvesting at specific times during the day depending on the tides, and seasonal tasks such as mending and replacing tools. These activities vary by fishing village and that which is being harvested. Each system, catch, place requires its own material approach, cared for not only by the individuals using them, but also the web of people that interact within this waterscape.
At Playa Chauman I met a family of seaweed collectors who harvest each morning at the public beach. When the tide begins to return, the mother and her two older children passively collect Luga Roja (Sarcothalia crispata) in the small, protected cove at the end of the beach. They use plastic woven sacks, a material that can be seen everywhere around the island, recycled from various other uses to hold their harvest. The bags are light, permeable and can hold roughly 25 kilos of wet seaweed. Once filled, they are carried from the shore up the beach to the warm sand where the seaweed is laid out to dry under the sun. After drying, the seaweed is loaded back into the bags and are transported to market and sold. When the bags start to break down, they are used at home until they deteriorate completely. Here, the rhythm of the sea and the bodies’ ability to carry are in constant conversation
These micro-installations of the fishing community’s daily operations are nimble, intentional and in conversation with the environment. Here, architecture does not serve as the foundation, nor does it act as the saviour; and in some towns such as Los Molinos where communal dinghies and wooden pallets are left on the shore, it is not even necessary. Instead, architecture is just one voice engaged in a dialogue with fishers, the sea, materials and the day’s catch. Architecture’s significance is small in scale, discreet and relational; capable of being adjusted, removed or replaced.
While different artisanal groups often use trade-specific tools and work in distinct coastal areas, there are similarities in the southern Chilean fishing landscape they all share — access to certain materials, how goods are bought and sold, climate, sense of place and a shared cultural identity. Chilean industrial and mechanised fishing industries use permanent piers and warehouses developed and maintained solely for that industry. In contrast, many artisanal fishers, such as seaweed harvesters or individual pescadores, rely on access to public beaches or local paths that lead to the water. The responsibility for maintaining access points – to take care of them – is shared. The line blurs between the individual and the collective as multiple families, ages, and professions collaborate to maintain communal tools, manage beaches, and generate income.
Even though the customary materials have changed over time, from jute and wood to plastics and styrofoam, many of the tools are still fastened, affixed, or used as they were by grandparents: knowledge is passed down, along and through time, to people young and old, and assumes a material form through these micro-installations that are cared for by the artisanal fishers and their families. The techniques of harvest and collection embed the strategies of those who came before and ways of working that will guide those who come after.
It is through these material expressions in the coastal towns of southern Chile that offer insight into qualities of wateriness that are applicable to our practice as designers. Working closely with the sea, artisanal fishers have honed their craft through generations, weaving together traditions, materials, and a deep sense of place. Water’s influence imbues a greater need for adaptability and resourcefulness that can be observed in these quotidian rituals of care. It is not through the simplification of these approaches that we are able to gain insight but rather through water’s synergetic nature that we can better learn to build together.
BRITTANY GIUNCHIGLIANI, a Baltimore-based landscape designer, explores embodiment in the landscape through a feminist lens. Brittany holds a Master’s in Landscape Architecture from Harvard Graduate School of Design.
www.littlejonquil.com and @ourbodiesmadeofwater on Instagram.
