LIGA 19: Llonazamora (Perú). Grammar
Photography: Luis Gallardo
Contemporary architecture seems to have reached a point of critical tension. On the one hand, real estate speculation threatens its autonomy and, on the other, “pure” art forces it to abandon its social aspirations. This dilemma has given rise to a certain fear among the profession, especially in a globalized world that destabilizes the position that architecture once held in the social sphere. In this scenario, the response has consisted of reinforcing the role played by the figure of the architect as a guarantor of the significance of their discipline, trusting that charismatic figures will restore architecture’s place as the ‘first art’. Thus, in a world where dialogue with other spheres is a must, the architect seems obliged to exaggerate the importance of his work with complex discourses, or to impose his aura as an auteur to materialize his vision of the world.
In this context, it is counter-intuitive to resist the temptation to overestimate authorial talent, opting instead to make things seem simpler than they are. As architecture itself is already complicated enough to pull off, making it seem simple too is no easy task. In fact, this implies distinguishing between simplification (the artificial reduction of the variables involved), synthesis (the forced conclusion of the problem through a project), and articulation (the subjective ordering of the variables in terms of an argument).
If there is something surprising about Llonazamora it is precisely their ability to make the difficult appear simple. Without overestimating their abilities—nor oversimplifying or summarizing—this Peru-based practice has managed to develop a career based on a series of principles capable of defining a field of play in which they move with consummate ease.
For example: how many have failed in their intent to replicate in their own city the model of Learning from Las Vegas? The exercise is not as simple as heading out to record architectural or urban phenomena, since it demands a broad cultural background (in order to be able to distinguish and isolate what is really unique about a place), together with a new perspective generally reserved to a foreigner (such as the South African Denise Scott-Brown, the true discoverer of Las Vegas), or to someone who has lived abroad (like Tzukamoto and Kaijima from Atelier Bow-Wow, who only rediscovered Tokyo after living in Paris).[1]
When Michelle Llona and Rafael Zamora moved to Lima in 2009—having met in Santiago, Chile—they were ready to observe the Peruvian capital from a fresh perspective. We are talking about a city that is no longer the impoverished, underdeveloped Lima to which John Turner moved in the 1960s,[2] or which received Van Eyck, Stirling, and others to design the PREVI Lima housing project.[3] The city rediscovered by Llona and Zamora is a contemporary metropolis, where corporate postmodern architecture share space with Colonial and Republican architecture. This is the city they are able to read with a fresh gaze, extracting from it a series of elements that, like an alphabet, are combined through a set of rules—a grammar—to form a new language.
The danger of naivety entailed by these kinds of exercises (translating the observation directly to the project, as if improving the flavor of the dish only required the addition of extra ingredients) is successfully evaded because the set of rules nullifies the individual value of the elements: language is more important than the alphabet. With Lima as an endless source of resources for articulating a vocabulary, and the rigorous mode of research they learned in the course of their studies in Chile,[4] Llonazamora has managed to develop a contemporary language grounded in existing elements. For example the teatinas—a sort of skylight window typical of Peruvian Republican architecture—become part of the contemporary lexicon when they are transformed into bow windows or hanging staircases.
These are exercises that, when presented as a kind of model kit, seem so simple that they make us forget how hard it is to understand architecture as a game in the Southern Cone countries. For a practice that does not make its living from commissions by wealthy clients, the risks are obvious: either they fall into the cliché of emphasizing how unglamorous it is to work in Latin America, or they overload their projects with artisanal “tics” to fetishize poverty. Llona and Zamora, on the contrary, create an unpretentious architecture, which takes reality as it is without exaggerating the context or the operations undertaken by the project.
In the Barranco Ceramics Workshop, for example—a double-height interior space between partition walls—they succeed in giving an impression of simplicity to both the space and the commission, allowing only the well-trained eye to discover the complexity and skill of the architectural ‘moves’ needed to make this central void seem obvious. Its insertion in the site also shows that the hours spent wandering around Lima have allowed them to understand the city inside out, something that in the age of global architecture and international architects has been lost.
In an age accustomed to eagerly consuming the slogans waved by new gurus who promise to save architecture from shipwreck on the sea of uncertainty, the challenge of the moment is to neither get seasick with complexity, nor surf the wave of fashion. Here are two architects who not only hold a steady course, but also do so in such a way that seems simply simple.
[1] A reference to Made in Tokyo and Pet Architecture, the two books on Tokyo published by Atelier Bow-Wow in 2001.
[2] British architect John Turner worked in Lima’s neighborhoods between 1957 and 1965, a period that allowed him to formulate a participatory vision of architecture, in which the residents must be in charge of constructing their homes. See John Turner, Freedom to Build: Dweller Control of the Housing Process (New York: Macmillan, 1972); and John Turner, Housing by People: Towards Autonomy in Building Environments, Ideas in progress (London: Marion Boyars, 1976)
[3] Fernando García-Huidobro, Diego Torres and Nicolás Tugas, ¡El tiempo construye! Time Builds!. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 2008
[4] Michelle Llona and Rafael Zamora studied a Masters in Architecture at the Universidad Católica de Chile, where they first met.
