A ranch for Fernando Birri: Project strategies for an architecture of resistance

Abstract

From the mid-twentieth century, modernising theory established a socio-economic model in which the traditional was placed at the antipodes of progress, especially for "underdeveloped" Latin America. In architecture, however, several exponents captured the essence of popular habitation as a dialogue between the conditions of modern space and the gestures of local tradition in terms of uses, materials and  construction techniques. The Sapukay house for the filmmaker Fernando Birri was more than a transculturation in a modern Latin American key. Within the framework of critical regionalism, his project - an epistolary manifesto between professional and client - makes visible the deals of social transformation that constitute it as an architecture of resistance. In order to approach this singular case study, this essay structures the analysis of the technical-project documentation on the basis of the six points proposed by Frampton in the framework of a critique of regional architecture.