Architectures of Care

Abstract

Our current “Anthropocene-Capitalocene condition asks architecture […] to take care seriously” (Fitz & Krasny, 2019, p. 20). Care for oneself, for the others and the planet in a “life-sustaining web” where architecture is “much part of weaving this web”(Fitz & Krasny, 2019, p. 13). This research departs from two facts:

Firstly, that indigenous populations are the guardians of our genetic biocultural memory as specie –a memory which is genetically recorded, necessary for the survival of any specie- that allows for socioecological resilience. This is, “the capacity of a social productive system to cope and resist unpredictable and catastrophic changes maintaining themselves within their normal state”(Toledo et al., 2009, p. 99). A capacity that in our case, was interrupted by the scientific and industrial revolution (Toledo & Barrera-Bassols, 2008).

Secondly, that in this moment in history, closely associated with the Enlightenment, were established the foundations of the Western program of modernity which entailed a type of thought built on the binary distinction human/non-human that many cultures on Earth do not share. This, according to Braidotti, generated a universalization of Western thought built over a basis of excluded “racialized, sexualized and naturalized others”, creating a sense of exceptionalism over species and bodies including nature, as an endless supply for exploitation (Braidotti, 2013). “Human” is not a neutral term. Who counts as human? Whose knowledge is recognize as valid?. Yet, “Mayas from Yucatan are three thousand years old, pygmies sixty thousand… [and] our civilization has placed itself on the border of collapse in barely three hundred years.”(*) (Toledo et al., 2009, p. 99)

As the need of finding socially and environmentally resilient solutions is highly pressing, this project revises counter-hegemonic architectural practices situating itself on the Zapotec indigenous cosmopraxis from Oaxaca (Mexico): on its episteme and praxis of living, to discuss what it really entails, in our current time, to practice Architectures of Care.

How Zapotec way of thinking, which implies a symbiotic relationship with the environment in a human-non human-nature-culture continuum, is expressed in the house? How this approach, which involves a way of design thinking that totally differs from hegemonic Western approaches, can help us to nurture resilience through inclusive, architectures of care? Could we complement each other’s knowledge for the sake of building a better future for all? [...]