Architectures of Care. From the Zapotecs to the Cosmos

On the importance of Design Driven Research for this project

The lava brick shown in [ 1 ], is a product of a situated project that served as a vehicle to experience-through-making the house-workshop of a Zapotec woman artisan who hosted me during three long periods of time. There are two ways of tacit knowing in the process of working with clay: one that externalizes the knowledge of the thinking body, this is, materializing in the brick embodied memories, such as Mexico’s earthquake from 2017, as well as my training as architect; and, another, which is internalized while making the object, as a result of new bodily memories created in the process of making, as well as through the daily experience of the spaces where the activity took place. Through the daily work in the spaces of analysis, was possible to tacitly assimilate, the practical and symbolic function of the spaces, their everyday dynamics, embedded rituals and myths that structure and give meaning to them. The thinking body of the designer-maker becomes an essential tool in the process of understanding the Zapotec practical philosophy. The thinking mind comes into play when the architectural analysis is made a posteriori, processing this information and making explicit a vast cultural knowledge embedded in the spaces that otherwise could have been overlooked due to their seemingly “simple” or “uninteresting” look and materiality.

Experimental forms of knowledge sharing are carried through objects and exhibitions, such as the recent Xunaxhidó’. Worlds within Worlds [ 2 ][ 3 ][ 4 ]. A result of weaved stories and experiences: the seism, the cycles of birth-death-and-rebirth from the Mesoamerican tradition, myths, rituals, the Earth and the Cosmos; as well as the role that women play within all these conceptions and events, weaving their community and their every day.