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Tapia pisada

Kristofer Mattsson

Diplomprosjekt

Høst 2021
Institutt for arkitektur

Andrea Pinochet
Lina Borstrom
I am Norwegian with both parents from Colombia. I wished to study Colombia through its vernacular architecture. Globally, Colombia ranks high in the number of displaced people. Internally due to a decade long civil war, and externally due to a Venezuelan migration crisis. I was curious about what architecture and context this would lead me to.  Cucuta is a major border city that has received the largest impact of the migration crisis. Cucuta practically functions as a bottleneck of Venezuelan migrants and Colombian returnees. 

There is a new policy that allows Venezuelans to stay for a minimum of 2 years and thus there is an assumption that many will continue to stay. Therefore education is relevant as migrating children will need educational facilities to integrate well into Colombian society.  This problem however is not exclusive to Cucuta but towns and rural areas along much of the Colombia-Venezuela border, which introduces a variety of issues such as material and labour procurement due to the remoteness of many of these locations. 

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Rammed earth as a construction material and method is well known in Colombia. When the environmental conditions are met this method is well suited to make buildings. This method has also contemporary precedence in Colombia including historical precedence in Cucuta. In the past decades, this method has been declining due to the association of earth-buildings to poverty and relatively high maintenance cost. Conversely, there is growing awareness of this building tradition as it has become popular among tourists and is proving to be a highly sustainable material. The ambition was to explore ways to use earth and reintroduce it to Cucuta and possibly, propose a school in or near Cucuta.

My process took 3 approaches:
•    Learning through reading and reference observation of buildings in Colombia and Cucuta.
•    Learning through earth sampling and physical labour.
•    Learning through Sketching and modelling. 

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These three approaches did not follow a neat chronological timeline as the reading happened evenly from pre diploma to the very end of the project. This included research on contemporary rammed earth precedence in Colombia, historical rammed earth in south-America and Colombia, Contemporary rammed earth in Europe, precedence studies of existing rammed earth sites in Colombia, reading structural analysis of rammed earth buildings and reading about Colombian cultural heritage. 

The earth samples had a focused start and lasted approximately to the middle of the semester. Here I explored intuitively, through ramming different types of earth mixes in a custom formwork and further modifying as I progressed. As well  as attempting to mimic the ramming process by making a 1:1 earth sample. This dedication to material led to a basic understanding of the earth as a building material as well as a realisation that it can take a lifetime to study rammed earth types as there is little to no formalised approaches.

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Sketching and modelling was the conclusion of the two previous phases. Combining knowledge of climate, construction technique, as well as material strengths and contextual orientation. As well as translating this knowledge to a model making method.. Working from a specific site I was able to decide what kinds and structural orientations, availability of materials, create spatial relations between buildings and between nature. Further understanding the hierarchy of material. And testing the material stability through modelling. In other words, the project explores a technique and is a foundation for further design. The project’s conclusion is not a final architectural iteration, rather it is an open ending, where I have decided to conclude with a method to design and explore.
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Kristofer Mattsson / kristofer-mattsson@hotmail.com