Center for Culture and Ecology Quiané

PROJECT In collaboration with the Mexican non-governmental organisation CAMPO the Centre for Culture and Ecology Quiané is planed and build in and with the community of Santa Catarina Quiané, Oaxaca. The new centre creates a space for working, learning, and recreation. The project supports the sustainable and ecological management of the land and promotes traditional as well as contemporary culture. The center include halls, workshops, a nursery garden, gardens for local plant species and a traditional communal kitchen.

CLIENT & CAMPO A.C. The project is based on a commitment with the community of Santa Catarina Quiané and CAMPO a.c., an NGO that has been supporting communities and production cooperatives in their social, economic and ecological development in the federal state of Oaxaca for the last 30 years. CAMPO promotes the self-confidence of the indigenous population and the exercise of their rights.

SANTA CATARINA QUIANÉ is a small rural community in Oaxaca, one of the poorest states of Mexico. Rural exodus, poverty migration, the loss of cultural identity and earthquakes are the major threats the population is facing. The community has a well-organized civil society and a vibrant culture, but no spaces to practice them.

WE ARE 21 students of architecture and civil engineering of the Munich University of Applied Sciences. With the support of professors and experts, we planned and build a cultural and ecological centre for the inhabitants of Santa Catarina Quiané. The experience of building a project in a foreign context by one‘s own hand not only broadend our cultural horizon but increased our professional competence.

WE  created a meeting place for the inhabitants of Santa Catarina Quiané - a place for dancing, working, learning, playing, cooking and eating. In the first phase,  we build a large aula and the sanitary building with an organic water-treatment plant, a constructed wetland for wastewater treatment.

Technical Description

Blog

gymnasium

The Community of Quiané installed elements for an outdoor gymnasium on the ground of the Center for Culture and Ecology and choose the shaded place near the big tree.

The University of Applied Sciences Munich decided together with the community and the local colaborator CAMPO to design and build a second phase of the centre consisting in a second hall or coverd space and the rebuilding of the commuity kitchen.

 

Book: Quiané DesignBuild Mexico

A book about the planing and building of the Quiané Centre for Culture and Ecology is available on request: Ursula.hartig@cocoon-studio.de

It is bilingual: German and English

Jury 2

At the second jury, three alternative schemes were presented. The decition criteria to select where the following:

overal concept; design quality, use; appropriateness; building phases; feasibility; costs; sustainability; earthquake-adequacy.

After a long and intens discussion, the jury as well as the students voted for the design of group A (former group 4) as final scheme for the further development.

File

181106_1-100Plan.pdf (PDF)

Jury 1

In the first jury, five alterative designs of the whole compound were discussed. The jury decided to extract three different approaches and to merge the similar ones. Group 1 + 2, group 3 + 5 and group 4 continued working for the second jury round.