Boris Lefevre, Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture, Paris, France

Productive Architecture: Can architecture help to empower marginalized communities as an economic & social development tool, allowing its users to reaffirm a common identity?

Like Cerro de Pasco, the existence of a large part of the South American mining cities derives directly from the need for a significant workforce presence. Thousands of families, sometimes against their will, sometimes in search of a better future, settled there for the unique purpose of putting their energy in the service of a single economic activity. The mine, a predominant production tool, then tended to give the inhabitants a feeling of a common identity, and to legitimize their presence in territories, which were sometimes very hostile. However, the mechanization of mining techniques now leads to a significant decline in the proportion of local workers in mining activity. Like Cerro de Pasco, some of these cities continue to grow, but they are going through deep identity and social crises, which are accentuated by worrying economic, sanitary and environmental issues.

Water is the hot topic among the project entries for the Holcim Awards in region Latin America. Whether for wastewater, drinking water, or tidal water, many of the prize winners have innovative and often surprising proposals for ways to master the use of this precious resource in Latin America.

Located in a contaminated body of water – formerly known as “the lake to drink” – in the city of Cerro de Pasco in Peru, the new construction offers the unpretentious need to inhabitants for washing themselves in clean, potable water. Combining a sewage treatment plant with baths and 400 shower cabins, the design is treated as a well-crafted and beautifully designed monument in the lake, albeit one satisfying basic functions desperately needed by the city population. The project’s ambition to provide both clean water as well as a place to bathe is a response to the wasteful use of an existing resource by ruthless industrial exploitation. Though poetic in its architectural expression, the design’s political message cannot be overlooked, namely, to treat both the natural environment and humans with greatest respect.

Architecture as an ethical position: a social response to a deeply symbolic context

Cerro de Pasco, mining town in the Andes founded in the 16th Century, has grown on a mineral deposit. Since the 1950s, an open pit mine is devouring the city from the inside. It has already destroyed a large part of the historical center, and will keep growing as long as Western society expands.

The combination of industry and public baths (which have always been symbols of a city within the city, in the Roman tradition as well as in the Inca tradition) makes sense. It’s an allegorical response to the deeply symbolic form of the city. Cerro de Pasco has always been closer to a factory than a city. People only live there to produce. The project questions this urban model. It offers an alternative to the productivist city of “living next to”: a city of “living together”.