A craft issue: approaches to constructability in the works of Rafael Iglesia and Solano Benítez

Abstract

Since the end of the 1990s, there have been architectural works in southern Latin America that problematize different issues linked to the concepts of structure and construction. Among them, the works of Rafael Iglesia and Solano Benítez are highlighted. Both architects have dealt with material and structural forms that are part of building itself. While emphasizing constructability, they develop a critical approach to contemporary architectural culture. Leaving aside the already extemporaneous notions of regionalism and identity, their works embody topics and concerns that interact with a conceptual spectrum which shows a strained relationship with the notion of tectonics. They account for technical knowledge, some sort of construction ethics and faithfulness to a consciously optimistic search for the reciprocal relationship between resources and challenges. Each one of the commissions entails an opportunity to explore, revalue and give a new meaning to the conditions of production. Thus, Iglesia and Benítez propose renewed questions and discuss ways of conceiving and doing architecture that nourish the permanent elaboration of a disciplinary knowledge which conveys the support and commitment of the builder’s craft. The aim of this analysis is to reflect on the role played by constructability in the recent architectures of Iglesia and Benítez. Both of them envisage their discipline as a form of unfinished universal knowledge.