The Las Tejedoras Community Productive Development Center in rural Ecuador, the recipient of the 2024 MCHAP.emerge award from the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize, stands as a tangible symbol of community, reflecting the active contributions of local residents in its construction and ongoing activities. Realised in local materials with local flora imbuing its central patio, the two-story centre sought to become an integrative space for a growing collective of unemployed craftswomen in the locality, who, prior to its realisation, lacked a dedicated space to develop their productive skills and activities in a meaningful manner.

Aimed at enabling these women weavers to express themselves and their aspirations, the community design project, situated on the outskirts of the urban community of Chongón, Ecuador in South America, is nourished with a ‘radical and concise’ intent — a place of purpose, built by and for the community.

“Architecture as a tool for the insertion, linkage and support of women weavers”

The narrative begins in Chongón, home to about 4,900 people, with a majority of women excluded from its economically active sections and carrying little to no possibility of entering and succeeding in the labour niche. Since 2009, the philanthropic Young Living Foundation has dedicated itself to generating programs empowering communities through education and entrepreneurship. It commenced the Young Living Academy, where approximately 150 low-income children, whose mothers are part of the local productive workshops, study. This led to the formation of the Organization of Bromelias Artisan Women, the group focusing on their development through handmade fabrics and natural fibres. Over time, Las Bromelias has grown its active members, resulting in a requirement for new, dedicated space that supports, hosts and enables its activities.

Las Tejedoras thus developed its design and construction through the transdisciplinary work of the Young Living Foundation, together with Las Bromelias, who reached out to designers and architects José Fernando Gómez Marmolejo (founder of Natura Futura) and Juan Carlos Bamba (founder of Juan Carlos Bamba), with an objective to generate a productive centre for learning, integration-exchange and the eventual sales of artisan handicrafts. “The purpose is that the work processes are a training and insertion tool, for which several construction workshops were held with the community and family members of the academy, in order to generate skills that help strengthen local and environmental development,” the project’s description relays.

“Las Tejedoras seeks to be a space for [the] intermediation of productive development processes, linking unemployed women through active participation, the potentiation of local artisan techniques and the revitalisation of learning as an empowerment tool,” the architects relay. The community centre thus becomes a safe public space, proffering workshops for the women artisans supported by the foundation and extending education to adults to complete their primary and secondary schooling in its premises. Beyond its programme, it emerges as a congregational place, one of inspiration and light-hearted interactions, one that reaches many corners of the community, making an impact with its focus on education and skill development, community engagement and social interactions.

Conscious architecture through participatory design

The architects also highlight the active participation of the women weavers in the centre’s design and how they have continued to be involved in its functioning, emphasising the project fulfilling its mission of dignifying their work and supporting their ambition to learn and grow. As Gómez and Bamba tell STIR, “The women weavers, through the organisation Las Bromelias, had been working with the Young Living Foundation long before we were commissioned to design the centre. Therefore, community involvement has been integral from the very conception. They later assisted in designing the program of requirements, building walls, cultivating endemic vegetation and are currently involved in programming activities at the centre.”

As stated by Gómez and Bamba, the main facets of the textile workspace and community centre emerged primarily from the process of developing and building it with the women weavers. Concurrently, its design was inspired by the traditional techniques the locals utilise to construct their wooden homes as well as the ancestral knowledge of building in a natural environment with a tropical climate like Chongón’s.  

According to the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize, the development centre is situated near an urban development project from the Guayaquil municipality, where 180 hectares of dry tropical forest were cleared during construction. “The project is expressed as a criticism of such residential development by incorporating endemic vegetation that manages to reveal new possibilities of environmentally conscious architectures, with the intention of encouraging debate towards the generation of public policies aligned with the SDG (sustainable development goals),” as noted in the project's official description on the Prize’s website.

Elaborating on the same, Bamba and Gómez tell STIR, “We believe the project had to be a manifesto against the destructive urban development currently taking place in the city of Guayaquil, proposing sustainable alternatives from a social, environmental and economic perspective through a radical and concise project.”

The community architecture’s central patio is conceived as a meeting and exhibition space surrounded by endemic vegetation, contained by two side naves and a central one — one of them hosts theoretical training classrooms, a cafeteria and hygienic services while the other features practical learning workshops, sleeping spaces, warehouses and a store to sell the products developed in the central nave, where the artisan fabrics are made.

“Endemic vegetation has been planted based on the advice of the La Iguana Foundation, experts in plant-based solutions. Currently, the guarumo trees and bromeliads have grown, and the bioclimatic performance of the courtyard has improved,” the authors tell STIR, elaborating on their salient effort against the region’s rapid deforestation.

The main front is a productive exhibition gallery, which doubles up as a filter for the lushly planted courtyard design and as an element generating urbanity towards the street, the architects mention. In contrast, the rear façade is more closed off towards the dividing space, providing greater control and security. Supporting the roof and the upper level’s floor, young, round teak wood articulates the main structure, a ubiquitous regional material used for the base supports of stilt houses in vulnerable areas here, owing to its hardness and durability.

Folding wooden lattice doors (a common element in the architecture of the Ecuadorian coast known as chazas, as per Bamba) were also created and incorporated to help control ventilation and illumination. These screens create flexible, naturally ventilated spaces that maintain occupant comfort sans air conditioning — an impressive feat given the region’s high humidity and temperature levels. The local earthen brick walls of the community building feature a herringbone weave pattern, stiffened by the very shape of the interlocked brick themselves, adding to the design’s subtle details and appeal.

Architectural activism in public buildings involves conceptualising and creating frameworks for projects that promote social equity, affordability, cultural relevance and environmental justice. It also carries, in tandem, a hope and vision to conceive inclusive and resilient communities through conscious and responsible practices. Central to this approach/ vocation/ intention is the keyword of ‘participatory design,’ which rethinks spaces and practises to effectively meet the needs of the communities they serve, where its members are actively involved in the development of projects, ensuring their voices are heard, their contributions seen and polished, and their stories told — as manifested and attested in the mindful design of the Las Tejedoras Community Productive Development Center.

Project Details

Name: Las Tejedoras
Location: Chongón, Guayaquil, Ecuador
Client: Young Living Foundation - Andrea Ollague
Architect: José Fernando Gómez Marmolejo (designer, founder of Natura Futura) + Juan Carlos Bamba (designer, founder of Juan Carlos Bamba)
Management and administration: Young Living Foundation
Collaborators: Pablo Ponce (principal builder); Andrea Ollague, Hector Perlaza, Fundacion La Iguana, Bromelias, Andres Ortega; Andres Ortega, Cynthia Rosero (graphics); Escape Fotografía (drone); Jaime Peña (illustrations)
Year of Completion: 2023