Marine Gigandet & Janosh Kirchherr & Johannes Pfeifle (FS23)

The verb purii, in the Inga language, means: to go, travel, walk, stroll.

We received an invitation from the Inga people to walk together with them between the Andes mountains and the Amazon rainforest in the south of Colombia. The Inga People are one of the 103 indigenous groups recognised nationally in Colombia and are currently in the process of creating their own higher education institution called AWAI (which means weaving in inga language). The goal of this institution is to legitimize ancestral Inga knowledge and to give future generations access to higher level education without having to leave their territory. The teaching will be intercultural and plural, combining western sciences with their ancestral knowledge. Therefore this future Institution will be named Pluri-versity instead of uni-versity.

While in Colombia we talked and shared many stories, most of which happened during long walks. The line guiding us throughout the territory was the ancestral paths of the inga, called ruku ñambi. These paths date back to pre-colonial times and are said to be part of the qhapaq ñan - the main communication and trade artery of the Inca people.This project aims to acknowledge these ancestral paths and the knowledge they anchor. Our contribution will be to highlight what is already there and imagine how those existing paths could become part of the future Pluriversity infrastructure.

To support its use, we implemented some places of rest, echoing the Inca typology of the tampu - a mixed use structure situated a day’s walk from each other. In this context, such a space can offer a protective presence - a place of care for the territory, the path and the body. Groups of people from both sides of the path can regroup around the tulpa - the traditional Inga fire pit - and share food and stories. Those punctual interventions are there to support a network of walking based education which we see complementary to the project of a Pluriversity spread on the territory. They could serve as anchors for future development of the AWAI infrastructure. The construction of the tampu is based on mostly non-extractive methods - using what is available around the sites themselves and can be transported mainly by foot or by horse.

Walking alongside the Inga people has led us to reflect upon our own reality. Global warming, biodiversity loss and social inequalities are resulting from extractive economic processes and architecture is one of them. Walking can help us open our narrow gaze to include all forms of built environment - human and nonhuman. This also helps us reconnect with our environment and lead toward a more inclusive design. In this context, every step of the building construction is important and design doesn’t stop with the construction process but rather embraces its ongoingness and long lasting effects on people and the environment.

The master thesis work is accessible on the following website: https://purii.space/