Architectural Design Field Schools
For the past five years, we have had the privilege to work with several cohorts of talented architecture and design students from Humber and Fanshawe College, Toronto, to develop ecological design solutions for Arkaea that will be responsive to the needs our students and the community. For the last ten years, we have collaborated with local communities and institutions in Pucallpa to develop innovative transcultural programming. Our plan was to create a research institute and land-based educational and conservation project at the Aguas Termales Reserve in Huanúco. After having the great fortune of meeting with educator and architect, Craig Crane, founder and director of Situate Design Build University, we discussed the plan of creating a prototype design field school where students could travel to Perú and experience a different perspective, connect with their own values and potential,  and work on real projects with impact.  The first assignment was to be the Arkaea build.
The Humber College Tambo Collective 2018
On 2018, our first group of intrepid explorer/designers came from Humber College department of Interior Design and Architecture.  After spending several classes in June developing their concepts in Toronto with course director, Craig Crane, our young designers embarked to Perú where they experienced one action-packed week of adventure. They first spent several days exploring  Lima where they immersed themselves in Peruvian culture and visited important archaeological and architectural sites, museums and landmarks. They also took campus tours to Peru’s most progressive university, the PUCP, and art school Corriente Alterna, renown for its unique composite architecture combining modern and neoclassical styles.
From Lima, they travelled to Pucallpa, and then on to the Aguas Termales Reserve, the site of Arkaea‘s land concession and the famous “boiling river of the Amazon,” a geothermal river that travels seven kilometres through the rainforest and reaches boiling point in places. Their brief was to create initial designs for individual live-work structures for visiting creatives to stay in on our immersive residencies on the reserve. Their designs were to be modelled off the concept of a tambo, an Amazon hut used for meditation and withdrawal by Amazon healers.  They stayed at Santuario Huishtin traditional medicine centre, where they also also learned about the practice of Amazon Vegetalismo (mestizo plant spirit healing) and took hikes in the rainforest to identify species of medicinal plants and animals on the reserve.  On one of these hikes, they selected their own unique site for their tambo connected to a specific tree. They then returned to Pucallpa, where they developed their ideas and drawings.  Before they returned to Lima,  they also took an excursion to the Santa Clara Shipibo-Conibo community for a tour by then Director of Amazon Permaculture, Marcos UrquÃa.
The Fanshawe Arkaea Tambo Collective 2019
In 2019, students embarked from Fanshawe College, Ontario, Canada, on an architectural field school to develop a master site plan and tambo design for Arkaea. As an experiential arts school and research institute, one of the unique design challenges of Arkaea’s design is the build “tambos” or live/work residential pods where creative researchers can spend extended time developing their projects immersed in the rainforest.
After spending several days in Lima exploring archaeological precedents and cultural sites, they headed to Pucallpa and on to the rainforest field site at the Aguas Thermales Reserve. There, they brilliantly conceived of the master plan of the concession site and concepts for an innovative tambo (live/work studio space), modelled on the form of a seedpod. The group then returned to Lima where they developed their final ideas and presentation on campus at the department of Architecture and Urbanism at the PUCP.