When our committee member Katrien was living in Ecuador, her base camp was PROMAS University of Cuenca. She worked there mainly by order of Domus Mundi. Now she is back, but we still have got lots of plans and ideas.
An SIG course in a postgraduate training
Domus Mundi gave the ‘Spatial analysis in SIG’ (Module 4) training in the ‘Higher degree in drainage basins and population management’ at the University of Cuenca, Ecuador. This postgraduate training stimulates the study, the understanding and the right interpretation of possible uses of land, the location of productive activities and the establishment of communities, both from a socio-economical and an ecological perspective. We mainly stress the optimal use of natural resources and a better life quality.
Adobe in the Andes
Domus Mundi followed the architect Wilson Pacarucu during his task for the VLIR IUS project at the University of Cuenca, more specifically in the ‘World Heritage City Preservation Management’ part. Because of his deep knowledge of historical adobe building methods in the Andes, the architect Pacarucu, who makes his theses within the VLIR IUS Project, is a valuable information source for Domus Mundi.
Modern architecture still considers adobe as primitive and old-fashioned. It is ‘the poor man’s brick’, and is therefore not considered as a full-fledged building material. In the Ecuadorian Andes villages, the expensive and ‘prestigious’ concrete brick gains ground over the cheaper, humidity regulating loam adobe. Once the house is ready, the farmers regret their way too expensive investment. The concrete house lacks the warmth and the humidity regulating characteristics of the loam huts, both aspects that are very important at an altitude of 3500 metres. The farmers themselves return to their loam huts, while their cattle stays in the concrete building. Domus Mundi’s message is clear: loam is a full-fledged building material.
Construction of schools in and around Guayaquil
Children from the poor slums around the megalopolis of Guayaquil often don’t have the possibility to go to school. In Ecuador, education is far more expensive than in Europe. In order to offer those children the possibility to leave the vicious circle of poverty and illiteracy.
First and foremost, free kindergarten education has to be provided in neighbourhoods where people haven’t got any money. The Belgian-Ecuadorean social-profit organization Membol undertakes that task. Currently, we are checking if we can offer support for the renovation of some schools in these slums.
Membol also plans the construction of a small school on the countryside just outside Guayaquil. Along with some students of KaHo Sint-Lieven, Domus Mundi has studied the conditions to draw up this school, so that it can be really sustainable: a healthy interior climate without additional charges, attainable and imitable by the local population, environment-friendly, socially accepted…
