GSD Lecture

"Transversal Grounds" with Sandra Barclay and Jean Pierre Crousse, founders of Barclay & Crousse Architecture.

"Transversal Grounds" with Sandra Barclay and Jean Pierre Crousse, founders of Barclay & Crousse Architecture. 

Architectural practice in South America is often defined by uncertainty, scarcity, and discontinuity in the design and construction processes. New fields of action must be found in the openings and cracks of instability to root architecture in new forms of meaning-building.

The design research led by Barclay & Crousse focuses on the power of imperfection, memory, and the archaic found at the crossroads between landscape, climate, and architecture. The topological approach of their buildings and projects combines a resolutely contemporary design with a careful and open-minded search for the meaningful local conditions that root them in Peruvian society as an act of stubborn resistance to standardization and stereotypes.

In Transversal Grounds, they follow the traces of Alexander Von Humboldt, the scientist who realized that the section, and not the plan, is the only way to understand the Central Andes region. Their journey from the barren landscapes of the desert coast through the steep Mountain range into the Amazon jungle helped them rethink architecture challenges from geographical and cultural conditions. The projects done in the last years through this territorial section understand architecture as a sensitive way of adding meaning to the cultural construction of our environment.

Visit the event page for more information. This event is open to the Harvard community only. 

Contact: events@gsd.harvard.edu