Undeclared Colonial Types in Modern Ecuadorian Architecture

Abstract

Studying ordinary housing types in Quito for a design studio activity led me to question the limitations of local theoretical accounts of incorporating non-canonical works in the literature. This essay develops this idea and analyzes how housing designs by Sixto Durán Ballén and Diego Ponce Bueno are portrayed in important architectural publications by employing diverse uses of the notion of type, allowing the way coloniality is reproduced in domestic spaces to be obliterated. The essay concludes by positing a speculative decolonial type, focused on communal spaces as the basis for experimentation rather than type as a pre-existing image or prejudiced model.

Keywords

• type
• decolonial
• quito
• housing
• informal
• canon
• domesticity