Many design students spend their time drawing up proposals for new and functional structures, but they are rarely implemented.

Studio Andino, an open-option design studio available in the spring, allows students to take their abilities and ideas across the globe.

For the last five years, Studio Andino has been focusing on contemporary urban issues in Lima, Peru.

Clare Cardinal-Pett, associate professor of architecture, began the class in 2012 with an interest in taking students to Latin America. It began with her focusing on cities in the Andes mountains that displayed interesting urban development. She was unable to take students to her city of choice, Bogotá, Columbia, as it is on the United State’s Bureau of Consular Affairs travel warning list.

“I’ve wanted to take students to countries in Latin America because the College of Design doesn’t have any study abroad stuff in Latin America, and other parts of campus do,” Cardinal-Pett said. “I did, in 2001, take students to Cuba and that was really a wonderful experience.”

This is how Lima was chosen, although it has a very different ecosystem than Bogotá.

“The more I looked at [Lima], the better it seemed as a possibility,” Cardinal-Pett said.

She connected with Cristina Dreifuss, an architecture professor in Lima, and began the studio.

Lima

Lima is the capital of Peru and one of South America’s largest cities. The city is on the coast and has an extensive history of fish markets.

The unique culture includes a history of squatters, or people who build homes on land that doesn’t belong to them. After a period of time, the land becomes their own and they are able to settle.

This form of urbanization is known as urban informality and is common around South America.

“People have said that maybe 60 percent of Lima was built that way,” Cardinal-Pett said. “You wouldn’t know it because a lot of it looks like a regular city now.”

Many people come to Lima to allow their children the educational benefits of the city.

Studio Andino

The first year that the studio was available, only theoretical research took place. This type of research is typical for the College of Design. Students looked around Lima, investigated issues and proposed plans without implementing them.

“We got a lot of interesting projects the first year,” Cardinal-Pett said.

The second year, students conducted design charrettes with students from the Peruvian University of Science. These charrettes consisted of short bursts of collaborative planning.

“That was so fun that we thought, ‘Maybe we should get these guys together to build something,’” Cardinal-Pett said of the charrettes.

That’s exactly what happened the third year. Students spent the spring semester designing a micro-library for children in Comas, and Spring Break was dedicated to building the structure. The spot where the library is now located was donated to the studio by a soccer club in Comas.

Before arriving in Peru, the studio collected more than 600 donated books in Ames to fill the library, which were then packed with the rest of the students’ luggage.

Last year, the fourth year, the studio had two projects going on at once. One focused on a neighborhood called Manchay.

“These neighborhoods are hot and dusty and they had no shade,” Cardinal-Pett said.  

Studio Andino built shade structures, playground equipment and revamped a soccer field with a mural. Spare tires were a huge aspect of the project, with students painting and making different functioning things out of them.

The other project involved the Chorrillos wharf that needed maintenance to stay relevant next to other more wealthy areas of Lima, a town that is on its way to being a tourist destination. They began their project at the wharf by building a collapsable table for the fish market.

“There’s some hope that with a little bit of help and a little bit of imagination they can start to make the wharf something that would have some sort of long-term viability, so they can keep doing what they’re doing,” Cardinal-Pett said.

The studio was connected with the wharf project by Hector Bombiella, an ISU graduate student in sustainable agriculture who is currently working in Peru, and Max Viatori, associate professor of anthropology. The two provided key input for the studio on cultural context.

“When we were in Peru, we led that group of students and did a day of orientation on the wharf,” Viatori said. “They got a sense of who was there and what they do.”

This year, the studio hopes to return to the wharf. Members began working on the plans when they returned last semester.

“We provided input and feedback on that,” Viatori said of the plans. “We basically functioned as local experts in helping to guide them through that process to get a sense of what might work and what might not work in that particular context.”

In order to pay for the work students implement in Peru, Studio Andino has become the guinea pig for Iowa State’s new crowdfunding website, fundisu.foundation.iastate.edu. A video about the studio and information about it’s previous work can be found on the website.

Donations to this fund will pay for materials and tools, transportation, food and water for students and other expenses directly associated with the design-build projects, according to the website.

The studio hopes to reach its goal of $7,000 to help fund future work in Peru. The page will be available until Oct. 15.