Buscando la voz del lugar, después del vértigo de sumergirme en una ciudad, el D.F. Mexicano, que tiene al Ecuador entero en sí misma, emergí con la acumulación en Tepito, un barrio poco visitado por “visitantes”, que encarna mucho esa identidad “amontonada” mexicana, chilanga. Esta es una compilación irresponsable e innecesaria de imágenes, ya que no tiene un fin social ni de denuncia, si no puramente de placer y deleite estético. Sin embargo, con una fuerte posición política, esta fotografía no busca ser documental, sin embargo, documenta la vida de un lugar, sin mostrar vida en sí mismo, y a partir de su memoria retrata su apretada esencia.

An old lady's words during the building process of a participatory design with a community: “But this is what we thought might be ideal?” Versus her husband, a construction worker: “But this is the way it should be done!” When dealing with participatory design processes sometimes the opinion of the experts are the ones always honoured and the minorities, not in quantity but in voice, are underestimated. This paper is based on a case study of three different design processes taken place on the rural community of San Jose de Olaes- Ecuador, dealing with the importance of the voice of the minority, in this case represented by the women of a community, and the men's voice, usually the working force. We will illustrate this process and how it has both positive and negative consequences on the project and community relationships.

Based on a case study taken place in the jungle community of Santa Rita-Ecuador, we will refer on the negative and positive impacts of the technology transfer system, acknowledging the differences, seeing this as a product versus a process. The product approach will have an impact in form and shape and the process approach on concept ideas and ideals. What may be better for communities? Taking in consideration that sometimes communities might need immediate product solution for their necessities but in the long run empowerment escorted by the people and collaborative processes lead to successful technology transfer and empowered-independent communities.

On April 16, 2016, Ecuador had suffered a 7.8 earthquake. The experience designing and building of Meche´s house, a post-disaster alternative building process, is analyzed in this paper applying Martin Heidegger´s concepts of Dwelling, Being in the World and Being There. These allow better understanding to the idea of housing in the community where the object is built, to visualize its most symbolic space, also it enables to see how the users of the built dwelling make it their own, the construction, form and materials despite that in the beginning of the construction process they did not accept them. This article tries to explain two questions: The house of Meche reflects its habitat: Where is it built? And how Meche, who is the homeowner, and the participants make the house and experience their own, in order to replicate the appropriate construction and resilience.

Meche´s House is an alternative post-disaster construction, and this is the study of its bioclimatic approach showing that social and post-disaster buildings also need this kind of research. Tropical climate conditions lead to buildings having a high energy consumption for cooling loads. In Ecuador, the energy consumption of the residential area is 28.78% of final demand. Also, there is very little relevant information on the analysis of bioclimatic design in buildings, as well as specific analysis of interior comfort. The carried-out analysis process considered methods of bioclimatic evaluation, which mainly focuses on building the user’s comfort. For this reason, in the first place, the site climatic conditions and possible passive intervention strategies were determined. Followed by the evaluation of natural ventilation with which it was possible to evaluate the effectiveness of natural ventilation through simulations in Computational Fluid Dynamics program. Furthermore, thermal comfort analysis using an Energy Plus program is used for comparing the internal temperature ranges versus indoor natural ventilation. Finally, the data is discussed under an adaptive comfort and user perception of satisfaction. This research confirms the need to carry out bioclimatic evaluations of projects conceived under a good line of architectural design, since only in this way will it be possible to demonstrate that the proposed considerations and strategies have positive or negative outcomes.

This research seeks to distinguish which factors influence the ecological footprint and what types of construction have the least environmental impact in a post-disaster social housing building. The first case study is a government social housing design, built with bamboo and concrete masonry blocks, and another design by Ensusitio, a private practice approach to social housing built with bamboo and earth. These houses were granted to victims of the April 2016 earthquake in the Ecuadorian coastal region. The investigation process was carried out based on primary research, which was used to understand how Ensusitio carried out the construction process of Meche's house and also based on a secondary investigation of government social housing. With this information, a comparison is made between them to determine which of the two has the least ecological footprint.