Patricia Guaita
Nationalité: espagnole et suisse
Domaines de compétences
architect, teacher and researcher
multidisciplinary projects
design methodologies in 1:1 fabrication
experiential learning processes
knowledge transfer with Latin America
multidisciplinary projects
design methodologies in 1:1 fabrication
experiential learning processes
knowledge transfer with Latin America
Biographie
Patricia Guaita is an architect, teacher and researcher. She is currently Head of Techne in the ALICE laboratory at the Swiss Federal School of Technology (EPFL). She is an Invited Professor for the Joint Master of Architecture in Fribourg with Raffael Baur.She founded the Open City Research Platform, a 1:1 fabrication research project in collaboration with Dr. David Jolly Monge at the Ead PUCV Valparaíso (Chile). Beginning in the summer of 2014, and continuing each summer since, the research has pursued the design and fabrication of a research center for the school’s Open City, an experimental community of architects and designers located on the Pacific coast.
In parallel, with Sony Devabhaktuni and Dr. CorneliaTapparelli, she is co-editor of Building Cultures Valparaiso (Routledge/EPFL Press), a collection of essays and archival drawings that looks at the relationship between teaching, practice and poetry at the Open City.
With Raffael Baur she is also leading a research on the reinforced concrete construction methods developed by João Filgueiras Lima (known as Lélé) for public facilities in Brazil in the1970s and 80s.The research seminar (Unité d'enseignement) is developped in collaboration with Dr. Miguel Fernandez Ruiz from the EPFL Structural Concrete Laboratory, and the Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade Federal da Bahia (FAUFBA).
Since 2018, she is a PhD Candidate at the Universidad San Pablo-CEU, CEU Universities Madrid.
Apart from her teaching activities, since 2009 Guaita works as an independent architect.
She is interested in small scale projects in Switzerland and collaborates with different partners. Prior to establishing her own practice, she collaborated with ateliers in Madrid and Geneva.
Between 1995-1999 Guaita worked on infrastructural reconstruction projects in Bosnia-Herzegovina, first as a collaborator with Architects Without Borders and later as a project manager and coordinator with Doctors of the World.
She studied in Madrid and Venice and received her architecture degree with a specialization in urbanism from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (ETSAM).
Publications
Publications Infoscience
2021
Docta Manus Drawing Structures, UE GC EPFL Lausanne
2021-09-21.Une architecture à la manière d’un jardin: construction incrémentale à la Ciudad Abierta
Tracés. 2021-09-14.A prototype pavilion in textile reinforced concrete: a tool for research and pedagogy
2021. International fib Symposium - Conceptual Design of Structures 2021, Attisholz Areal, Solothurn, Switzerland, September 16-18, 2021. DOI : 10.35789/fib.PROC.0055.2021.CDSymp.P063.Notes on learning through building in the Open City: Body, Craft and Materiality
Building for Architecture Education Architekturpädagogiken. Lucerne Talks; Zurich: Park Books, 2021. p. 210.2020
An experiential learning approach to educational development: Responses to teaching architecture through the lenses of reflective practice
2020-12-09. International Consortium for Educational Development ICED 2020, Zurich, Switzerland, 15-18 June, 2020. p. 422-427.Textile reinforced concrete for sustainable structures: Future perspectives and application to a prototype pavilion
Structural Concrete. 2020-01-29. DOI : 10.1002/suco.201900511.2019
The potential of textile reinforced concrete for design of innovative structures
2019. Madrid, Spain.Building Duration / El Portico de los Huespedes
2019. 107th Annua2019 Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) 107th Annual Meeting: Black Box: Articulating Architecture's Core in the Post-Digital Era, Pittsburgh, PA, March 28-30, 2019. p. 127-128.2018
Pedagogy through artisanal construction of thin-walled concrete elements: a dialogue between engineering and architecture
2018. IV Int. Conference on structural engineering education without borders, Madrid, Spain, 2018.2015
Building Cultures Valparaiso: pedagogy practice and poetry at the Valparaiso School of Architecture and Design
Lausanne: EPFL Press.2013
ALICE y1 2012-2013
2013.2012
ALICE y1 2011-2012
2012.2011
Annuaire 2010-2011: Mondes archipels, La ville entière
2011.Sélection de publications
| Guaita, P., Baur, R. JMA, HEIA Fribourg, 2020,2021 |
Construction Cycles: Analysis, Reiteration, Innovation |
Recherche
The possibility of a new building paradigm
“The possibility of a new building paradigm thanks to Textile Reinforced Concrete"
Seed Money Grant 2020, Leading House Latin America, St Gallen
This research project investigates innovative and sustainable concrete construction systems for the formal and informal city. It emerges from the global need for safe and adequate shelter to be built from a sustainable and efficient perspective, requiring a new building paradigm. Within this frame, a step forward is proposed by exploring the application of an innovative material and its implications on architecture and building technology. This project is based on the use of innovative Textile Reinforced Concrete (TRC), a material with high mechanical properties where a carbon fabric is embedded in a cementitious matrix cast with low-clinker content cements. The use of such cement together with the high efficiency of the material allows to dramatically reduce the ecological footprint of construction (use of less material, associated to a lower energy-consumption for production). The use of TRC allows thus building very thin and highly durable structures. In this research, the use of is implemented in the construction of a prototype pavilion in Fribourg (Switzerland). This work considers sustainability from a wide perspective, not only environmental, but also social and economic. Such a holistic approach requires research at the material level, structural efficiency, building potential (modularity), possibility of building in small and large communities and with different approaches (craftsmanship, industrialization/prefabrication).
Co-PI applicants:
Miguel Fernández Ruiz, Senior Scientist, ENAC IIC IBETON
Patricia Guaita, scientist and lecturer, ENAC IA ALICE
Pr. Sergio Kopinski Ekerman, FAUFBA Salvador de Bahia
A Prototype Pavilion in TRC
"A Prototype Pavilion in Textile Reinforced Concrete"
ENAC Exploratory grant 2018, EPFL Fribourg
The ENAC format offers to start at the intersection of research and practice, of teaching and learning, of engineering and architecture. What is possible as symbiosis of structural, architectonic and environmental research with a high-performance material such as textile reinforced concrete? How can this point of convergence of different fields be used to explore a material / construction technique that has as its promise a radical reduction of material quantity whichcomes hand in hand with the augmentation of its spatial quality?
PI applicant:
Raffael Baur, scientist and lecturer, ENAC IA ALICE
Other applicants:
Patricia Guaita, scientist and lecturer, ENAC IA ALICE
Miguel Fernández Ruiz, Senior Scientist, ENAC IIC IBETON
Patrick Valeri, doctoral assistant, ENAC IA IIC IBETON
Dr. David Fernández-Ordóñez, Invited Professor, ENAC IA IIC IBETON Secretary General, International Federation for Structural Concrete.
Social Concrete
"Social Concrete, Argamassa Armada: Recovering a Building Technology for Social Housing in Salvador de Bahía",
Seed Money Grant 2017, Cooperation & Development Center, CODEV in collaboration with I-BETON, LASUR and the FAUFBA, Brazil.
Argamassa Armada is a building technology developed by the Brazilian architect João Filgueiras Lima (known as Lelé), that facilitates slender building elements fabricated on site and assembled without the use of cranes. The project proposes to further develop, test and use argamassa armada in a technologically advanced manner for the design and building of elements for social housing units in poor urban contexts, beginning witha test-case in the city where the technology was first developed, Salvador de Bahia, Brazil.
PI applicants:
Patricia Guaita, scientist and lecturer, ENAC IA ALICE
Partners FAUFBA
Prof. Dr. Ana Maria Fernandes, Architect and Urban Planner, Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade Federal da Bahia
Enseignement & Phd
Enseignement
Architecture
Design Together ENAC
Open City Research Platform, Lausanne_Valparaiso
The “Open City Research Platform” was founded as a collaboration between the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology - Lausanne (EPFL) and the Open City / School of Architecture and Design of the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaiso (ead-PUCV) in Chile. Since 2014, this collaboration has brought together students from Europe and Chile to work on the incremental building of El Pórtico de los Huéspedes (The Threshold of the Guests)for the Open City.
Every August, around 20 students from Switzerland travel to Ritoque to join Chilean colleagues for the design and building of new elements of El Pórtico. Students are tasked with moving the project forward both through the design and construction; they work directly on the site of El Pórtico with limited tools, local material sand an attitude toward work characterized by collaboration and exchange. The goal of the summer school is to provide an innovative pedagogical context for students to develop a heightened awareness of how the fabrication of architecture can be in a cultural, social, ecological and poetic relation with place and community.
The summer workshop sensitized Swiss students to multiple issues specific to the local context: structural requirements in a seismically active region; ways of building more efficiently with slender timber members; techniques for ephemeral foundations; siting decisions based on seasonal wind directions, etc. In their collaborative work, Swiss and Chilean participants exchange techniques for fabrication and design based on observation and testing. This creates conditions for knowledge exchange and broadens an understanding of how the built environment, sustainability and development are linked to a local context. Students work directly with wood, brickand concrete, testing material behavior and limits. Designing and building enter into a reciprocal relationship, such that construction becomes a projective activity revealing as key factors resilient construction, economies of material and a rooted relationship to place.
The workshop takes place during one week in Lausanne and three weeks in Chile, with 20 students from Swiss schools of architecture and engineering (bachelor and master) taking part along with 10 Chilean students from the ead-PUCV.
Project Team
Patricia Guaita, Lecturer and Scientist, ENAC IA ALICE EPFL
David Jolly, Professor, Ead PUC Valparaíso, Chile
Invited Experts
Raffael Baur, Architect, Zürich
Victoria Jolly, architect, Prof. Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, School of Architecture, CorporaciónCultural Amereida, Chile
Romain Dubuis, Architect EPFL
Patrick Valeri, Doctoral Assistant, ENAC IIC IBETON, EPFL
Project partners
Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology, ETH Board
School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering ENAC EPFL
School of Architecture, SAR, ENAC, EPFL and Institute of Architecture, IA, ENAC, EPFL
Comision Nacional de Investigacion Cientifica y Tecnologica (CONICYT), Chile
AVINA Stiftung (2014-16)
IKEA Foundation (2019)
Cours
UE génie civil : Docta Manus
L'Unité introduira le dessin comme l'outil clé de la communication entre ingénieurs et architectes et comme médiateur entre la construction et l'étudiant. Grâce au dessin, nous analyserons des projets structurels sélectionnés qui incarnent une interaction exemplaire entre l'espace et la structure.
Making structural logic
This ENAC week provides students with the opportunity to apply theoretical structural principles in an applied context through the collaborative design of textile reinforced concrete shells that test structural and material limits. The ENAC week will take place in the Blue Factory at EPFL Fribourg.
Argamassa armada
The UE Argamassa Armada will develop prototypes of structural elements in textile reinforced concrete (TRC) that allow the continuation of the TRC prototype pavilion started at EPFL Fribourg in 2019. The UE will take place in the Blue Factory in Fribourg.