Treasures of the origins
Sweeping away the beliefs that the forest is a virgin land, the sites of the Río Abiseo National Park, dating back 6,000 years for the oldest, testify to an astonishing mastery of space (road network, agricultural terraces) and an impressive ceremonial architecture. Elements that can be found in the sacred city of Caral-Supe whose origins go back 5,000 years. We discover a city of earth and stone organized around monumental platforms and large circular courtyards as well as impressive pyramidal structures. At that time, the seismic situation preoccupied the builders who arranged at the base of the houses shicras, baskets of stones, intended to dissipate the waves. Jewel of the Chavín culture, the Chavín site of Huántar, ceremonial and cultural center, has majestic buildings in dressed stone and impressive artificial terraces, the whole overhanging an incredible network of underground galleries serving at the same time as ventilation and canalization ducts. The site is also famous for its decorative wealth. Zoomorphic, anthropomorphic and geometrical motives are engraved on immense bas-reliefs and beams of stone. In the region of Puno, the civilization of Tihuanaco also cultivates this art of gigantism in impressive chullpas or funerary towers whose highest can reach several tens of meters. The Huari culture develops, it, a sense of the very pushed urbanism. Its capital, Huari, had a geometrical layout and a rigorous division into districts, the urban whole being protected by a wall. The Huari used this scheme in their fortress of Pikillacta, which housed no less than 700 houses of adobe (a mixture of mud and straw). Material that we find in Chan-Chan, capital of the Chimus. One finds there a rigorous urban zoning and one discovers there 9 citadels delimited by thick and high walls... of ground! The huacas or temples can be identified by their pyramidal structure with platforms. The most beautiful examples are to be seen in Trujillo, site inseparable from the great Moche culture. The Huaca del Sol and the Huaca de la Luna impress by the monumentality of their earth structures. The impressive site of Kuélap is a testimony of the power of the Chachapoyas. See the imposing walls of this citadel where we find the division in different sectors, the importance of the platforms and open spaces and where we can admire the Templo Mayor of circular plan. The circular plan is a constant among the Chachapoyas, as shown by the site of Ollape with its hundreds of circular dwellings made of limestone and mud mortar. The stone cornices are decorated with superb geometric friezes. To finish this non-exhaustive tour of the pre-Inca riches, do not miss the site of Chanquillo in Casma whose architecture was entirely thought to transform the building into a calendar instrument!
Inca power
The Inca architecture is based on a respect for the topography of which each construction harmoniously follows the contours. The stars also play a key role in the construction of the monuments whose alignment with the sun or the moon is never the fruit of the chance. The Incas are also famous for having invented an arrangement of monumental blocks of polished stones cut with precision to allow a perfect interlocking of the blocks between them, and this, without mortar. Stone giants that resisted earthquakes thanks to an imperceptible spacing that allows them to bounce back during the earthquakes and fall back exactly to their original location. As regards decoration, the Inca buildings are characterized by an external sobriety that only comes to disturb the trapezoidal shape of the openings (doors, windows, niches). The interiors were on the other hand the object of all the decorative attentions, their walls being panelled with plates of gold and silver. Great builders, the Incas were also great engineers developing on a large scale the cultures in terraces and putting in place the legendary Qhapaq Nan. The 4 big roads of this network left from Cusco. With their paved roads, suspended bridges, gigantic staircases and other systems of canalization and drainings, the Incas knew how to appropriate a hostile ground. The most famous of the Inca sites is of course Machu Picchu. Made from a cut in the mountain, the city illustrates the Inca building genius mixing urbanism, architecture and engineering. Cusco, the ancient Inca capital, shelters numerous witnesses of its mythical past, starting with the vestiges of the Qoricancha or Temple of the Sun protected by a thick wall of polished stones and whose walls were formerly entirely covered with gold. A treasure protected not far away by the fortress of Sacsayhuaman with its impressive triple enclosure in zigzag. Another Inca feat: the Q'eswachaka. It is the last suspension bridge entirely made of grass and wood. Spanning the Apurimac river on 35 m, it is rebuilt every spring since 5 centuries!
Colonial heritage
In all South America, the colonial cities are organized according to a checkerboard plan whose streets serve the great central square bordered of arcades, Plaza Mayor or Plaza de Armas, concentrating the powers. If Peru is not an exception, the colonial cities have developed their own identity, like Arequipa, nicknamed the white city because of the volcanic rock (sillar) in which it was cut. The city is famous for its casonas. Organized around sumptuous patios to which one reaches by impressive porches and carved portals, these residences are distinguished by their frontages punctuated with carved decorations. Lima rivals in decorative audacity with the sumptuous carved wooden balconies of its colonial houses, imagined as Arab moucharabiehs allowing to see without being seen. The Casa de Osambela has no less than 5 of them! Cajamarca is characterized by its typical Hispanic-Andinian architecture illustrated by its buildings where adobe and volcanic stone are harmoniously mixed. But it is of course in Cusco that this Hispano-Andine mixture is the most visible. The Plaza de Armas extends on the ancient Inca ceremonial space, Huaccapayta, even if this last one was slightly reworked to correspond more to the European canons, while the historical center preserves in many places the historical Inca layout. Inca foundations for colonial houses that can be recognized by their whitewashed silhouette, their carved wooden balconies and the stones framing doors and windows. But the colonial imprint is especially religious. The cities are covered with churches and convents, likeAyacucho, nicknamed the city of 33 churches. From a stylistic point of view, this religious architecture most often transposes the codes of the Plateresque Renaissance then in vogue in Europe, as evidenced by the churches of the Plaza de Armas of Cajamarca with their finely worked stone facades. But these Renaissance elements are often combined with Gothic and Romanesque elements, especially in the work of the vaults and the simplicity of the plans, and above all with Mudejar elements, i.e. of Arab inspiration, with the carved coffered ceilings and star motifs in mind. Then at the end of the 17th century, when the country had suffered another destructive earthquake, churches and convents were rebuilt in a baroque style bathed in gold and stucco. One of the most beautiful representatives of this mixture of styles is the church of San Pedro de Andahuaylillas, nicknamed "the Sistine Chapel of the Andes", whose facade of sobriety all Renaissance shelters a profusion of gold and painting and superb ceilings with polychrome coffers. The monastic complexes are not to be outdone with their cloisters and galleries covered with sumptuous azulejos and their domes and ceilings with carved wooden coffers. The conventual complex of Saint Francis of Assisi in Lima and the Convents of the Merced and Saint Francis in Cusco are the most beautiful of the country. However, if you observe attentively some of these religious buildings, you will discover that in the heart of a very Christian decoration are hidden typically Indian motives (sun, moon, puma, mermaid, tropical flora...)... an astonishing mixture that one baptized Andean baroque. We find it in the cathedral San Carlos Borroméo of Puno or in the Cathedral Our Lady of the Assumption of Cusco. A mixture that we also find in the rural temples of Cusco indissociable of the Indian reductions, such Oropesa or Huaracondo, imagined to evangelize the remote native populations. The craftsmen who worked to their construction were local, what explains the formal simplicity of the plans, but especially the very beautiful work of the local wood and the presence of a rich Indian decoration. The baroque temples of Collao are astonishing for their stone monumentality dominating the surrounding landscapes, such as the Temple of Saint Francis of Assisi in Ayaviri.
Eclecticism and modernity
In Iquitos, the great rubber industrialists, many of whom were Europeans at the time, wanted to show off their newly acquired fortune in houses that resembled lordly palaces, mixing all possible neo-styles and featuring Spanish tiles and Portuguese azulejos. The city is also famous for its Casa de Fierro, whose name is misleading, because this amazing building is not made of iron... but of steel! Brought back in kit from Paris, it testifies to the flexibility and modularity of metallic structures... but contrary to the legend, it is not the work of Gustave Eiffel, but probably of the Belgian Joseph Danly! In the same way, the famous bridge Simon Bolivar or El Puente de Fierro with its 280 m of length and its impressive structure in lattice is the work of the American Henry Meiggs; while the beautiful fountain in cast iron in Tacna is the fact... of the English! At this time, Lima enters a great phase of modernization. Public lighting, tramway, new asphalted avenues, drinking water supply and iron, concrete and cement buildings appeared, even if the popular classes continued to build with traditional materials and techniques (brick foundations and quincha floors, i.e. made of a wooden or reed frame covered with mud and plaster). This modernization was accompanied by new styles, with Art Nouveau in the lead. The facades were decorated with floral motifs and the halls were covered with beautiful glass windows. The Casa Courret is a magnificent example. At the same time, other buildings saw pediments, cornices and pilasters flourish in an Italian Renaissance revival... Peru is looking for itself. As shown by this republican style with a monumental pomp borrowing from all the neo styles, like the Palace of Justice of Lima which wanted to be the reproduction of the Palace of Justice of... Brussels, the dome in less! The neoclassic is also used in abundance as the buildings with arcades of the Plaza Mayor of Lima show it. But the city knew how to open up to the first impulses of modernism with resolutely Art Deco buildings, some of which borrow their portholes and balconies with curved lines from the liner style, while geometric patterns and asymmetrical compositions enhance the concrete facades.
Contemporary architecture
As destructive as it could be, the earthquake of 1950 allowed Cusco to rediscover the wealth of its Inca heritage, blowing to the successive municipalities the need to preserve it. An awareness much less prevalent in Lima which, since the 50s, does not stop growing, and this, without any form of planning. The shantytowns or pueblos jovenes succeed one another in its periphery multiplying the dwellings which of summary, in steel or plywood, became permanent, in hard and in cement. However, from the 40's and 50's, architects and intellectuals, especially those of the Espacio group, had tried to launch new formal research. The capital was then the champion of a brutalist modernism illustrating the technical and formal potential of concrete, before giving way to the international style and its buildings with glass curtain walls, such as the Edificio Javier Alzamora Valdez and its convex glass façade. From the 1960s onwards, the city tried to remedy the housing problem by launching social housing campaigns and financing more experimental projects such as the Previ neighborhood with its white cubic houses with flat roofs organized around open, tree-lined courtyards... but these projects did not catch on. And whereas the capital continues its expansion and that other projects threaten other sites, such as the airport of Cusco planned for 2025 and which should radically transform the face of the Sacred Valley of the Incas, other architects make the choice of the purification and the return to the tradition of the respect of materials and the environment. It is the case notably of Luis Longhi to whom we owe the astonishing project of housing in Moray, whose silhouettes of the houses inspired by the minerality of the places are integrated in a vast space with terrace, echo of the structure of the ancient inca city; or still some of the most beautiful villas of the country to the image of the semi-buried Pachacamac House whose geometrical edges of the roofs answer the surrounding mountains. The environment is also taken into account in the multi-awarded project of the Irish agency Grafton Architects for the UTEC Campus in Lima, an astonishing vertical campus with its landscaped terraces and its alternating recesses and projections reminiscent of the steep relief of the mountains. To face the challenge of tomorrow, architects could also be inspired by the vernacular Peruvian habitat, like the floating islands and reed houses of the Uros people on Lake Titicaca, or the palm wood houses on stilts or floating platforms of the people living on the banks of the Amazon, or simply the Quechua habitat which perpetuates the thousand-year-old tradition of adobe constructions, capable of resisting the assaults of the earth!
