It is theorized the Pumapunku complex as well as its surrounding temples, the Akapana pyramid, Kalasasaya, Putuni, and Kerikala functioned as spiritual and ritual centers for the Tiwanaku. This area might have been viewed as the center of the Andean world, attracting pilgrims from far away to marvel in its beauty. These structures transformed the local landscape; Pumapunku was purposely integrated with Illimani mountain, a sacred peak that the Tiwanaku possibly believed to be home to the spirits of their dead. This area was believed to have existed between heaven and Earth. The spiritual significance and the sense of wonder would have been amplified into a "mind-altering and life-changing experience" through the use of hallucinogenic plants. Examinations of hair samples exhibit remnants of psychoactive substances in many mummies found in Tiwanaku culture mummies from Northern Chile, even those of babies as young as one year of age, demonstrating the importance of these substances to the Tiwanaku.[15]

The Tiwanaku civilization and the use of these temples appears to some to have peaked from 700 AD to 1000 AD. by which point the temples and surrounding area may have been home to some 400,000 people. By this point, an extensive infrastructure had been developed with a complex irrigation system running over 30 square miles (80 km2) to support potatoes, quinoa, corn and other various crops. At its peak the Tiwanaku culture dominated the entire Lake Titicaca basin as well as portions of Bolivia and Chile

The Machu Picchu Context
Intervening Nature
We Peruvians have the most incredible architectural background. One can find brilliant solutions of how to deal with nature in every intervention done by Incas and Pre Columbian Peruvians at where their Empire used to be. However contemporary Peruvian architecture doesn’t represent such conditions. There is a question which answers help me look for the modern Peruvian architecture. Where did we loose the connection?

The Titicaca Lake Context
Weaving Architecture at Taquile Island
The best way for natives, at Taquile Island in Lake Titicaca, to express themselves is by weaving, in fact they learn to weeve before reading or writing. Traditionally, the way to report their year round activities is by using different types of symbols on thier weaved waistbands, an important piece of their attire. This community had maintained their ancestral traditions for centuries, becoming one of the few communities in the planet where one can find and learn essential ways of living. I feel fortunate to collaborate with them in the Master Planning of their Island. They expect vanguard architecture coming to their place; I feel vanguard architecture should appreciate the basics of life.

The Peruvian Desert Context
Burying Architecture in Pachacamac
A long time ago, I was very moved by a futuristic movie in which, due overpopulation on Earth, people had the chance to choose: date, place, atmosphere (favorite song, movie, etc) to pass to a better life. Since then I thought of that moment as something every person deserves to have; however, considering that the situation is not possible in our society, the closest to that sublime moment should be the place in which you will live your last years. For me as an architect the issue is a magnificent opportunity to create, this is exactly the design circumstances of the house in the hill of Pachacamac. The client gives the commission to design the place where he is going to live after he retires from work.
He could have asked for the place where he is going to die, or simply for the place to find eternity. The Inca and pre-Columbian cultures settled in the arid Peruvian desert for centuries are excellent examples of how to deal with all these issues

The Light
White Light Black Shadow
The night before to a planed visit to Puruchuco an Inca architectural site near Lima, I was reading a text by Louis Khan and Gabor in which they talk about light. Not only until I entered to one of the rooms at Puruchuco, where I could appreciate the particular way in which the incas used to invite their God ( Sun) to their intimate spaces that I understood the real meaning of what I was reading the night before: ….“What is the shadow of white light?” Gabor has the habit of repeating what you say, “White light…white light…I don’t know.” And I said, “Black, Don’t be afraid, white light does not exit, not does black shadow exist.” …

IN THE SEARCH FOR A CONTEMPORARY MACHU PICCHU
The mission [adventure] of Peruvian architect Luis Longhi.

by Maya Ishizawa

In 1911, Hiram Bingham, an American explorer revealed the most emblematic Inca complex nowadays, Machu Picchu. Even if this event has been called a “discovery”, locals from the area who guided Hiram Bingham to its location, cultivated the terraces [andenes] of the site that was built during the 15th century, a century before Spaniards reached the Inca land. Fortunately, Machu Picchu was not found by Spanish colonizers, and remained conserved under the vegetation that covered it for nearly 500 years.

When Hiram Bingham brought about the value of this complex of Inca architecture, the discussion on the national identity was central in the nation-state building of Peru, process that had only started in 1821 and that is yet to be consolidated. Machu Picchu and other Inca archaeological sites of the Urubamba river valley were chosen as symbols for this new-born nation. Inca architecture became one of the most exploited symbols for the creation of a Peruvian identity. Yet, during 286 years of colonization and evangelization, indigenous peoples, inheritors of the Inca civilization and their traditions were treated with disdain. Nevertheless, the resilient Andean communities could safeguard their worldview/traditional knowledge that has been captured in constructions such as Machu Picchu.

However, even when having such magnificent examples of architecture that converse with the environment where they are placed, there is a discontinuity between Inca architecture and the Peruvian contemporary architecture. This has been fed by a capitalist, soul-less and uninspired production of buildings. The “colonial style” that has been constructed over pre-hispanic foundations has been copied; neo-colonial architecture and the “chicha style” have invaded Peruvian cities. The architecture in Peru is the reflection of a society that has been traumatized by a colonial past and later integrated into a global civilization without being cured of its traumas.

These are the reflections that accompany Luis Longhi’s architecture. Born in the city of Puno in 1954, next to the Lake Titicaca, the sacred lake of the Inca, where they are thought to have come from, Luis Longhi feels very close to the altiplano landscape where he has grown. From Italian descent, he was raised among Quechua and Aymara people that connected him emotionally with the ancestors, and their traditions, undermined by the hegemonic Western culture being imposed over the Andean world.

After studying and living for 15 years outside from Peru (United States and India), he felt the call of the ancestors and the need to return to his homeland in order to fullfil a mission, to recover the essence of an architecture from these lands, and conceive what could be a contemporary Inca architecture, retying his production to the broken threads that connect us with them.

But Luis Longhi’s search, is a search in the practice, it is not a theoretical search. Longhi is looking for an original architecture through the communication with the place, the feeling of local materials, the playing with the light, concepts learnt along his professional and academic practice. Longhi feels close to Louis Kahn, Isamu Noguchi, Peter Zumthor, Carlo Scarpa, and of course, the ancestors, pre-hispanic architects that communicate through their works: the waka of Puruchuco, the Temple of the Moon in Machu Picchu, and the Tiahuanaco Sun gate.

Longhi, as an artist-sculptor and architect, obeys primarly to his instinct in the moment of creation. He is inspired by some principles that he has come to elaborate through his practice. First, he understands nature as a divine creation and hence, a perfect one. From here, he derives the feeling of respect to the environment and place. Second, he accepts the ethymological intepretation of the word “design” as being formed by De, meaning Divine and Signum, meaning Sign. He defines design then as the act of taking divine decisions, which would give to the architect the huge responsibility of “guardian of the planet”. Only by accepting this he could understand the assertion of Peter Zumthor of how to recognize good architecture: “only when it (the architectural work) can move…”. He considers the work of an architect as the capability of generating a divine creation. Following classical ideas informed by Christianism and the Enlightment, he firmly defends the idea of architecture as the most powerful tool to save or ruin the world. Third, he is inspired by the thinking of Louis Kahn who talks about an “architecture with soul”. Fourth, he considers himself as having been, like Luis Barragán, “touched” by beauty. And finally, he admires the labor of Inca architects that honored their gods through their work. Hence, the search of Longhi is of creating architecture responsible, with the environment and the cultural space, charged with soul, that can move emotions in its dwellers and visitors, and that connects the present with the past, through the regeneration of Inca principles of design.

The result: Longhi’s architecture appears as sculptures in the landscape.

Longhi has enjoyed working not only in the natural landscape, like in the case of the beach houses, but he has also established deep relationships with old buildings in ruins. In these projects, Yuyanapaq and the Municipal Theatre, he tried to connect with the memory of the buildings. In the case of the exhibition Yuyanapaq, the recent Peruvian past is confronted, marked by terrorism and a war [1980-1992] that has mostly been suffered by the inheritors of the Inca, the Andean peasant communities. In this curatorial work Longhi established a relationship with the hosting house, the Casa Riva Agüero, a house that has witnessed the sacking during the Pacific War. The tour in the exhibition corresponds to the tour into the past and feelings of this centenary house, and for 18 months, the dwellers of the house in ruins, were the victims of the war, achieving a poetic metaphor between the country and the house.

The Municipal Theatre, partly consumed by a fire in 1998 was adapted by Longhi to be the scenery of the classic Shakespeare, King Lear. He transformed the audience floor in the stage, connecting the old stage in ruins through a platform, that later became the stage for several other plays. In this intervention, Longhi tried to respect the building and its wounds, in order to leave them cured until it was restored.

Yet, the emblematic work developed by Longhi is the Pachamac hill house. In this building, a residence for a couple of intellectuals, Longhi captures all the principles that guide his practice, recovering pre-hispanic symbols and traces expressing with mastery the deep interrelations between art, architecture and place. Working with local materials found in the site, Longhi created a land art in between the sea and the hills of the pre-Andes mountains.

These are only the first stones of the contemporary Machu Picchu. But building Machu Picchu was not the task of only one architect. Longhi’s work as educator aims at raising a new generation of Peruvian [and worldwide] architects that respect the environment, the place and the culture, putting new stones in the contemporary Machu Pichu.