Think, for a minute, about the room you are in. Is it lit by natural light or electric light? Is the window open? Do you need a fan? Is there an air conditioner humming in the background? What type of windows are there in the building? Do they ventilate the space even when closed (like Demerara windows) or were they designed with insulation rather than ventilation in mind (like the imported metal-framed glass windows now in vogue)? Are there burglar bars on the windows? We take these features for granted and stop noticing them after a while but someone, at some point, made these choices for the spaces we inhabit and they have a huge impact on our daily lives
Architectural trends afford a glimpse of our culture, as it was and as it is. They act as a lens into our tastes, our priorities, our collective aesthetic. They also speak volumes about our relationship with our environment. We live and labour in a climate that is hot and subject to heavy downpours. Our coastal strip has always been prone to flooding and suffers unpredictable and unreliable supplies of water and electricity. Our modern buildings, domestic or public, reflect this but in a reactive rather than a proactive manner. Generally, architects and builders expect challenges of terrain and climate: in Guyana our challenges are largely man-made. As the country’s infrastructure has crumbled, so each building has had to become a self-sufficient microcosm – a veritable bubble complete with water tanks and generators. As crime has become more entrenched in our society, fences have risen, patios and verandahs have been enclosed and we now cower indoors, secure (and stifling) in our gilded cages.
The older style wooden buildings are porous, often with front verandahs, large windows near ground level and decorative friezes in their walls to allow air to enter and circulate. No one chooses these features when building anymore because they confer a degree of accessibility that we have come to regret. Instead, our modern buildings are a triumph of function over form: they insulate us from the noise, smells, fumes and insects that plague our environs and also shut out the trade winds and most of the natural light. They are impermeable and inaccessible, except through strictly regulated entrances.
What does this say about our culture? We have achieved, whether by design or default, a complete break with a fairly distinguished heritage of timber architecture.
Timber is an ancient building material. It is renewable and it is perhaps the sole building material of which we happen to possess an enviable quantity, quality and variety. In his detailed exposition, reprinted in this newspaper a few months ago, Professor Westmaas described the metamorphosis of the traditional Guyanese timber house: it was, he showed, a structure constantly evolving in response to the changing demands and dynamics of domestic life. Many examples still survive, though in various stages of neglect and disrepair. Another contributor, Mr Hernandez, lamented last year, that we have swapped “a fine tradition in timber architecture” for a fairly anonymous conglomeration of concrete and steel. There have been a few isolated examples of innovative use of timber by local architects in the last generation (such as Vibert Lye) but these are the exception, not the rule.
We have abandoned the established traditions of building our houses, of living in our communities, of articulating our space without producing any coherent or locally attuned alternatives. For example, the public road between Vreed-en-Hoop and Parika and sections of the East Coast Road are all littered with houses that would blend seamlessly into a North American suburb and probably withstand the winters there quite well too. These houses are often completely sealed, with windows that provide vistas rather than ventilation, built-in garages and other curiosities which have no precedent in our local traditions and, some might argue, little relevance to our local conditions. Professor Westmaas identified an “inadequacy in design for our specified needs. From ashtrays to automobiles, from telephone booths to buildings we must think things out for ourselves. Ours has been described as a derivative culture.” Our architectural heritage has been discarded. We now tend to import, wholesale, architectural designs, templates and materials configured with other climates and cultures in mind.
Aesthetics are not the only consideration. Elsewhere in the world, architects are striving to produce houses (and public buildings) with a low carbon footprint. These structures use local rather than imported materials, take advantage of local climatic conditions and consume as little energy as possible both in construction and when inhabited. Houses consume a fair proportion of the energy generated by our power stations and the water from our water companies. Governments are alive to this and keen to encourage architects and commercial builders to produce self-sufficient houses.
The UK has its Code for Sustainable Homes, the Germans have a ‘Passivhaus’ rating system and America uses the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standard.
Oddly enough, we in Guyana have stumbled part of the way down this route (through necessity) with our generators and our water pumps. However, our efforts have been largely unregulated, unco-ordinated and uncodified. Moreover, the modern concept is that houses should use techniques such as solar panels for electricity and boreholes for water to be self-reliant, to generate what they will consume. In temperate climates, these initiatives have peaked in the design of striking and sophisticated prefabricated houses such as the German Huf Haus.
In this case, building modules were designed to meet strict criteria in terms of carbon emissions, insulation, ventilation, light and space provision and the use of appropriate materials. The modules are produced in factories for later (and rapid) assembly on site to reduce the energy used in construction and waste materials on site.
Why can we not create and construct a tropical version of the Huf Haus for local and regional markets? There are companies in Guyana with some experience of producing prefabricated structures for construction. We still have architects who are alive to the dictates of our climate and our environment. Could they not collaborate to produce buildings and templates that have relevance to our needs? Might it even be opportune to embrace and encourage initiatives such as these within the framework of the Low Carbon Development Strategy? Whatever the means, we need to start to frame our own codes, produce our own templates, use our own materials, develop our own architectural products once again and help to forge a genuine cultural identity in the process.
