By Studio Tom Emerson & Taller Juillerat-Manrique

Beginning in June 2018, some forty-five students from Zürich and Lima led by Guillaume Othenin-Girard (ETH Zürich) and Vincent Juillerat (PUCP) worked together to produce a structure in the heart of the archaeological landscape of Pachacámac, Peru. The project was the culmination of a half-year collaboration between Studio Tom Emerson of D-ARCH, ETH Zurich and Taller 5 of the Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo, PUCP Lima, at the invitation of Denise Pozzi-Escot, the Director of the Museum of Pachacámac. In this new structure, archaeologists make their first examination of artefacts emerging from the digs, shaded from the punishing Andean sun and in view of passing visitors and school children, who in turn, perform their own exploration in the sandpits across the courtyard. At each end, new finds are stored in rooms enclosed by woven cane walls before being transferred to the museum for permanent conservation. The structure was collaboratively designed and constructed by the students in three weeks in June and July, following a joint research project over several months that produced a new topological survey of the territory: the Pachacámac Atlas.