NETWORK OF ANCESTRAL KNOWLEDGE. Revalue of agro-productive system of the cultural landscape of the Sondondo Valley

The project is located in the Sondondo Valley - Ayacucho, in the highlands of Peru at 3200mts above sea level. This valley is one of the oldest and most hidden places in the country, where the population has managed to preserve 3,500 ha of terraces of more than 1,000 years old, corresponding to the Wari and Inca cultures.

However, this productive activity, which represents 90% of the valley’s economy, is facing a gradual alteration of its landscape as a result of new government interventions and a constant process of depopulation, as its inhabitants migrate to the big cities in search of better opportunities. This has resulted in the degradation of their ancestral territory and
cultural heritage; the construction of road infrastructures that attack the pre-existing historical vestiges, the appearance of buildings made of non-traditional materials, and the increase of abandoned crops.

Starting from the premise that walking is the most appropriate and ancestral way to understand the territory, and making a deep reading of the dimensional values of the Valley itself, the project seeks to configure an agro-productive system that reveals the symbolic elements of the Andean cosmovision and promotes the transmission of knowledge.

This is how a multi-scale (territory and architecture) and multi-dimensional (physical, symbolic, ecological and cultural) project is consolidated, with interventions where the population itself will become an active actor for the maintenance and protection of this ancestral agricultural territory.