Delfín’s Tui’que Huë’e. Ethnoarch building models.

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Delfín’s Tui’que Huë’e
Ecuador

Description

Back in 2003, this house was the only remaining example in Ecuador of the Tui'que Huë'e, a vanishing indigenous typology. It was built as a demonstrative model no to live in, under the direction of Don Delfín, a Secoya traditional builder. Funding support was provided by Osanimi Group's foundation OSA. It had been already a few years since the last time the community had built one of these structures. "Don Delfín had to meditate for many days to remember exactly how it was built," says an OSA representative involved with the project.

Some personal references in relation to this house: I had learned about the existence of the Tui'que Huë'e type from descriptions by Secoya builders, as well as from the reading of some anthropological reports dating back to the 1930s. I had also heard about one of these houses that had been built in San Pablo in about 1993. When I traveled there in 1997, all that remained of that house was a pile of palm leaves and fractured poles, as the house had collapsed recently. Having missed the opportunity to see this type of house in real life, and given the difficulty for the Secoya to be able to build another one—because of a shortage in the traditional building materials as well as deep economic and cultural changes the community was going through—the idea of finding a Tui'que Huë'e became, if not an obsession, an intense fantasy. I had given up that fantasy when, in 2003, during a trip to Remolino, another Secoya settlement, I heard they had built a new one, some like two hours north by canoe. Cesáreo, an old and renowned Secoya builder, offered to go with me to the place, as soon as his son arrived from a journey to Lagartococha, two days south. However, his son did not return before I had to head back to Quito.

During the trip back through the Aguarico River, Jennifer and I made a stop in San Pablo, near the place where the house was supposed to stand. After asking around, we found Delfín's place, but he was traveling. However, one of his older sons offered to send two kids with us to see the house, which was at the other side of the river.

Our little guides quickly found the way through a path that was almost completely covered by new vegetation. It would be hard to convey in words the feeling of finding a house I had only seen in pictures and imagined in descriptions. Entering through that miniature door, which was small even for the kids, and getting inside of that palatial space, huge and dark (despite it was noontime). Being there, standing, smelling, touching; experiencing those spaces that, when described in books, sounded like part of a fabulous world. The two triangular skylights projecting light inside, the huge posts, that were actually longer than I had always thought. And the empty central space, a space which in the past was destined to be a cemetery inside of the own house, because after all the dead are just alive in another state of being. In such state, their sleeping quarters had to be moved to the house's underground level. The space for the dead was still reserved in this empty structure, a living example of Bachelard's evocations of domestic space use in the dawn of history.

I stayed inside of the house for a long time, enough to test my companions' patience. I did some quick measuring and notes and took some pictures and footage, making sure to gather enough material in order to re-build the house in a virtual form with CAD software.

Location

Ecuador – Sucumbíos – San Pablo de Kantesiya.

Images

Images include photography and CAD views.
See images.

Classification
Keywords	Ecuador Compression Flexion
Type	Tui'que Huë'e
Related types
Related models	César's kitchen, Remolino; Colón's Pa'pa Huë'e, San Pablo; Generic Zinc House; Zinc House in San Pablo de Kantesiya

References
Bibliographic / Online references
No references in English at this time.
Discussion	See members' discussion and contributions on this model.
Questions	Ask a question about this model in the forum.

For academic purposes, please cite this page as:
Arboleda, Gabriel. Delfín’s Tui’que Huë’e [online]. Berkeley, CA: Ethnoarchitecture.com, 27 December 2005 [cited 28 May 2012]. Available from World Wide Web: <http://www.ethnoarchitecture.org/web/models/model/432>.

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