Natura Futura’s winning sustainable designs shine in Babahoyo

Without much noise, the Futura Natura architectural studio has built projects with a sustainable splendor and respecting the environment where they are built. In 2016, 2018 and 2020, the collective of architects won the Pan-American Architecture Biennial of Quito; and in 2022, the coveted Brick Award, an international award given by Wienerberger AG, the largest Austrian brick manufacturer in the world, which awards, every two years, those buildings in which brick is the protagonist.

For the Brick Award, Futura Natura presented the Casa que Habita, located in Babahoyo, as a statement that not only opposes the commodification of the city, but also gives brick a symbolic character, making it the protagonist. “Wienerberger promotes the sustainable use of brick. Worldwide, projects from all countries are presented. About a thousand projects arrived for that edition, and filters are applied whose process lasts about a year. On that occasion we were happy, because they told us that we were already among the 500, then among the 100, then in the 40, in the 20, and finally they announced that we had won. We went to Vienna to receive the award. For us it is not the study that wins something; that for me is not the final satisfaction. But like Babahoyo, a transit city, that satellite city that revolves around the metropolis, through which you have to pass to go to bigger cities, like Quito. With this, Babahoyo begins to be made visible through these international awards”, highlights José Fernando Gómez, founder of Futura Natura.

“In the studio I have several people who collaborate with me on the subject of drawings, photographs, renders, but some projects are part of a community or participatory process. We work on the latter with other architecture offices; we got together and worked together on several of these projects. Ten years ago I founded Natura Futura, and I have always been working in collaboration. My vision is that architecture should not be worked alone, but always collaborating. I am like a mediating entity between a person who first has a vision and then generates the project”.

Gómez says that when they work with foundations, they already have projects and also a management process. “What we as architects do is develop the design of a project and take it to a construction guide with the community; at the same time that we work, sometimes, as managers, because there have been projects in which we have helped to obtain financing resources, presenting the studies to large companies and suppliers. For example, the La Comuna project, the Fisherman’s Refuge, and the Santay Observatory are participatory projects. The rest are private projects, that is, already with the client and the architect. In both cases, always with the idea of ​​creating a city and creating a manifesto from each project that is carried out”.

Each Natura Futura design is conceived from its viability. “We believe that a good project is one that does not spend too much, but rather, with what we have on hand and the resources we have, to be able to generate habitable, good, healthy atmospheres, and understand that each inhabitant who is going to live there also get very involved in the design process so that there is a true appropriation of the project”, explains Gómez.

The Ecuadorian architect says that Europe is turning its gaze to Latin America. “Because he feels that the future of sustainable construction is very clear here.”

Another of the projects presented is a floating house that sailed from Babahoyo, along the river of the same name, to its meeting with the Guayas River, more precisely to Santay Island. “That was like a mastery of life. It was a process that lasted two years since they contacted us. It was when we had finished a shelter for a fisherman in Babahoyo. At that time, the leader of the Friends of the Isla Santay Association contacted us, who asked us if we could work on a similar project, but that they had no money. We decided to do it, because we wanted to give continuity to the floating architecture. We started to raise funds, making designs, prototypes of buoys, of buoyancy; going to the island, to see how we could connect there, how we were going to get there. We understood that in Santay it is not possible to build, because it is a protected area. From there we built the house in Babahoyo. Let’s remember that, many years ago, the way to connect this city with Guayaquil was by river; and, when it was time to set sail, we felt that we had traveled back in time. It was something very nice; the trip lasted a whole day. When we reached the immensity of the great Guayas, a buoy exploded; we almost sank. The tide carried us; we had to change boats. It was quite an adventure to get to Guayaquil like this. It was historic,” José recalls emotionally.

The designs proposed by Natura Futura, built especially in the capital of Los Ríos, attract attention; although they are also in Montalvo, Huaquillas, Guayaquil, Chongón. They are modern, welcoming, functional, eco-friendly, viable, comfortable. “It is more than anything about respect for our tradition, because, if we start to study what our cities were like, they were well-planned, well-built, very well-designed places. They had cross ventilation, passive natural ventilation systems. They didn’t need air conditioning, because they were cool. They were constructions with little bricks, wood, bamboo. They were sustainable! They were cities that did not spend as many resources, as it happens now. Our way of being is what is leading us to climate change. Since the studio was founded, it has been quite an adventure to be able to bring these traditions, get to know them and be able to capture them in a contemporary way, making use of technology to be able to maintain those traditions over time and be part of a current architecture. It is a respect towards what we had, towards our environment, our nature”.

José Gómez Marmolejo (1987) graduated from the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of Guayaquil, and obtained a master’s degree in Advanced Architectural Design, in Chihuahua, Mexico.