Shuar architecture as a model of sustainability

In recent decades modern architecture has focused excessively on the search for new construction techniques to facilitate and improve the construction process in cities. This has reduced the application of local construction techniques and materials, leading to the neglect of cultural heritage and architectural landscape. As vernacular architecture relates to historical inhabitance of the territory with no theoretical or aesthetic pretences it is a viable model of sustainability. At no point do poverty and nostalgia for the past correspond to the way in which this type of architecture was conceived. The ways of thinking and life of indigenous cultures open a viable path towards the conservation of their architecture. Although nowadays there is an inclination to build following the new tradition of modern materials and typologies, and leaving aside the close connection between the forms of inhabiting and their surroundings, it is necessary to create a heritage awareness of place, where its architecture can be adapted to a new way of conceiving architecture and its spaces to fulfil the needs of a modern society.