Corinthian columns with corncob carved capitals accent the Mayan heritage of the otherwise Spanish colonial and classicist architecture of a town that is new, but not “modern.”
Cayalá, near Guatemala city, was built in the past 12 years, following a process with potential to upend urban planning and, crucially, urban founding.
Fruit of “Estudio Urbano” founders architects Maria Sanchéz and Pedro Godoy’s efforts, it provides a clear case study for how the remaining centres of traditional architecture remain relevant and can improve people’s lives, with both Sanchéz and Godoy having studied at the Notre Dame School of Architecture in South Bend, Indiana.
After getting the go-ahead from the family that owned the large plot of land— technically within Guatemala city, but outside its centre—on which Cayalá would rise, they turned to the Luxembourgish urban planner and critic of architectural modernism Léon Krier.
Identity, or the Mayan Mediterranean
Importantly, the project draws on local identity rather than importing foreign forms to Guatemala. Where a globocratic modernist architecture tends to homogenise city-centres and suburban neighbourhoods around the world, Sanchéz, Godoy, and Krier have sought the opposite.
Writes David Brussat in his “Architecture Here and There” blog:
[Cayalá] incorporates Mayan ornamental detail amid a robust Spanish classicism. Streets and squares are lined with colonnades. A monumental set of steps ascends to the Athenaeum, designed by Notre Dame Prof. Richard Economakis, forming a pyramid of Mayan descent, topped by a Spanish temple.
True, the Mayan element is more muted than it could be. Cayalá is a manifestation of Spanish European-America incorporating native highlights, not the other way around. In this, it represents local identity well without excluding the possibility of a revival of indigenous forms, to which it nonetheless hints and provides some inspiration.
Accessibility and wider impact
In coming up with a plan for the future town, Krier resisted calls for it to be designed as a gated community on account of Guatemala’s high crime rate. Sanchéz and Godoy did not want a closed-off suburb and were confident security could be guaranteed while having the space open to visitors. They conceived of it as a “Christian city,” and as heir to Greek, Roman, and European mediaeval styles of urbanisation.
In this connection, and with regards to accessibility, while real estate prices are predictably high, there are, apparently, plenty of affordable businesses and activities for visitors. Cayalá is also eminently pedestrian-friendly, forcing vehicles to slow down in order to navigate its curves and organic, irregular angles, thereby doing without excessive signage, curbs, and speed bumps.
Detractors, mostly on the Left, have run articles erroneously claiming that the town is, indeed, gated, as well as complaining that the desire to spend time, or buy property, in a new, safe area is somehow not only harming other parts of Guatemala city, but is also part of a dark, misanthropic and classicist project. Brussat disagrees:
People who want to protect their families and themselves from crime are not racists for preferring safety to danger. To turn such an allegation into a dominant narrative, at least among the elite, risks destroying a society’s mechanisms to improve the lives of citizens. In all societies, self-preservation has been the concern of all humans. In free societies, citizens have the right to plan for the betterment of their families, in part by selecting residences that are safe, schools that provide quality education, and jobs that offer prospects for higher income. Societies such as Guatemala, young democracies that are rising from periods of civil strife, have these same natural rights as free peoples, and it should be the purpose of government to honor and to protect those rights.
Lessons for a constructive conservatism
The fact that a town or city, albeit a small one, can be built from scratch and seen to thrive in so short a period of time is a testament both to the traditional design principles employed and to the fact that we do not necessarily need many generations of co-creation to make a place liveable. Slow alterations can of course take place over time, but the main of a city can, indeed, be offered to a people in short order.
Krier himself has written that, while the time of construction for a traditional building compared to a modernist one can be the same, what distinguishes them is their time of use post-construction. Tradition believes in long-term human flourishing, and its design delivers on durability.
Léon Krier, Drawings for Architecture. MIT Press: London, England. 2009.
Traditional principles and techniques lead to longer and more frequent use, as well as being more durable and requiring less upkeep. (In a future essay, we will explore some of Krier’s ideas in more detail.)
Cayalá, then, should encourage both our traditionalist and voluntarist instincts. It is an example of what can be done to engage with the present to actively bring it into conformity with tradition.
They eat from it, who plant a tree; they dwell in it, who build a home.
