Al Borde

An approach to architecture

A profile of Quito-based Al Borde through Nueva Esperanza School and Flying Beds House, exploring participation, precise reuse and material assembly.

Source-based editorial supplied by Dots; published on 1 October 2026 without an independent original-source recheck by Codex. Chinese sections are summaries. Source limitations: Flying Beds official page contains an English/Spanish discrepancy about the original house's century; building age is intentionally omitted. Flying Beds project credits list design 2015 and construction 2016–2017; the body makes no incompatible completion claim.

Working from the conditions of a place

Al Borde is a Quito-based practice established in 2007 and formed by David Barragán, Pascual Gangotena, Maríaluisa Borja and Esteban Benavides. Its manifesto gives users an active role in design and construction and emphasises resources and techniques available in each place. This position directs attention toward how a project can be made, maintained and inhabited. It also provides a useful way to read the practice's varied portfolio: form emerges from an engagement with a particular situation, including the people willing and able to participate in changing it. Official practice profile and manifesto.

A school with a clearly credited community

Nueva Esperanza School in Puerto Cabuyal, Manabí, is recorded by the practice as a 2009 project commissioned by the community and constructed by volunteers and residents. Those credits are a substantive part of the architectural record. They identify a relationship between the people requesting the building and those participating in its realisation. For readers studying community-based practice, the project offers a useful starting point for asking how professional knowledge is combined with local labour and decision-making. The credits should remain visible alongside any discussion of the completed form. Official Nueva Esperanza project record.

Repair that reorganises domestic space

Flying Beds House in La Esperanza, Imbabura, transforms an existing earth-walled dwelling through a small set of coordinated interventions. The walls are strengthened and the failing roof is replaced. The new eucalyptus roof trusses also accommodate sleeping spaces, allowing the principal floor to retain a shared domestic character. A glazed ridge introduces daylight, while the project account describes the reuse of discarded materials in the roof and courtyard. The design links a necessary repair to a different arrangement of life inside the house. Its most instructive detail is therefore the connection between roof structure and occupation. Official Flying Beds House account.

Precision within constraint

Read together, the school and house show two different meanings of participation: collective involvement in a public building and a close response to a household's chosen way of living. Neither case should be treated as a universal template. A shared interior or a volunteer construction process depends on specific needs, relationships and responsibilities. Al Borde's work is most useful when it prompts that specificity. Its emphasis on clear assembly and available resources encourages readers to examine what each intervention changes, how much it requires, and who can carry it forward. Those questions connect architectural economy with the practical life of a project. Practice manifesto.

Explore the GAD index

For a related educational project in a different material and climatic setting, explore Gando Primary School.