interview Juan Carlos Bamba Vicente × Kim Bokyoung
Natura Futura Arquitectura (principal, José Fernando Gómez), based in Babahoyo, a small city in Ecuador, and architect Juan Carlos Bamba Vicente, based in Madrid, Spain, have worked on several floating house projects. Their attempts to restore local artisanal techniques and create a sustainable community stem from their deep connections to the Babahoyo, where they were born, studied, and continue to reside. With the climate crisis causing coastlines to shift, the floating house system is drawing attention as a viable way of coexisting with water and the encroaching sea levels. SPACE spoke to them about their community-focused floating house projects.
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Juan Carlos Bamba Vicente
Juan Carlos Bamba Vicente is an architect based in Madrid, Spain. He graduated from the Higher Technical School of Architecture of Seville and received a doctorate in advanced architectural projects from the Polytechnic University of Madrid. He is currently a professor of architectural projects and director of the VIS Guayaquil Laboratory research group of the faculty of architecture and design of the Catholic University of Santiago de Guayaquil. He has developed projects such as the Fisherman’s Shelter with Natura Futura Arquitectura and was nominated for the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize and was a finalist at BIAU 2022.
Natura Futura Arquitectura
Natura Futura Arquitectura, based in Babahoyo, Ecuador, is an architectural practice founded by José Fernando Gómez in 2014. Natura Futura Arquitectura considers sensitive issues around Latin American cities and architecture and employs an approach of architectural exploration that works in search of solutions through continuous experimentation and research. They respond to the urgent need for architecture to begin to have its own presence starting with local materialities, techniques and traditions within territories in peripheral cities of the metropolises. Also, generating a sustainable and responsible habitat through an architecture that opens up to the possibilities of facing its environment, which promotes the dignity of its inhabitants who tend to be made invisible in their own territories.
