A team of volunteer architects converted a dilapidated historic home into a bare-bones cultural centre for a biennial five years on, the projects legacy is mixedIn much of Latin America, the workingclass builds uphill: considerthe favelas of Rio de Janeiroor the comunas of Medelln. But in flat, landlocked Paraguays capital, Asuncin, low-income residents and rural migrants have little choice but to settle inlow, floodprone places. The oldest such neighbourhood is Ricardo Brugada also called La Chacarita, and home to 13,000 people which tumbles down the slope behind the citys Congress and the cathedraltowards the Paraguay River.In 2019, when Paraguay hosted the 11th IberoAmerican Biennial of Architecture (BIAU), its codirector Jos Cubilla decided to centre the event on La Chacarita. Though a marginalised neighbourhood with few public services, it still seemed more vibrant than Asuncins vacant historic core and the Miamistyle business district. The centre was asleep; La Chacarita had been abandoned, the architect explains. Wewanted to connect them, the empty citywith the inhabited city, and selfcritique our profession. Architects had long been notable by their absence in La Chacarita, heargues, and were not wanted or especially needed. When Cubilla and hiscolleagues first visited to sound out theirproposals, some residents threw stones atthem.The hostility is understandable, explains Christian Nuez, a TV producer and community organiser from La Chacarita. Locals are used to planners and developers tearing down their homes to make way for dubious development projects or shoddy mortgaged housing. Some families are scraping by on 10,000 guaranes (1) a day, he adds. Yet Nuez agreed to help facilitate meetings between his neighbours and the architects from Spain, Portugal and Latin America taking part in the BIAU. Gradually, a mutually agreed programme of 13 lighttouch urban interventions took shape: most of them improvements to existing public spaces.Click to download drawingsResidents consulted by UNA Arquitetos (Brazil) said they wanted a viewpoint above the Tacuari creek to be properly illuminated and made accessible for older people. A team led by Roberto Busnelli (Argentina) turned Acceso Mompox, a rubbishstrewn alleyway, into a miniature garden with builtin benches. To encourage people toreclaim Plazoleta Amapola, a notorious gang lookout, Entre Nos Atelier (Costa Rica) and local studio Mnimo Comn installed free internet, and a digital library of books downloadable via QR codes on a transparent mural. Rozana Montiel (Mexico) installed a slide, childrens play area and drainage system in an ofteninundated stairway. But Paraguays national pavilion was perhaps the most ambitious: transforming a dilapidated private residence into a cultural venue for the community on a budget of next to nothing.The centuryold redbrick house in the upper part of La Chacarita had belonged toRubn Vysokolan, famous for his theatre work and telenovelas (TV soaps). As the sonof a military general, the eccentric actor nicknamed Vysoka exercised a degree of liberty during the 195489 dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner. His home which he dubbed his agujero, or hole in the ground served as a postcurfew nightclub for creatives. He used to come downstairs naked with a snake around his neck, recalls Zulma Veneroso, his former housekeeper, who still lives on site. The house comes with a lot of legends, says Lukas Fster, theAsuncinbased architect who curated the restoration project. The agujero was even rumoured to conceal hiding places for communists, and a tunnel to the presidential palace a kilometre away. After Vysokolan died in 2007, the house was left to his sevenyearold daughter, Lou Mei. It fell into disrepair. Twelve years later, she agreed to the renovations. They were to be completed without charge, on the condition that the property would remain a cultural space for at least five years.We brought some engineer friends to the site, explains Nicols Berger, a volunteer architect who worked on the agujero along with Sergio Ybarra, Guido Martnez, Javier Rodrguez, a municipal craftspersons college called the Escuela Taller, and Fsters students from the architecture department at the National University of Asuncin. They said: This things going tocollapse. Recalling the scale of the challenge salvaging the structure without stripping it of its essence and sentimental value prompts Berger to reach for surgical metaphors. We had to perform a kind of orthodontics inside to keep it standing.Yet Fster was determined not to cut corners. He sketched out a rough plan while allowing himself to be guided by realities onthe ground. Theres an element of improvisation, he says, depending on thematerials that you find. These included a donated set of ornate window frames fromthe summer house of a vicepresident assassinated in 1999 which the team bartered for long, sturdy beams of lapacho wood and a mismatched array of steel girders formerly used in electricity transmission towers.The house was rumoured to conceal hiding places for communists, and a tunnel to the presidential palace a kilometre awayTo start with, the project involved moredeletion than creation. They knocked downa handful of recent, singlestorey outbuildings formerly used as crash pads by Vysokolans friends and visiting artists while retaining Venerosos living quarters. This opened up a long, wide patio along twolevels to the rear of the house, with anempty window in a standing wall framinga burst of greenery and rusted corrugatediron rooftops. They demolished a crumbling mezzanine within the main house, revealing a tall, airy space akin to arustic chapel, lit by shafts of sunlight from two upstairs doorways. The original floor tiles were preserved, including a striking fleurdelis design in blue and gold.Then came the dentistry. The team fortified the structure internally with the lapacho spars, bolted to the brickwork withthe slicedup pylons serving as girders. They smartened up a buckled, corkscrewing exterior staircase leading to the first floor. Here, they extended a narrow walkway of wooden planks atop a steel frame across one corner of the space, through a doorway and over the internal alleyway below. From another entrance, ashorter gangway pokes a couple of metres into the room like a diving board or a pulpit. Fster says that they had no particular reference inmind but notes a similarity to the industrialstyle floating footbridges employed in Carlo Scarpas restoration ofthe Castelvecchio Museum inVerona.Crossing to the adjacent roof, a sheet ofcorrugated plastic offers a fragment ofshade. Wooden benches line an otherwise unadorned terrace, with sweeping views across La Chacarita to the river and the palace. Repurposed bottles of Munich acheap, popular Paraguayan lager forma green, translucent window to the bathroom, and a rehomed set of wooden shutters clads the open portion of the upper floor, keeping the interior cool and adding atraditional, homely touch to the mass ofexposed masonry.The project was never finished, Fster freely admits. It ran away from us. A curved steel frame was built for a set of Venetian blinds that never arrived. But after six months work, they had revitalised the space enough to host events by the time of the biennial in October 2019. They mounted displays of Paraguayan architecture and projected a map of the neighbourhood ontothe floor. People opened up their homes, their patios, their gardens, enthuses Cubilla. All of Paraguay got to know La Chacarita. The 17 winners of that years Panorama de Obras prize awarded by the BIAU to renovated public buildings across Latin America and Iberia were screened on a television in someones front room.The final spend on the agujero was around 3,000, nearly all of which was raised by the team of architects themselves. We decided to do the project in an entirely independent and selfmanaged way, says Fster. A donation from the BIAU late inthe process predominantly went towards beer and barbecues to keep up morale. They were mainly focused on the architectural challenge of rescuing the agujero. We did not think we would also have to run it, saysBerger.But for a while, that was what they found themselves doing. In March 2020, the stage director Paola Irn premiered Nombre herplay about human trafficking at the agujero (she donated an airconditioning unit in exchange). Neighbours threw baby showers and birthdays in the space. We did not want the agujero to be really solemn, says Fster. But just when we were beginning to touch the ground, the pandemic came. It was like a bucket of cold water.Things began to unravel, says Berger. Fster had to relocate to Argentina. Whenlockdown eased in 2022, Ybarra moved into the premises with his partner Giulianna Zucolillo, and they continued therefurbishment, planted shrubs, and openeda vegan popup: a bold move in a carnivorous nation with twice as many cows 13 million as people. They organised concerts with Lou Mei Vysokolan now an actor like her father and Roco Robledo, amusician. It had its challenges, Ybarra admits. We succeeded in bringing the place to life. It was difficult to sustain, but the experience was very enriching.There was occasionally friction with the neighbours. Some still viewed the curators as interlopers. The same features that made the agujero inviting as a community space and interesting as an architectural project the permanently open doorways, the clear sightlines from the street through the property made it challenging to inhabit and care for. Ybarra and Zucolillo left eight months later.Five years on, the buildings future is uncertain. Robledo and Vysokolan still hold events now and then, although it is unclear whether the space will remain open tothepublic indefinitely. It has been abeautifulexperience, says Vysokolan. Veryexhausting, but its worth it. The neighbours, meanwhile, seem positive aboutthe buildings facelift. But there isalso nostalgia for its bohemian heyday, andasense that other problems are morepressing than the lack of cultural programming. It is nice, says Mnica Aquino. The president of a union of sex workers, she lived at the agujero at the turn of the millennium and remembers its former owner fondly: Rubn was a great person, very humble. We had parties most nights. There were folk sessions, we drank, passed round joints, the lot.The agujeros ambivalent afterlife was mirrored by the other Biennial projectsAquino thinks the space should host asmall museum to Vysokolan, with photographs and some of his things. Thereis lots of discrimination towards LaChacarita. So for someone from here tomake it, it is a big deal. I meet her sittingoutside a plywood shack in the nextalleyway along: her home for the past20years, despite promises of a dignified alternative by the authorities. Here Iam,waiting for a miracle, she sighs. LaChacarita is not as safe as it was before, because the gangs are killing each other. Our neighbourhood is being flooded by drugtrafficking.Today, the cobbles in the agujero havecome loose. Laundry presumably Venerosos has been hung out to dry on the walkways. A storm has snapped off part of the plastic sheeting. Plants sprout from the roof. It is falling to bits, laments Nuez, showing me around. He thinks the venue needs clear leadership to achieve its full potential. The space could be used a lot more; it could explode. But I know it is complicated.The agujeros ambivalent afterlife was mirrored by the other Biennial projects. The free WiFi in Plazoleta Amapola wasahit, but the virtual library was later smashed to pieces by vandals. One resident tore up the climbing plants giving shade toAcceso Mompox, complaining they attracted bees. Several plans drawn up during the BIAU a soaring scaffolding walkway between several hillsides to bypassa tortuous path of mud and planks, atreelined thoroughfare to link La Chacarita with Asuncins historic centre are gathering dust at the mayors office.Yet the restored plazas and miniparks proved a lifeline during the pandemic. Theywere places of dignity the only places where people could breathe, says Cubilla. And the experience of leading visitors around the Biennials interventions inspiredNuez to create Chaca Tours: asocial enterprise that has since taken nearly 10,000 people on guided cultural walks through La Chacarita, encouraging Paraguayans and foreigners alike to see the historic district with fresh eyes. The model of streetlevel consultation pioneered by theBIAU has been repeated in subsequent public infrastructure projects. It was fundamental to promoting the importance of architecture and public spaces in giving people agency, Nuez explains.On 21 December 2024, the agujeros patio was filled with visitors, harp music and theswishing skirts of the galoperas: local women who dance with ceramic pitchers ontheir heads. The event was a celebration of the guarania, a musical style created by Jos Asuncin Flores, a composer born a few doors down 120 years ago. Following several years of lobbying by Paraguay, UNESCO had awarded the genre Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity status a few weeks earlier. You see the neighbourhood now and compare it with what it was before, the difference is crazy, says Vysokolan. It is like people can now hold their heads up high.Fster is drawing on his experience withEl Agujero de Vysoka in writing hisdoctoral thesis. It deals with how localarchitects should approach the few resources, or rather the many, they have tohand, he explains. Apparent scarcity, itturns out, can yield a jumbled kind ofabundance. Fster draws an analogy withjopara, a term meaning mixture, describing the conjoinment of Spanish andthe Indigenous Guaran language spoken by most people in the country to this day. Though not an officially recognised dialect, he explains, it is the most common way of doing things in Paraguay.