Along the spine of the Andes, terraces, salt flats, and carved stones bind agriculture to ritual time. This project treats these landscapes not as inert heritage but as diagrams in earth that couple soils, water, stars, and collective life. Moving through Chile, Bolivia, and Ecuador, the project images alignments, hydrologies, and thermal floors to recast architectural section as a medium of relation. Through measured sketches, photography, and field notes translated into analytic diagnostic drawings, the work foregrounds Andean knowledge as design intelligence for the present, challenging Eurocentric habits of representation and climate practice.

José Ibarra is a Venezuelan designer, researcher, and educator whose interdisciplinary work examines architecture under conditions of environmental uncertainty. He is assistant professor of architecture at The Pennsylvania State University and a doctoral researcher at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. He directs Studio José Ibarra and is cofounder of House Operations. His scholarship and practice engage architectural process, time, and geoempathy. Ibarra is coeditor, with Caroline O’Donnell, of Werewolf: The Architecture of Lunacy, Shapeshifting, and Material Metamorphosis (Applied Research & Design, 2022), and curator of Table Manners, a research-driven program of exhibitions and performative convenings that uses participatory formats to rethink architecture’s civic and ecological agency. His work has been exhibited at venues including MoMA PS1 and ÉNSA Versailles, and supported by organizations including the Graham Foundation, the National Science Foundation, Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, American Institute of Architecture Students, and Tulane University. He holds a BArch from Cornell University and an MArch from Princeton University.