‘tradition contains generations of knowledge’: natura futura builds with ecuadorian wisdom

natura futura designs from the river outward

Along the Babahoyo River in Ecuador, houses once floated with the rhythm of trade, fishing, boat repair, and family life, forming a waterborne architecture shaped by weather and work. From this context, Natura Futura has built a practice that begins with what is already present: heat, timber, local craft, informal occupation, and the social ties that hold a place together.

Founded in the riverside city of Babahoyo, the studio works across housing, cultural, productive, and community projects, often in collaboration with Juan Carlos Bamba and local teams. Its architecture grows from direct conditions rather than abstract concepts.

As the studio tells designboom, Latin America has taught it that architecture is ‘less about creating objects and more about understanding relationships,‘ with climate, labor, local economies, and collective memory becoming ‘the very material from which architecture emerges.‘

The Tea Room, Babahoyo, 2021. image © JAG studio

architecture as a social tool

Through the work of Natura Futura, the idea of softness has little to do with fragility. It appears through listening, reuse, shared building knowledge, and a willingness by the studio to let architecture support what a community already knows how to do.

This comes through clearly in La Balsanera, a 70-square-meter productive floating house completed in Babahoyo in 2023 with architect Juan Carlos Bamba. The project responds to a river culture that has almost disappeared from the city. The Babahoyo River’s floating houses once served as gathering, storage, and resting points along the commercial route between Guayaquil and Quito, but their number has dropped from about 200 to 25, even as they remain recognized as part of Ecuador’s intangible heritage.

La Balsanera, Babahoyo, Ecuador, 2023. image courtesy Natura Futura Arquitectura

la balsanera and the right to remain with the river

Rather than relocating Carlos, Teresa, and their son away from the water, La Balsanera strengthens the life they have built there over more than 30 years. Carlos repairs wooden boats, while Teresa prepares traditional food for local communities. Their former house had serious structural damage and lacked basic services, making both domestic life and work harder to sustain.

The new structure preserves the position of the living room, dining area, kitchen, and bedrooms at the center, while extending the platform two meters on each side. Modular wooden frames form a gabled roof, bringing height, storage, light, and ventilation to the interior. At the edges, service and production areas make space for a boat workshop, dry toilet, laundry, shower, and a river-facing terrace where food service and social gathering can continue.

La Balsanera, Babahoyo, Ecuador, 2023. image courtesy Natura Futura Arquitectura

continuity through transformation

For Natura Futura, traditional construction carries value because it holds generations of environmental and cultural knowledge. The studio describes preservation as an active process, one that can adapt as needs, climates, and ways of living change. ‘The goal is not preservation for its own sake, but continuity through transformation,‘ the team explains.

That idea also appears across projects such as Las Tejedoras in Chongón, Guayaquil, The Santay Observatory on Isla Santay, and The House of Time in Babahoyo. Natura Futura returns again and again to local economies, shared spaces, and the social knowledge already held within a place.

Las Tejedoras in Chongón, Ecuador, 2023. image © JAG Studio

listening before drawing

The studio describes its process as beginning with what is already there: routines, stories, patterns of use, and absences. Sometimes the first conversation is with residents. Sometimes it is with builders. Sometimes, the studio says, it is with climate itself. Before form, there is a question: ‘what relationships need to be strengthened here?‘

That question gives the work its Radical Softness. Architecture becomes a framework for participation, repair, and coexistence, especially in places where limited resources demand intelligence before abundance. In this sense, Natura Futura’s ambition feels grounded in scale. A floating house, a productive center, or a small civic structure can carry a larger cultural argument when it helps people stay connected to territory, labor, and one another.

Santay Observatory, Guayas River, 2022. image © José Escandón, Juan Terreros, Jhonatan Andrade

in conversation with Natura Futura

designboom (DB): Your studio often works from Latin American contexts where climate, labor, informality, and local memory are already deeply present. How has working from this position shaped your idea of what architecture can do?

Natura Futura (NF): Working from Latin America has taught us that architecture is less about creating objects and more about understanding relationships. Climate, labor, local economies, and collective memory are not external conditions that architecture responds to; they are the very material from which architecture emerges.

In places like Babahoyo, where we work, architecture cannot be separated from the river, the heat, the informal ways people occupy space, or the knowledge embedded in local construction practices. This has shaped our belief that architecture can act as a mediator between people, territory, and time.

DB: Much of your work seems to move away from architecture as a finished object and toward architecture as a social tool. When you begin a project, what are you listening for first?

NF: We begin by listening to what is already there: the routines of daily life, the stories people tell, the way a place is used, and often the things that are missing.

We are interested in understanding how architecture can support existing forms of living rather than replacing them. Sometimes this means listening to a community, sometimes to local builders, and sometimes to the climate itself. The project usually starts not with a form but with a question: what relationships need to be strengthened here?

La Balconera, Montalvo, 2022. image © JAG studio

DB: Our current editorial chapter, Radical Softness, looks at design through care, repair, ecology, and slower forms of attention. Does that framing resonate with the way Natura Futura approaches architecture?

NF: Very much.

We understand architecture as an act of care. Care for people, for local knowledge, for existing ecosystems, and for the resources available in a place. Many of our projects begin not by adding something new, but by observing what can be repaired, reused, adapted, or simply appreciated differently.

The idea of Radical Softness resonates because it suggests that transformation does not always happen through large gestures. Sometimes architecture can be gentle, creating conditions for encounter, learning, comfort, and collective participation.

Shelters for Homeless Animals, Babahoyo, 2019. image © Anthony León

DB: Your projects often give new life to familiar materials and local construction knowledge. How do you decide when to preserve a traditional technique, when to adapt it, and when to challenge it?

NF: A traditional technique is valuable not because it belongs to the past, but because it contains knowledge accumulated over generations. We try to preserve what continues to make sense environmentally, socially, and culturally.

At the same time, every context changes. New needs, new climates, and new ways of living require adaptation. We often work with builders to modify familiar systems, combining local knowledge with contemporary questions.

Challenging a technique becomes necessary only when it no longer serves the people who use it. The goal is not preservation for its own sake, but continuity through transformation.

DB: How do local builders, residents, and collaborators help shape the final project?

NF: They are fundamental to the project.

We understand design as a collective process rather than an individual act. Local builders contribute technical intelligence that often cannot be found in drawings or books. Residents reveal patterns of use, needs, and aspirations that shape the project’s direction. Collaborators from different disciplines help us expand our understanding of the social and environmental context.

Many of our most important design decisions emerge during conversations on site, through construction, and through shared experimentation. In that sense, the final project belongs to a broader network of people than the architect alone.

Proyecto Chacras, Chacras, 2016. image courtesy Natura Futura Arquitectura

DB: In a moment when architecture is often pushed toward speed, image, and novelty, your work feels more patient and grounded in what already exists. Is that something you consciously push for?

NF: Yes.

We are interested in architecture that grows from its context rather than architecture that seeks immediate attention. We believe that meaningful projects often require time: time to understand a place, to build trust, to learn from local knowledge, and to test ideas.

This does not mean rejecting innovation. Rather, it means understanding innovation as a process of careful observation and adaptation. We are often more interested in discovering overlooked potentials than in creating entirely new forms. Patience allows architecture to become more connected to people and place.

DB: Looking across your body of work, what kind of future are you trying to make room for through architecture?

NF: We are interested in futures that are more collective, more ecological, and more deeply connected to local realities.

Rather than imagining architecture as a tool for controlling environments, we see it as a way of learning to live with them. We hope to create spaces that encourage participation, care, learning, and coexistence between people and nature.

If there is a common thread in our work, it is the belief that architecture can help strengthen relationships: between neighbors, between generations, between communities and their territories. The future we imagine is not one built through abundance of resources, but through intelligence, solidarity, and the capacity to recognize value in what already exists.

La Comuna, Huaquillas, 2018. image courtesy Natura Futura Arquitectura

project info:

architect: Natura Futura | @naturafuturarq

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