Collaborative Research on Mexican Vernacular Architecture in the Age of Digital Humanities
In 2018, I began research on vernacular architecture in northeastern Mexico. Together with a team of photographers, architects, and a geographer, we set out on expeditions to rural communities where we documented ordinary houses. Our intent was to gain a better understanding of how people in rural communities build and inhabit their environment. There is documentation of historical and monumental architecture in this region; state agencies have cataloged buildings such as churches, former haciendas, and train stations. When we started work, however, there was very little research on the region’s housing and its relationship to geography and to social and cultural phenomena. We decided our work should be broad and far reaching. Instead of writing a few papers, as we initially planned, we chose to lay the groundwork for further research by processing and sharing our data widely.
Research expeditions consisted of one– to eight-day trips in the states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas. We photographed the exterior and interior of dozens of houses, and aerial views of them and their surroundings. We also conducted short stints of participant observation, made interviews on the history of certain dwellings, and drew precise architectural blueprints of several. Three to six researchers were part of each of twenty-five expeditions; I, an anthropologist, participated in all of them and, as the project’s coordinator, have been responsible for integrating our documentation into different “products.” Two among them — the Arquitectura Popular Fond at Fototeca Nuevo León, and an online dictionary — merit discussion, not only because of their subject matter, but also because they offer clues to how digital files and social media might shape collaborative research.
Figure 1. Interior of an adobe house with cement floors and walls painted with colored lime. Los Terreros, Arteaga municipality, Coahuila. Photograph by Paco Álvarez, 2019.
Figure 2. Adobe production in Sandia, Aramberri municipality, Nuevo León. Photograph by Iván Manrríquez, 2018.
Arquitectura Popular Fond
Between 2018 and 2020, Arquitectura Popular del Noreste was funded by a grant from Fondo Regional para la Cultura y las Artes (FORCA) and managed by Fototeca Nuevo León, one of Mexico’s largest photography archives. When we started collaborating, this institution had twelve fonds, or collections, whose organizing principle is the lifework of local photographers or the history of particular institutions. In conversation with Laura Pacheco, Fototeca’s coordinator at the time, we planned a thirteenth fond with our project’s materials. We would convert the close to seven thousand digital photographs, videos, and drawings produced over two years into a source that could be consulted in Fototeca’s online platform. This required adjusting the habitual work processes to handle digital originals and, on a deeper level, rethinking how and why archives are produced and preserved.
Fototeca’s older fonds were donated or deposited by individuals or institutions. Archivists preserved the provenance order and assigned inventory numbers sequentially, following the physical location of prints and negatives. But digital files like ours can be easily copied and occupy different locations at once. Moreover, in a fond that is not acquired but produced, there is no preexisting order. To organize the files, we tried out a few possible classification trees. We settled on one where the broadest categories are geographical, beginning with state, followed by municipality and locality, and then by author and type of material.
With the tree and inventory numbers set, the cataloging process began. After identifying relevant descriptors — keywords associated with images as metadata to facilitate searches — among those used in other fonds, we complemented them with dozens of terms used by our project’s informants to describe their built environment. I then shared my fieldnotes with those responsible for the cataloging process. They used them to title and annotate each image. Forms also include a section for the inventory numbers of related files — in this case, other images of the same structure, often by different photographers or architects. Cataloging, realized over the span of two years by Angélica Pérez, brought together the different disciplinary dimensions of Arquitectura Popular del Noreste under a framework that highlights the project’s collaborative dimension and makes available multiple perspectives on its objects of study.
Figure 3. Wood and adobe house in San Ignacio, Bocoyna municipality, Chihuahua. Photograph by Josué Olivo, 2019.
Figure 4. Stone house in Vallecillo, Nuevo León. Photograph by Paco Álvarez, 2018.
When we made its official presentation on May 6, 2023, Arquitectura Popular became the first digital fond in Mexico’s national network of photography archives. Our work demonstrates that archives can be produced collaboratively and incorporate diverse viewpoints. This is relevant to both photography and architecture collections, which generally reflect the interests and practices of the powerful. In the case of architecture, this leaves out self-built works and their transformations over time, as well as the practices of their inhabitants and the meanings they associate with them. In our work, we deliberately produced images about a subject matter rarely documented in archives and sought to use the legitimizing power inherent to these institutions to broaden the scope of potential research.
The Arquitectura Popular Fond also shows that, when physical storage conditions are not an issue, different types of media can interact within the same archival space and complement each other. In the future, archives associated with specific formats such as photographs or blueprints might become less common, and their organization will increasingly depend on their subject matter or intent. Further, the lift on material constraints and the overabundance of digital files might make editing — selecting some documents and discarding others, and ordering them in particular ways — and cataloging — naming files and registering information about them — more important tasks than accumulation.
“Photography and architecture collections generally reflect the interests and practices of the powerful.”
During our research, we documented expeditions on Facebook and Instagram. We posted images that are now part of the Fond, with brief descriptions. Our followers have become our interlocutors; they offer information on sites we feature, or send us photos of their homes or of places they have visited. Social media has allowed us to explore how open digital archives might be managed and how they might function as ways of building — and making visible — communities with shared interests. Some of our followers are architecture students or young practitioners. Others are current and former residents of sites we have documented. Images from our accounts have been reproduced widely; some are featured as Facebook profile photos of rural organizations or ejidos. This appropriation suggests that the ways in which we have represented sites resonates with their observers and inhabitants.
The Arquitectura Popular Fond might someday incorporate data obtained through social media and by research conducted by others. Projecting this possibility, we called it Arquitectura Popular Fond, and not Arquitectura Popular del Noreste; it could eventually include materials from regions beyond Mexico’s northeast. We have also explored adding interactive features to the platform where it is hosted; by allowing people to comment on images, we would incorporate new perspectives and gather further information. The Fond could be accretive and ever-changing to reflect further evolution of the sites it documents, and new findings and research relationships. At the moment, however, established procedures at Fototeca Nuevo León require that the Fond remain a closed collection.
Figure 5. Wood and mud store in Magüiras, Hualahuises municipality, Nuevo León. Photograph by Josué Olivo, 2018.
Figure 6. A tanner’s workshop in Lampazos, Nuevo León. Photograph by Nora I. Gómez, 2018.
Arquitectura Popular del Noreste Dictionary
Another product of Arquitectura Popular del Noreste is an online dictionary of terms used to describe typologies, materials, construction techniques, and other aspects of the natural and built environment in our research area. One of its antecedents is a series of animations we did for social media that highlight structural elements in vernacular construction and show what people in different localities call them. Our list of terms grew when identifying descriptors as part of the cataloging process. I realized many of these words were unknown beyond northeastern Mexico and were not documented in dictionaries of Mexicanisms. I thus decided to edit a dictionary that would define these and other terms, in collaboration with the project’s audiences.
After I wrote approximately fifty entries, designer David Quiroga and his team built an online platform and published them there. This site lists terms alphabetically and, when users click on words, it leads to a web page with its definition, usage examples, and photos. Words are grouped into categories such as structural elements, architectural typologies, and objects. Below each definition there are links to other words in the same category. With this system set up, we launched a call for additional terms, definitions, and photos through social media. We edited and incorporated submissions, and credited contributors as “correspondents.” We also included a short bio of each person that links to their contributions.
The list of correspondents makes the collaborative dimension of the project visible; it is, however, imprecise. Collaborations have grown increasingly complex, making it difficult to assign a single individual to each word. Some months after publishing our website, we started asking people online to help us define terms. Many shared definitions helped us identify regional variations, as well as the various meanings of certain words. With the help of these answers and usage examples found in literature, newspapers, and online videos, we wrote new definitions and edited earlier ones. We have also expanded the list of terms by posing questions such as, “What are the roles associated with the management of communal lands in northern Mexico?,” or “How are the different parts of carbon mines known in the state of Coahuila?” The dictionary now has close to four hundred entries.
Our work involves both documenting existing, and producing new, knowledge. We have registered terms already in circulation and coined new ones to describe architectural typologies. We have also used the dictionary and a graphic novel that I published as references in new Wikipedia articles. One among them describes calceniza, a mixture of ashes and lime used to make building blocks in northeastern Coahuila. Another one is about casas tren, or “train houses,” a typology we named after documenting it in the states of Coahuila and Nuevo León (Figure 8). These articles are part of a growing network of resources on the built environment in our region. Until recently, there was practically no information about this topic online. Today, we periodically find personal posts on social media that use words we have popularized, or which reproduce parts of our definitions. We might soon find them in scholarly texts.
Figure 7. Aerial view of a cemetery in ejido San José de Bellavista, municipio de Mapimí, Durango. Photograph by José Kontos, 2019.
Figure 8. Aerial view of a casa tren in Tanque escondido, Saltillo municipality, Coahuila. Photograph by José Kontos, 2021.
Digital platforms such as the dictionary are simultaneously research tools and products. As tools, they can be edited to incorporate its users’ observations; this encourages feedback to make their contents richer and more precise. As products, they showcase information that can be readily circulated. The dictionary might eventually be edited into a printed volume. This would give this project greater longevity; websites need constant maintenance to remain functional and are often discontinued. The book’s audience would be most likely smaller and more specialized than that of the online dictionary. Each of these products has its own publics and temporalities. In the age of digital humanities, web resources have not superseded printed media. They do, however, offer novel ways of gathering and sharing information that underscore that knowledge is a process with no definitive end and that always occurs through collaboration.
Both the Arquitectura Popular Fond and the dictionary break down rigid distinctions between academic research and institutional service — common in U.S. universities — and between academic works and those aimed at the dissemination of knowledge — common among academics in Latin America. In both contexts, what has traditionally been rewarded with scholarly advancement and promotions are articles and books published by certain journals and presses. Creating archives and other “primary sources” is often assumed to be a technical or managerial task. Archives, however, often result from the critical analysis of data, and materials for general audiences can have great depth. Digital media can make their production process — and therefore their conceptual complexity — visible. In the study of the built environment, these resources have the power to transform our view of architecture: from the work of individual authors with shrine-like archives, to a more inclusive understanding of how dwellings are built and inscribed with meanings. They also complement, and complicate, the perspectives of institutionally certified, university trained experts with local forms of knowledge and personal experience. As we explore this potential, we hope the circulation of data online will compel us to seek answers to difficult questions on collaborative work, authority, and intent.
Citation
Pablo Landa, “Collaborative Research on Mexican Vernacular Architecture in the Age of Digital Humanities,” PLATFORM, July 17, 2023
