By examining the stunning stone buildings and dynamic spaces of the royal estate of Chinchero, Nair brings to light the rich complexity of Inca architecture. This investigation ranges from the ...paradigms of Inca scholarship and a summary of Inca cultural practices to the key events of Topa Inca's reign and the many individual elements of Chinchero's extraordinary built environment. What emerges are the subtle, often sophisticated ways in which the Inca manipulated space and architecture in order to impose their authority, identity, and agenda. The remains of grand buildings, as well as a series of deft architectural gestures in the landscape, reveal the unique places that were created within the royal estate and how one space deeply informed the other. These dynamic settings created private places for an aging ruler to spend time with a preferred wife and son, while also providing impressive spaces for imperial theatrics that reiterated the power of Topa Inca, the choice of his preferred heir, and the ruler's close relationship with sacred forces. This careful study of architectural details also exposes several false paradigms that have profoundly misguided how we understand Inca architecture, including the belief that it ended with the arrival of Spaniards in the Andes. Instead, Nair reveals how, amidst the entanglement and violence of the European encounter, an indigenous town emerged that was rooted in Inca ways of understanding space, place, and architecture and that paid homage to a landscape that defined home for Topa Inca.
This paper examines an eighteenth-century roof in Chinchero, Peru to show the critical role played by roofs in Andean communities across time. Roofs can reveal identity constructions, continuation of ...traditions, adaptations to new influences, and relationships to local environments and the sacred. We present a discussion of the importance of roofs in architectural history, the critical role played by roofs in Inca architecture, and a description of the colonial period roof in Chinchero, along with its facture, dates of construction, botanical identification, and the environmental zones from where these items could have been gathered. En este artículo se analiza un techo del siglo dieciocho en Chinchero, Perú, con el objetivo de mostrar la importancia que tuvieron los techos en las comunidades andinas a lo largo del tiempo. Los techos revelan construcciones de identidad, continuidad de tradiciones, adaptaciones a nuevas influencias y relaciones con los ambientes locales y con lo sagrado. Presentamos aquí una discusión sobre la importancia de los techos para la historia de la arquitectura y el papel fundamental que estos desempeñaron en la arquitectura Inca. Asimismo, describimos el techo del periodo colonial en Chinchero y discutimos su fabricación, fechas de construcción, identificación botánica de los materiales y las zonas ambientales donde estos elementos podrían haberse obtenido.
In 1693 the indigenous artist Francisco Chivantito completed the Virgin of Montserrat, devoted to the titular saint of the church in Chinchero, Peru. Illustrating an Iberian holy image and landscape, ...along with Inca elites and architecture, this painting weaves Andean symbolic and spatial understanding with European painting conventions to create a multivalent image that encompassed both Roman Catholic teachings and indigenous understandings of sacredness and history. Chivantito's layered narrative addressed the realities of life in the indigenous parish and also affords one of the few known examples of a local landscape illustration in a colonial Andean painting.
The study "Palaces and power in the Americas : from Peru to the Northwest coast," edited by Jessica Joyce Christie and Patricia Joan Sarro, is reviewed (University of Texas Press, 2006). The essays ...examine the architecture--specifically palaces--and culture of Native North to South Americans.
On Reconstructing Tiwanaku Architecture Protzen, Jean-Pierre; Nair, Stella E.
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians,
09/2000, Letnik:
59, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The site of Tiwanaku is thought of as the center of a civilization of the same name that exerted its influence over the southern Andean region from around 300 B. C. when it emerged to about A. D. ...1100 when it collapsed. The architecture of Tiwanaku today is reduced to several eroded mounds, outlines of courtyard structures, weathered uprights, fragmented walls, foundation stubbles, and jumbles of building stones but not a single standing, original building. It is argued that before this architecture can be understood and its anthropological and cultural significance properly appreciated, it first has to be reconstructed. The reconstruction of Tiwanaku architecture, in turn, requires an understanding of what the design principles were that gave Tiwanaku architecture its identity. Many building blocks and fragments are analyzed for the purpose of identifying the design features typical of Tiwanaku architecture, and in search of clues to their bond to other stones and to their initial appurtenance to some larger configuration. Several partial reconstructions are presented.
The early colonial church Nuestra Señora de Montserrat rests on the remains of an Incan royal estate in Chinchero, Peru. Its exterior is simple, like the houses around it, contrast the interior ...opulence. Its 17th-century doors, Inca stone walls with Spanish adobe bricks, murals, and intricate ceiling have been neglected. The significance of this church is examined, with a focus on its painting and architecture.
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