Vernacular Housing in Paraguay

As I'm thinking about the utility of this blog, I seems to me to makes the most sense to use it to record my observations about different aspects of housing. The great thing in traveling is that subtle changes in culture, technology, climate, and laws often lead to fundamentally similar but surprisingly divergent types of solutions to common problems. It would be a wonderful thing to travel the world and get standard recordings on housing types in every country. I imagine something like this has been done, perhaps by an architect. I bring to the exercise the interests of an urban designer in vernacular housing, or common housing (not mansions, not palaces). I want to know both how a house works for its inhabitant and how it fits together and is combine with other similar houses to create an urban fabric. I will be developing this method of study here in Seattle and starting next month in Copenhagen, where I will be doing this work as an independent study for four months. However, I'd like to start with a country with which I am very familiar, though distant from: Paraguay. 

A very modest dwelling near the Rio Parana.

It is useful to study urban development in a country like Paraguay because it is much poorer than the USA or Denmark. Many of the same elements are present in their fundamental forms, and structures are built and daily life is undertaken with an economical use of resources. Housing is no different.

Building Material:
Housing in Paraguay is constructed of brick and stucco or un-insulated wood boards.
Wood is almost exclusively used for lower quality or temporary building, and even lower-middle class Paraguayans build their homes of brick when possible.
Standard bricks are often locally manufactured at wood-fired kilns in tejars. These brickyards are located where clay is available, and nearby trees are used for fuel. This has contributed to deforestation in areas with rapidly growing populations. Darker clay yields heavier, stronger bricks, with a higher thermal capacity. I imagine this may be reflective of the silica content in the soil. Local production mitigates high transport costs for these heavy bricks. Some tejars also produce modular bricks with internal hollow spaces, meaning a lower overall mass.

Type:
Houses in Paraguay are adapted to their conditions over time, with little or no concern for land use regulations. Single family homes may become businesses, live/work spaces, boarding houses, stacked flats, or other arrangements over time.
Single family homes play a central role in the social structure in Paraguay, as they do in other countries. In Paraguay, traditional ideas of the family structure maintain a link with the country's colonial heritage - servants are commonplace, as are members of the extended family living under one roof. Furthermore, gender roles are very firmly rooted and are tied to ideas of work, at home and away from home, with the effect that the idea of a home without some sort of woman to look after it is considered laughably pathetic. Thus, the large, extended family home easily transitions to the boarding house, with single men, or women, renting rooms and paying for meals prepared by a matron.

Outdoor cooking area in central courtyard of family home.

Courtyard House
The colonial legacy of the Spanish hacendados gives us the roots of the Paraguayan courtyard house. This type has served as the home seat for the upper class for centuries. Its interior spaces are typically dark, stuffy, and often invaded by insects, so rooms tend to serve a utilitarian purpose for shelter and storage. They are arranged around a central courtyard between the front rooms of the house and adjacent to the cooking facilities, which likely include a wood-stove.
In modern Paraguay, this type is most common among upper-middle class families and above, especially in more densely populated and older towns. The courtyard house often directly abuts neighboring homes and is walled or fenced-off from adjacent properties.
The courtyard plan is highly adaptive to the needs of its users. The front portion can be used as a business, with residential areas only around the countryard itself. Individual rooms can be rented out, preserving a clear demarkation of private space and shared spaces among tenants. Schools, churches, and instituional offices can also use this pattern to

 
Small Country House
Small country houses share some of the characteristics of courtyard houses, with cooking facilities separate from the rest of the house, often in a shed, and dark, cramped, utilitarian interior spaces. However the small country house is often well removed from other homes and stands alone, making it impossible to enclose a courtyard area. Country houses usually have peaked roofs, covered with tile or corrugated metal, or traditionally with palm thatch. Wood beams span the interior without supports, though larger structures will can be divided with a centerline wall, which supports the roofbeam. The simplest structures are not divided into rooms, but often have two small structures separated by an open space with a roof bridging the gap. This simple design provides a shaded, semi-outdoor area similar to the courtyard enjoyed in higher-class homes.


Urban Form
Residential land use in Paraguay tends to develop gradually based on organic patterns of town formation. Small farms, gardens, and pastures are common land uses, which easily make way for houses as land values increase and development expands out from a town's center. Homes and shops cluster around important roads, while residential density gradually decreases with distance from nodes or important pathways.