ELEA07 El Salvador

I thought i could go to Denmark and present it in person, but i cannot, so here comes a brief description of what i saw at the XXIV. ELEA, as far as i know first ever european to participate in its history. (Not in the ELEA South though, where if not anyone else, some French guys, not from EASA, participated last year in Chile.) For what very little i saw of the country, i lived my greatest ever cultureshock, never having been outside of Europe before, but the event itself, in spite of all the differences, had quite the same essence as EASA. As for the organization, the main difference is that it is much more formal than ours, the coordinators (~NCs) have a more hierarchical structure as they elect a president, vice-president, secretary and a treasurer (or how on earth it is called in English….)(which last one implies that they also have a common budget to take care of, what, to be honest, i don’t know if we have); the assembly is, or at least this one was, more connected to universities: the student lectures were held in 4(!) different unicersities of San Salvador; the events – inauguration, lectures, clausure – are also a bit more formal than ours, even the parties are less only about drinking and dancing, and are more cultural. This is for the organized ones, of course, the spontaneous ones occurred every time we had 5 free minutes, as there was always someone to start to play some percussion, and soon everyone nearby was dancing. The whole ELEA is a bit more „fancy”, so to say, than EASA, mostly for the accomodation, which is in hotels, and for that kind of formality i talked about. Also, transportation was organized not only to the excursions, but also from and to the airport and between the hotels and the workshop and lecture places. Another great difference is that the ELEA is not nearly as much about workshops as EASA: as far as i know, this was the very first one where workshops were obligatory for everyone and lasted the whole week (shorter and „free-choice” workshops were held in earlier ones as well), and that is said to be an EASA influence. The workshops were divided into 3 categories: spacial, conceptional and visual, every applicant could choose from these three, but to the concrete workshops they were sorted randomly (so as to avoid having workshops with participants from onlyone country for ex.). Also, the themes were proposed by a team of young local architects, the tutors, from different countries, „only” conducted them. Recycled materials were provided by the organisers, and each workshop had a budget of around 60 USD to buy other things needed. Practically every evening, except for that of the Feria Latinoamericana (~national evening) and the excursion, there were lectures of invited architects and other artists, and two mornings there were student lectures. The ELEA is also, in a way, more competitive than EASA: the bests of the student lectures, just like those of the academic and cultural stands and the Arqui-fashion, are prized at the clausure event. The academic stands, installacions of student projects of each country, were presented the last day, along with the workshop results. The cultural stands were part of the Feria Latinoamericana, just as a presentation – a video and a dance, in most cases – of the countries. To the stands they brought, apart from some food and drinks, books and papers of architecture, folkloric artefact and so on, but in principle (in practice not that much) these were for sale. The Arqui-fashion is a real fashion-show that consists of the presentation of a video of a contemporary architect of each country and a costume, preferably made of recycled materials, that represents his/her style.
The assembly lasts for one week; this year it had about 300 participants, „only” so much because of the workshops, at earlier ones there were 500-600, even 1000 participants. As only 14 countries participate (and some others as guests), the delegations are way bigger than at EASA, up to 50-60, even more people. Officially it cost 350USD; being the only european i didn’t stay at either of the hotels, but in the house the organisers rented for themselves, and paid only 230. The whole event is in Spanish, of course, and even though i speak it all right, i did have quite some difficulties in understanding all the different accents.
So much for the professional and objective part: personally i can say it totally unforgettable, i’d never seen people so open, with so much positive energy and so full of music, nor had i recieved such a warm welcome as there. As soon as i can i’ll put up some pictures and videos (which also may explain this feeling a bit better :-) ), but surely you can find some already (on youtube i already saw some).
The next ELEA will be in Guatemala, the theme is the evolution of Latin-American architecture; when i get the presentation and some details from the organisers, i’ll put them up as well. I don’t think i can go next year, but it’d be really grat if some easians went.
Any eleans reading this, if i wrote something that’s not correct, that is for not remembering, and please tell me :-)

posted by eszter
Sun, 18 Nov 2007 19:52:00 GMT