Kieran Lindsay

The region coined as the ‘lithium triangle’, situated at the borders of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile, has been embroiled in a series of border disputes and trade disagreements since colonisation. Its economy can be defined now by a neo-extractivism, containing the largest deposits of lithium in the world. With lithium’s key role in the progression of a ‘green’ future, the regions are deeply intertwined in the processes of the world's resource markets.

As such, ’Los Pueblos de la Vida Cotidiana’ (or, the Villages of Everyday Life) operates along a path that is inherently multi-scalar, recognising the overlapping and contentious schisms which form through its position in the global assemblage. The key architectural scales form along two key axes. First, across the contested border lines of the nation state, and second through the village, unambiguously ‘local’ in its functioning but increasingly intertwined into global ‘flows’. The aforementioned lithium triangle acts as the site of exploration, in which the border is tested as a zone of collectively instead of a device of enclosure. This border occurs as a condition both spatial and figurative, existing as a conceptual gesture and through moments of physical activation. Via a series of outputs (pueblos) that function with this border mechanism as a central node of cooperation, the project engages with the complex social and ecological systems on the ground, integrating the very tangible spatial dynamics of these ‘flows’.