Chaki Wasi, Shalalá community handicrafts center
La Cabina de la Curiosidad 

Chaki Wasi, Shalalá community handicrafts center

La Cabina de la Curiosidad 


The tourist center of the indigenous community of Shalalá is located close to the volcanic crater in the Quilotia Lagoon. Promoting sustainable tourism, the complex recently incorporated a circular construction for stalls showing handicraft products, arranged around a paved central plaza. Using traditional vernacular techniques and local materials, the handicrafts center is called Chaki Wasi, which in Kichwa means house made of straw from the floor to the roof.

Over river stones, the pavilion presents a structure of eucalyptus wood tied with cabuya (fiber coming from the penco, a plant with which ropes and fabrics are made) and wrapped with a large mantle of straw. Everything is built by hand with simple tools and collective strength, in a process of intergenerational knowledge-transmission and collaboration between the Shalalá community and the architecture practice La Cabina de la Curiosidad (Marie Combette and Daniel Moreno Flores). 

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