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Bahareque, also spelledbareque (also referred to in spanish asbajareque orfajina), is a traditional building technique used in the construction of housing by indigenous peoples. The constructions are developed using a system of interwoven sticks or reeds, with a covering of mud, similar to the systems of wattle and clay structures seen in Europe. This technique is primarily used in regions such asCaldas, which is one of the 32 departments ofColombia.[1]
Bahareque, is an ancient construction system used within the Americas. The name is said to come from the wordbajareque, is an old Spanish term for walls made ofbamboo (guadua in Spanish) and soil.Guadua is a common woody grass found in Colombia.[1] While its exact origin is uncertain, some authors have also attributed it to Caribbean-Taino culture and written it as 'bajareque'. Similar homophonies are found in other native American languages such as Miteca, ba and balibi, bava.
Pedro José Ramírez Sendoya (1897-1966), a Colombian priest and anthropologist, mentioned its use in his writings, noting that it was used to construct "good buildings with walls of clay and wood almost as wide as one of our walls, tall and whitewashed with very white clay".
Based onJorge Enrique Robledo's book,[2] Muñoz points out that this traditional technique of building evolved in Caldas from the first buildings constructed during the 1840s through the introduction of new materials, creating differenttypologies. All of these typologies typically use stone foundations.[3] These typologies are: 1.bahareque de tierra, 2.bahareque de tabla, 3.bahareque metálico, and 4.bahareque encementado.[4] Each typology has a different structural design. For instance,bahareque de tierra uses bamboo in both the frame and the structural panels and the plaster, and according to Sarmiento, is made from a mixture of earth and cattle dung.Bahareque encementado uses wood in the frame and bamboo (guadua) in its structural panels,[5] and the plaster is made by a kind of “reinforced cement” because of the use of steel mat between the bamboo panels and the cement plaster.[6]
In the 1840s, the first settlers ofManizales, the capital city of Caldas, usedbahareque de tierra in buildings that were usually single story. At the same time, in the rural areas, some farmers used a mix of traditional building styles.[7] This mix of traditional styles wastapia, which is a pre-Hispanic construction technique, andbahareque. The first floor,tapia, was based on compacted earth using wood earth forms,[8] and the second floor wasbahareque. In 1993, Robledo called this variationestilo temblorero.[2][9] The name derives from the fact that this new technique ofbahareque had better performance in the earthquakes (Spanishsismo meaning 'earthquake') since the first floor, which was rigid, absorbed the seismic energy, and the second floor, which was flexible, dissipated the energy.[9] Consequently, theestilo temblorero, which was used in a few farms and occasionally in the city of Manizales as temporary housing, gained favor after people saw that earthquakes were destroying buildings built with other construction techniques, such astapia. Those built withEstilo Temblorero remained standing.[10]
Because of thebahareque materials' flammability, and after the great fires of Manizales between 1925 and 1926, the trustworthiness ofbahareque was lost. After these great fires and the introduction of new construction techniques, such asreinforced concrete, new variations of thebahareque technique were introduced, leaving more trust in reinforced concrete thanbahareque.[11] These new techniques, which used concrete frames andbahareque facades and structural panels, were the most common structural designs in the reconstruction of the downtown that was swept by the great fires.[11]