In conversation with... Luis Longhi

• Main Authors: José Luis Crespo-Fajardo, Geovanny Sagbay-Jaramillo, Luisa Pillacela-Chin
• Format: Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Universitat Politècnica de València 2021-03-01
• Series: EGA
• Subjects: luis longhi
• Online Access: https://polipapers.upv.es/index.php/EGA/article/view/15234
• ISSN: 1133-6137; 2254-6103

Luis Longhi Traverso, professor at the Peruvian University of Applied Sciences (known as UPC) and international speaker, receives us one afternoon in September via video call. We are in front of one of the architects with more projection in Peru. In recent decades his figure has been widely recognized and his projects have won him important awards, most notably the 2010 Golden Hexagon, the highest distinction in Peruvian architecture. He earned his degree from Ricardo Palma University and has completed postgraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania, he worked in Balkrishna Doshi’s studio in Amhedabad (India). In the United States he was employed in the offices of Adèle Santos, David Slovic, Gruen Associates and Farrington Design Group, among others. In 1994 he returned to Peru to create the firm Longhi Architects, focused on creating architecture with a high degree of artistic sense. One example is the house where he currently resides and from which he virtually receives us: the Chullpas House (outside Lima), whose tubular structures are related to the Inca archaeological remains of the Chullpas of Sillustani, in Puno, his place of birth. The interior of the Chullpas house is full of sculptures, some of them own, the most abstract ones, and others of pre-Columbian nature. The cardboard and wood models remind us of his job as a professor, while the posters announcing theatrical performances speak of the time when he worked as a stage designer. Between stones and the gray concrete painted in magenta, yellow and blue tones, the Inca Longhi, as his friends call him, has spent this time of confinement.