Water and architecture: power and poetry in Keushu

Abstract

The relationship between water and the built environment at the an-thropic lagoon of Keushu in northern Peru, evinces, on one hand, the characteristics behind funerary architecture and their symbolic dimension bound to the landscape, and on the other, the value of water understood as an economic, social, and symbolic resource. The intention is to present this poetical pre-Hispanic Andean architecture as one capable of revealing, through constructive gestures, the importance of the ancestors in relationship with water and land-scape, and of integrating the territory's sacred symbolism with the social, cultural, and economic affairs of the communities residing around Keushu.