Double Quincha in Lima, Peru: Innovation, Adaptation and Comfort in the XVII–XIX Centuries

Abstract

Peruvian construction technology has an original tradition of thousands of years, from a completely indigenous remote past to the cultural mixture of the viceroyalty centuries and the encounter with the rest of the world. This tradition has been, as is to be expected, strongly conditioned by the material characteristics of the geographical, climatic and territorial environment, with multiple adaptations and innovations. One of these innovations is the quincha, used throughout the coast of the Peruvian viceroyalty for the second and third levels of all structures. But the documentation indicates the use of a variant, the “double quincha” as an element that, using the width of more rigid supports, created an internal air chamber. This work references colonial and contemporary documentation and case studies in Lima, to verify the properties for thermal comfort of the double quincha, in one of the first studies of its kind for this material. Architectural surveys and systematic temperature measurements were carried out at multiple buildings in the center of the historic city- as well as the use of models in an energy simulator program. The results allow us to understand a little more both the constructive reasoning of quincha and the possibilities of this traditional method.

Double Quincha-The word, of indigenous origin, was already found in chronicles such as those of the priest Bernabé Cobo (History of the New World... p. 210–211). In Spain, similar elements were called “looms”.