Builder’s Jam

The principle of a Builder’s Jam is that you build without a prior plan in a self-organized way. However, because the building authority in La Paz made it a condition that they wanted a final plan of the skatepark before construction began, we stuck to this rule but extended it a little: We drew really big pro-forma plans that said in very big letters that the result would definitely look completely different. And because a plan like that doesn’t count for anything if it’s not stamped, we then got the biggest stamp available in the city and stamped everything. That made all the bureaucrats happy and we could get started. We organized a camp with sleeping places and a communal kitchen and picked up our friends from the airport in buses. In a megalomaniacal, invisibly structured and highly productive chaos, we then not only built the skate park in a very short time, but also a small house that is used as a skate school and homework help.

The special thing about this way of building - without a plan and without fixed responsibilities - is that it creates a certain kind of communication, social interaction and mutual support that is based above all on empathy, which is otherwise completely unusual on construction sites. That’s not to say that things weren’t rough on our building site - on the contrary: we threw ourselves into the dust with open hearts, got our hands dirty and moved small mountains with a shared mission to grow. The result is not only extraordinary architecture, but also many, many friendships all over the world.