Ñandeva

The ITAIPU dam, the greatest dam in the world, was opened in the late seventies, within the natural park of the Iguazu Falls, between Paraguay and Brazil, a few kilometers from the Argentinean border. The dam created a huge artificial lake (1200×300 km), which interfered with the equilibrium of the area, altering its climate and forcing all the traditional communities who lived along the shores of the Paraguay River to move away. This completely deranged life in craftsmen villages, whose inhabitants found themselves without their raw materials, in different echo-systems, far from the traditional marketing centers.

The Ñandeva project is based on the utilization of theme workshops in which designers and craftsmen and technicians work on the analysis of native cultures as a starting point towards the development of new typologies of items made out of ecological raw materials, ethically and socially correct. Craftsmen communities from Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina that were relocated to build the ITAIPU dam can learn to use new ecological raw materials and develop new products lines which, respecting their cultural identity and traditional techniques, allow them such incomes to guarantee a decent life, while preserving and rediscovering techniques, expressions and tribal traditions.

The intervention of design through creative laboratories breaks the typical isolation of craftsmen communities, puts them in contact with each other, with near countries, with people from all over the world, makes them visible and thus “defendable”. (Unknown community’s disappear every year with no-one noticing it)

Since 2004, the Ñandeva Project has been giving impulse to a special dynamic among craftsmen and their families in the three participating countries (Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina). The new lines of products that were created during the design workshops will help increase available funds for the families.