Quincha

Quincha (also quinche) is a building technique of the Pacific coast of South America in which a timber frame of posts and beams is filled with cane or reed woven together and plastered with mud. It is closely related to the bahareque or wattle-and-daub construction of Central America and Colombia. Because it is light and flexible, quincha has a reputation for good behaviour in earthquakes.

Lima

In Lima, colonial houses were at first built of adobe or fired brick, often two storeys high. After strong earthquakes in the 16th and 17th centuries, the viceroy, the Conde de la Monclova, ordered in 1699 that upper floors be rebuilt in the lighter quincha system. As a result, many historic buildings in the centre of Lima have an adobe ground floor carrying quincha upper storeys, and quincha remained in use after independence because of its good performance in earthquakes. The Historic Centre of Lima was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1988.

Roofs and floors

A paper by Daniel Torrealva and Erika Vicente of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, presented at the 15th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering in 2012, describes the roofs of these buildings: timber rafters are nailed to the top beams of the quincha walls, boards are laid over the rafters, and a layer of soil goes on top. Earth-covered, nearly flat roofs of this kind suit Lima's dry coastal climate. Peru's 2017 census still records "cane or reed matting with a mud or cement layer" (caña o estera con torta de barro o cemento) as the main roof of 3.4% of occupied dwellings.

The same authors tested twelve full-scale quincha walls modelled on the three-storey Hotel Comercio in Lima under cyclic horizontal loading. The walls reached large drifts without collapse, and the authors concluded that their seismic behaviour was excellent.

Ecuador

On the coast of Ecuador, cane (caña guadúa) and mud plaster, called quinche or quincha, has been used since pre-Columbian times. Research at the Universidad Laica Eloy Alfaro de Manabí documents houses on stilts, montubio rural houses of cane and quinche, and timber, cane and quinche mansions in Guayaquil (18th century) and Portoviejo (19th century).