The impact of “de lo blanco” carpentry guilds on 16th century Lima architecture

Abstract

The study of Lima “de lo blanco” carpentry has focused mostly on the 17th and 18th centuries, due to the lack of comparable examples from the previous cen- tury. This paper examines the work environment of Hispanic builders during the 16th century, which conditioned the wooden architecture of this era. The re- search motivated an exploration of historical sources that allowed us to unravel the performance of carpenters in Lima. It was detected that there was a guild that regulated the work, and whose few members had to continually move be- tween the viceregal capital and the neighboring Andean regions, spreading very similar wooden structures. Thus, Lima showed an image like the Andean villas with sloping roofs that defined the city’s profile.