Reed Kroloff, Dean-Architecture, Rowe Chair at Illinois Institute of Technology | Illinois Institute of Technology
Peruvian architect Kevin Malca will join the Illinois Institute of Technology’s College of Architecture as the 2025 Jeanne and John Rowe Fellow. Malca’s work focuses on integrating ancestral ecological knowledge into contemporary architectural practices, drawing inspiration from his experiences with indigenous communities in Peru.
Malca was particularly influenced by the Quispillacta community’s use of “qochas,” or rain basins, which are artificial lagoons created using traditional stone masonry techniques. These water harvesting systems, passed down through generations, serve both practical and cultural purposes for the community.
“For all these techniques, there’s so much knowledge embedded, it’s an inheritance over time for generations. It’s more of an ecological way of living and thinking,” Malca said. “There’s an infrastructure and a system of practices both technical and sacred, very personal for the community.”
He added, “I’m interested in how these ancestral sites and practices can teach us ways of embracing ecological thinking in architecture.”
As a Rowe Fellow at Illinois Tech, Malca will spend two years teaching courses that examine how indigenous and modern spatial practices—from buildings to landscapes—function as interconnected ecological systems. He plans to explore how architecture can merge ancestral wisdom with contemporary innovation.
“We have embraced this binary thinking of past-present in architecture, and I don’t think it’s true,” Malca said. He noted that many ancestral practices align closely with recent sustainable design approaches.
Malca traces his interest in architecture back to his childhood in Lima, Peru. He observed his father designing their family home while listening to stories from his mother and grandmother about life in the Andes mountains and the relationship between native communities and their environment.
“I’m interested in the relationship between territory and communities, recognizing its critical role within interconnected ecological, cultural, and social systems,” he said. Malca has studied how Incan and pre-Incan societies designed structures that were integrated into their natural surroundings.
After earning a bachelor’s degree from Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú in 2016, Malca led public architecture projects focused on heritage landscape sites for the Peruvian government. He later completed a master’s degree at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he researched how ancestral knowledge influences architectural sites across different regions of Peru.
During his studies at MIT, Malca learned from members of the Quispillacta community—including nurturer Marcela Machaca—in Ayacucho province about water management traditions.
“Water is connected to everything,” he said. “It carries multiple meanings—playful, untamed, celestial, sacred—while at the same time being finite.”