ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at a recurring theme and key influence in Klumb’s residential practice – the homes of the island’s rural fieldworkers and working poor, that is, Puerto Rico’s jibaros. The main argument is that, whereas a casual observer may have seen a jibaro’s seemingly ramshackle wooden home as a substandard dwelling, Klumb came to see the jibaro hut as a complex social, economic, and cultural symbol, and as a valuable building archetype. To illustrate this point, this chapter traces Klumb’s experiments at emulating the jibaro hut in a series of public works projects.
