Valparaiso School / Open City Group MASTERS OF LATIN AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE SERIES An international joint project developed by Birkhauser-publishers for Architecture Contrapunto. Logos. McGill-Queen's University Press and Tanais Ediciones Part of the Biblioteca Lberoamericana de Arquitecture clooection BIENAL IBERONMERICANA DE AROUITECTURA E INGENIERIA CIVIL Ministerio de Fomento del Reino de Espana, Junta de Andalucia v a l p a r a f s o s c h o o l o p e n c i t y g r o u p Rodrigo Perez de Arce Fernando Perez Oyarzun Edited by Raul Rispa McGill-Queen's University Press Montreal & Kingston ®Tanais Ediciones, s.a., 2003 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, broadcast- ing, reproduction on microfilms or in other ways, and storage in data banks. For any kind of use, permission of the copyright owner must be obtained. ISBNO-7735-2651-Xx McGill-Queen's edition available exclusively in North America, Australia, and New Zealand McGill-Queen's University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities. Originally published in 2003 under the title escuela de Valparaiso /grupo ciudad abierta by Tanais Ediciones s.a Publisher Raiil Rispa Executive Editor: Valeria Varas English Editor Teresa Santiago Texts: Selected Works by Fernando Perez Oyarzun (pages 20-31 and 36-55), RodrigoPerezdeArce(pages 32-35 and 56-133); Biography and Chronology by Catholic University of Valparaiso School of Architecture, Corporacion Amereida and Tanais Editorial Team; Bibliography by Tanais Editorial Team and Catholic University of Valparaiso School of Architecture. Original drawings, plans and photographs by Institute of Architec- ture, Catholic University of Valparaiso School of Architecture, Cor- poration Amereida, Juan Purcell, Raul Rispa eto/.:see page 167. Documentation by Catholic University of Valparaiso School of Architecture, Architecta Outsourcing 21, s.L, Tanais Editorial Team English translation by Erica Witscheyand Gown Powell Text editing Lettice Small Design and Layout by Tanais Editorial Team Electronic Edition by Jose Luis Casado, Belen Gomez National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Rispa, Raul Valparaiso School : open city group / Raul Rispa. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7735-2620-X 1. City planning—Chile—Ritoque. 2. Architecture—Chile— Ritoque—20th century. 3. City planning—Philosophy. 4. Universi- dad Catolica de Valparaiso. Institute for Architecture. I. Title. NA867.V34R58 2003 711,45711'.45C2003-901720-6 A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress, Washington D.C., USA Printed by Torreangulo arte grafico, s.a. Printed on acid-free paper produced from chlorine-free pulp. TCF°o Printed in Spain 8 The Valparaiso School Fernando Perez Oyarzun 13 So far yet so near: the Open City and the Travesias Rodrigo Perez de Arce 19 Selected Works 20 Achupallas Urban Development 24 Los Pajaritos Chapel 28 Naval Academy 32 Avenida del Mar 36 Benedictine Monastery of the Holy Trinity 42 Casa Cruz 48 Southern Churches 50 Mother Church in Puerto Montt 51 Church in Corral 54 Church of Nuestra Seriora de la Candelaria 56 Open City 66 Music Room 72 Palace of Dawn and Dusk 78 House of Names 86 Wanderer's Lodge 98 Henri Tronquoy Agora and Vestal 102 Double or Banquet Lodge 108 Temple, Cemetery and Gully 114 Prototype Workshop 122 Works in Travesias 124 Travesia to Lake Titicaca 126 Troves/o to Caldera 128 Travesia to the Plains of Curimahuida 130 Troves/as to Comau Huinay Fjord and the Amereida Vessel 135 Works and Designs 152 Biography and Chronology 161 Bibliography 166 Glossary 666 As poets, men inhabit the land Heidegger You have in your hands an exceptional book. It is exceptional, first and foremost because of its subject matter: the work and life of the Valparaiso group is somewhat polyhedral, with its multiple facets so intrinsically interrelated and hier- archically alike that it is by no means easy to place them within the context of the original format of words such as the book and the narrative. This volume seeks to transmit to the reader that polyhedral character of those four gen- erations of men and women, so we recommend that you start reading the book at any point which immediately appeals to you, thereby creating your own roadmap. However, we believe that it would be useful to begin with the Biography and take a look at the basic dictionary of concepts, both of which are to be found at the end of the mono- graph. It is no coincidence that we refer you first to the words, because another exceptional feature of Alberto Cruz and his companions is their architecture sustained by the Word and co-generated with poetry, the ultimate distillate of the word. The word! What a contrast to the visual banality which surrounds us! Let us pass from the power of the word to the shapes and forms of the architecture itself and the visual arts which flourish within the group; here you will find extremely modern and up-to-date formal language: diagonals, sloping planes, acute and obtuse angles, apparent examples of destructuring which can immediately be associated with the shapes and forms of deconstructivism. But these are not hollow, empty formulas, monotonous fashion of our times, a blurred, diffuse and unfocused Neo-Baroquism (such, perhaps, because it does not really have anything to say?); rather they are paths discovered by radical researchers who, on the periphery, are prepared to challenge everything and face the consequences, but always with the greatest mathematical, structural and analytical rigour. For aesthetics and ethics, architectural discipline and individual and social life could not be more inextricably linked than in the case of these university teachers who make their models on a scale of 1:1 and live in them, thereby fol- lowing in the footsteps of the Christian communities, humanism, the Jesuits and their missions in South America (including their work with the Araucan Indians), of Owens, the Bauhaus and Le Corbusier, of Torres-Garcia and his proposition of the south as north, of Dim, Tomas Maldonado, Utopia... They revel in the splendour of poverty, the poverty of the materials used in their buildings, the transitory hospederias rather than privately-owned houses, the austerity of their way of life, the assumption of the ephemeral condition, the fragility and temporality-as an alternative to the Vitruvian firmitas; which all means divesting oneself of the non- essential. It refers us back to early Christianity, and then forward to the here and now, to a "return to not knowing", authentic deconstruction avant la lettre, a play of oppositions... We think you will love these people who, from out- side the mainstream, propose a true radical alternative to architecture, and the way it is taught, researched and prac- tised professionally. The publishers Birkhauser, Logos, McGill-Queen's, Contrapunto, and Tanais, and the Ibero-Ameri- can Biennial, have believed from Basel, Modena, Montreal, Santiago de Chile, Seville and Madrid that it is well worth learning about this group. To the people of Valparaiso who trusted us-soul companions in this travesia-to show their life and work in their first book open to the world, we offer our apologies if we do not succeed in arousing in you the same enthusiasm which they, and their telluric land of poets have aroused in us. The Editor Luodo, games at Open City 7 The Valparaiso School In 1952, a group of young architects led by Alberto Cruz and the Argentine poet Godofredo lommi moved from Santiago de Chile to the city of Vina del Mar, next to the port of Valparaiso. Having Fernando Perez Oyarziin accepted contracts with the Catholic University of Valparaiso, they had come to teach at the School of Architecture founded some decades before. The Rector of the University, the Jesuit Jorge Gonzalez, had initially invited Alberto Cruz, who had been teaching at the Catholic University of Chile, in San- tiago. Cruz and lommi, who had become friends and co-operated at an intellectual level for several years, decided to transfer as a group and made this a pre-condition for accepting the invitation. A radical experience. Born in 1917, Alberto Cruz studied architecture at the Catholic University of Santiago, and soon proved himself as a charismatic young professor, organizing an introductory course on architecture which was a departure from the traditional; he played a significant role in the movement to reform his School in 1949. However, Cruz afterwards gave up teaching and travelled to Europe, lommi, also born in 1917, for his part did not complete his studies in Economics. He decided instead to dedicate his life to poetry, having come under the influence of the poet Vicente Huidobro, and settled in Chile. The newly-arrived group moved into a collection of recently built dwellings in Cerro Castillo, in Vina del Mar. Overlooking the city, the houses, set in a cul-de-sac, offered the right conditions for the life of social and strong communal interaction which they intended to lead. The influence of the new teachers from Santiago was such that it completely dominated the School. Before long, the Valparaiso School, as it became known, acquired a reputation for its radical stance. Its teaching, compared with other schools, offered an experimental alternative. At the same time, the group also founded the Insti- tute of Architecture, envisaged as a place for research and completion of architectural projects. Using various names and methods, this flank of research and practice, often experimental in nature, was to become one of the more permanent features of the group. The school soon attracted other artists, such as the Argentine sculptor Claudio Girola who, together with Tomas Maldonado and others, formed a substantial art group in Buenos Aires linked to experi- ences such as that of Max Bill in Basilea and the Salon Realites Nouvelles in Paris. Contacts were also established with artists, thinkers and men of science, among them the Brazilian poet Thiago de Melo, the French philosopher Francois Fedier, the Chilean intellectuals Mario Gongora (historian), Jorge Eduardo Rivera (philosopher), and Juan de Dios Vial Correa (biologist). In this way the group affirmed, on the one hand, its universal vocation and, on the other, its intention of establishing a dialogue between different arts and disciplines around the innovative activity of teaching, research and creat- ing which were being proposed by the school. At a certain distance, contacts were maintained with those who -albeit from different positions, such as Juan Borchers- shared the group's concern with the theoretical development of, and the search for, alternative ways of working professionally. In addition to its unusual teaching activity, its projects and its participation in competitions, the group became known for staging poetic acts in public, which served to highlight both its alternative nature and its adherence to a poetic vision of culture and existence. The best known of these acts, which they called phalenes, consisted of an act of poetic creation performed on a collective basis and in public places, lommi, inventor of the phalenes and of their poetic rules, travelled around Europe performing these acts. 8 In 1965 members of the school, together with poets, philosophers and foreign guest painters, set off on a poetic journey from Punta Arenas, in Patagonia, to Bolivia, in the very centre of South America, staging a series of events and poetic acts while they travelled. The experience of the trip led to two publications, entitled Amereida I and //, which, the first especially, have played a significant inspirational role in the activity of the School. This first poetic journey marked a new stage in its history, which germinated, years later, in that pedagogical and creative proposal which went under the name of travesias (poetic voyages or crossings). In 1967 the Valparaiso School, its students and professors, led a movement to reform the university. This movement was unable to maintain the momentum which lommi and his group had started and finally ended up going the way of other university movements at the end of the Sixties. However, it acquired sig- nificant historical importance both as the initiator of a series of similar movements inside and outside the country, and for its theoretical content, expressed in various documents and manifestos. Terrace, Valparaiso School of Architecture, Recreo, From 1970 onwards the research and design activity, and a large proportion of the energy of the group, Vina del Mar began to be focused on what became known as the Open City. Founded as a co-operative in Ritoque, a small coastal village to the north of Vina del Mar, it was conceived as a space of collective life and work which would bring together the disciplines cultivated by the School and was intended as an open site in the double sense that it was open to its destiny and had a vocation for hospitality. At the beginning of the 21st century, the Open City changed its legal status, becoming a foundation and seeking to open itself up to those who are interested in its ideas, thereby expanding outwards beyond the relatively small cir- cle of its founders and owners. The permanence and continuity of the Valparaiso School over a period spanning more than fifty years makes it, on that basis alone, rather exceptional in the architectural production of the world, and one of the most important cultural phenomena in the recent history of Latin America, transcending what might have been an atypical academic experience. Strictly speaking, it can be considered a "school" because of its collective nature, but above all, because it is a collective which is distinctive and recognizable. A school is recognized not only for sharing a set of ideas and beliefs, but also for its capacity to generate a char- Alberto Cruz and Godofredo lommi (reading) acteristic iconography. In this case it does not restrict itself to architecture, but covers a set of formal in a poetic act or phalene in Caleta Abarca options ranging from a way of drawing and writing to a way of speaking. There is a " Valparaiso line", a "Valparaiso lyric", a "Valparaiso rhetoric". Furthermore, sustained by its dedication to teaching, the group has joined in, creatively and unusually, with the university institution. Taking very much into account the role played by research in the contemporary university, the group has brought into being a remarkable foundation which could, indeed, be described as an institutional creation with a scope that goes beyond what is usual in a school of architecture. The end of the First World War and the infectious enthusiasm which accompanied it had played an impor- tant role in disseminating the avant garde movements in Europe. With some exceptions, these ideas reached Chile ten or fifteen years later, on the eve of, or even during, the Second World War, at a time when they were beginning to be questioned in Europe. The reception of Modern architecture in Chile occurred at a time when the profession was going through a critical moment in its development. There- fore, the emergence of the Valparaiso School can be placed between this critical experience which arose 9