Domus India – March 2018

77

important. Aldo Rossi’s autobiography maybe
more that, The Architecture of the City. The
autobiography itself is a really beautiful book of
architecture. Something that connects the
biography of the architect with the architecture,
and that is really important. You said before, it’s
always connected, it’s about life, it’s not about a
profession. And that in Thomas Bernhard’s
Correction, you could feel that, or maybe in
Constant, the obsession with New Babylon, it’s
not about the house, it’s about an obsession, a
real-life leitmotif of life. It’s not something you
could do like a profession, it’s something you
really feel.
HUO: You’re also teaching, and in a way, many
young architects now are so inspired by your work:
what would be your advice to a young architect?
SR: I started teaching for the first time in 2015
at a University in Chile and I had them prepare a
replica of The Invention of Chile. It is a book in
which many writers wrote about Chile, but they

This text is an extract of a conversation which

took place in Paris in October 2015 during FIAC

never came to Chile. It’s just an invention of Chile.

And we did a guide for architects who could go to

Chile but they could find something about the

invention of Chile for architects. And we did try

to do something good with the students, something

in between Superstudio and mixing everything:

it is not about writers but about architecture. It

was a new imaginary.

HUO: If we talk about a new imaginary, and the

mix of all these radical experiments, obviously

one thing that comes to mind is The Open City [a

school of Architecture founded in 1971 at the

Ritoque beach, just north of Valparaíso in Chile

that has defined its pedagogy as a combination

of poetry and architecture]. And I wonder if you

could speak a bit about the Open City and this very

unexpected experimental cooperation. How you

see it then and now?

SR: The Open City is a city, with houses and

cemeteries and temples, very special ones, made

in the Universidad Católica de Valparaíso. It was

really successful and really important for our

generation, because in the middle of

postmodernism in our school there was a sign

that was really important, throughout this really

boring architecture: and it was a really good

exercise for them. And I think right now it’s not

really powerful, but it’s still there in the imaginary,

it’s still there working for us in our memory.

Hidden house

Casa Escondida is

located 110 km south of

Lima, on the edge of the

desert coastline, at Playa

Escondida. It is easy to be

overwhelmed by the

radical conditions of the

construction in the region

of Peru and the

opportunities emerging

from its possibly primitive

nature. It is a place where

we can build a dry

architecture: without

insulation and without

waterproofing. With these

basic requirements

(temperature variation

and the presence of

water) excluded from the

building process, endless

opportunities arise to

redefine the architecture

of the region. S.R.