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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.