Dave Vera Chile
How are we to enrich our creative powers? Not by subscribing to architectural reviews, but by undertaking voyages of discovery into the inexhaustible realm of Nature! — Open your eyes, burst the straight-jacket of professional discussions! Devote yourself so wholeheartedly to studying the meaning of things that architecture spontaneously becomes an inevitable conse- quence. - Le Corbusier I traveled to Chile two years ago to live and work as part of a school term for four reasons. One: because I was born there and had always wanted to visit family and travel the country. Two: because I was genuinely interested in the culture and knew if I came to a better understanding of it that I’d have a better understanding of myself. Three: because I had seen some examples of tremendous design coming from the country and wanted to know more. Four: because my thesis term was arriving and I wanted to have it influenced by what I learned in Chile. What I encountered was like nothing I had ever experienced before in my life! I found work in a government architectural office, in the city of ValparaÌso, making enough money to pay for my cab fare to and from work each day. This did not matter since I had plenty of family willing to feed and provide shelter. In the office I focused entirely on social housing and learned a great deal of how their system works in providing the basic necessities to people. Initially, this was the driving influence for my thesis but, as in most cases, thoughts change. The real influence became the city itself. I have an uncle who is an engineering professor at the Technical University of Federico Santa Maria, a spectacular neo-gothic campus protected by the UN. He took me through the campus and around a few bends until we got to the school of architecture. The entry was homogenous with the rest of the campus but things changed the further into the building we went. I was amazed to find an open steel truss like space extending out into the city! I had to stop but only for a second since my uncle was taking me to meet the director of the school, Roberto Barria. He was delighted to tell me that his school was designed by Oliver Lang and Cynthia Wilson of Lang Wilson Practice in Architecture Culture (LWPAC) from Vancouver. I was even more astounded! Here I thought I was entering a country full of rich culture and a passion for good design and one of my first examples comes from Canada. The school itself had embraced computers and used them extensively as a tool for information gathering and architectural communications. On my way out I decided to let my uncle go ahead so I could walk around the building and look at the detailing. I interrupted one of the critiques in the main event space between a group of Chileans and a visiting class of Norwegians.
I lived one block up the street from a second school of architecture. This one was part of the University of ValparaÌso and is somewhat infamous for its teaching philosophy and style. The initial quote by Le Corbusier at the beginning of this paper describes this quite well. I visited
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