the school periodically and had a chance to chat with a professor who told me that no school in the world is like theirs. Why? Because they have the students go out and draw the city over and over again until they understand it. They design spaces for people. I can still hear him telling me this and is the reason that I now draw people in all of my drawings at work. Here they say we don’t need to draw people in an elevation because it is implied. Is it? Is it possible a new mean- ing could arise if our designs were populated? This school’s humanistic approach to design is directly influenced by poetry. The city has inspired poets for centuries so it is a relevant factor to consider in a design.
ValparaÌso robbed me and subjected me to its domain, to its foolishness: ValparaÌso is a heap, a bunch of crazy houses. - Pablo Neruda
These two schools each demonstrated the impact of architecture by the city. The first is a bold, almost crazy move, through use of computer design, to help enlighten groups of growing minds. The second is a passive human scale approach of discovery in which meaning is attained through the act of letting go. I find both vital. For my thesis I chose to combine these two trains of thought: technology and poetry. The search was for a building that reacts to and is influenced by its distinctive place. The use of comput- ers was intentional. An extension of the MIT Media Lab was proposed for South America to be situated at the end of the Valparaiso’s main axis. Why? Because I know that Chile has embraced the new technological frontier. The Media Lab has extensions in both India and Ireland with a logical move being another creation in Chile. Working with government, industry and the uni- versity the lab asks the questions of technology in a place. The building is placed at the end of Avenue Argentina to reunite the street with the water in a poetic way. The building is a metaphor of the sea with the Humbolt Current that runs up the coast of Chile providing more than enough background and inspiration. During the six months I was in Chile I didn’t choose a site or idea for the thesis. It was only after I had walked up and down the streets for months taking pictures and just enjoying the city that I could make a good decision for my next step. With the help of computers I continued to learn from my home in Canada. I am glad that I was subjected to ValparaÌso for that short time. It will be a huge influence as I start my career here in Canada. Is this the new globalization? One place influencing another place? Let’s hope so. In my case I feel the term globalization is blurred; I am both a Canadian and a Chilean. If there is an architecture for each of these countries, to which am I bound? Again, I go to Le Corbusier when he states a devotion to the study of the meaning of things. If you are in a place and study it well, good architecture will always be a consequence.
David Vera holds a Master of Architecture degree from Dalhousie University and is cur- rently interning at the Calgary office of Kasian Architecture Interior Design Ltd.
Ann M. Pendleton-Jullian, The Road That Is Not a Road: and the Open City, Ritoque, Chile (Cam- bridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996), 53. Pablo Neruda, ValparaÌso: Where the Imagination Lives On (ValparaÌso: City Hall of ValparaÌso, 2002), 2.
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