Croquis Hospederías del Banquete / Banquet Inn sketch.
Orientation is normally a reference in respect to the path of the sun; due to this, architectural plans state the relationship of the building in respect to the sun as information relevant and necessary for the comprehension of the project. The “oriented” extension refers in this case to a greater complexity than to the normal dimensions of width/length of construction, and is introduced the concept of distance, which is embodied in architectural form as building a relationship between two limits: the form itself and its closure, and the meeting of this (form) with the distance that is not closure. Both limits are, by the way, in the scope of the visible thing. “The visible is not – we could say – one- dimensional, but multidimensional. These are; one: that sees what surrounds us and leaves us inside, that sees what is before; another: Evokes the absent. Whether it is to evoke in one’s past or future states; whether it evokes other things near and far, even the most distant” . (3) The oriented extension “that accommodates”, lastly, escapes the normal conception of the “isms” characteristic of modernity. Architecture is normally conceived as action that responds to determined problems with determined solutions. To accommodate, on the contrary, is the manifestation in space of a mode of inhabiting in permanence, that embraces life’s acts projecting them into a transcendence. This reality is formulated firstly in the project for the Chapel of Pajaritos in 1952: “In order to make this Church it was necessary to ford a great zone. The great zone to interrogate itself: How should the form be where one prays?”.
“In Church some kneel, others fold one leg, others barely incline forward, the last ones bare the bells of the consecration standing up. Church is not a stadium watching athletes. I would feel naked even before this question. It was strange to feel so naked. Because the city is built every day for everyday living with the gifts that great architects have given us” . And adds: “When I returned, I checked the current usual Chilean churches. They are round empty interior spaces, surrounded by a complicated game of architectonic motifs, pillars, vaults, mouldings, lights, large windows, cases, pictures, adornments, thousands of other details. Game which can be simplified, stylized, modernized, as is currently said. And that these interiors have nothing to do with what they try. It’s best to be inside them with eyes shut. Looking at the church’s nave is almost the same as leaving a play in the middle of the spectacle into the foyer. Their architects did not know, do not know how to assemble the sand of the sea of the prayer. They do not know of spatial situations. They do not know of the external circumstances of the internal fact. Is there less internal doing in those that only fold a knee? I’d think of the gothic architects of Notre-Dame and I felt more naked” . (4) This essay attempts to engage, from the perspective that present time provides, how a definition of architecture as an “oriented extension that accommodates”, inaugurates for the present and for American modernity, a new way of project conception. Each author approaches one of these concepts to expand them in Alberto Cruz’ built, written and plastic work.
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