During more than three years of operation, the Cautín River Urban Park has shown that its minor architectural intervention was a very good idea. In this interview, the academic speaks about the key milestones of this project and the foundations it has laid for the development of other similar projects in the future. Landscape Architecture Must be Able to Orchestrate Resilient Infrastructures All architecture is a disturbance, but this does not mean that it is always negative. It can destroy wetlands, forests, or dune fields, poison rivers and coasts; but, as a disturbance, it can also create improvements in damaged or deteriorating ecosystems. ! Gonzalo Carrasco Purull An architect with a PhD in Architecture from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile focused on the relationship between architecture, ecology, and technology. A curator from the Uruguay Pavilion in Venice 2012 and the curator responsible for the Chile Pavilion “Moving Ecologies” at the Venice Biennale 2023. He is the researcher responsible for the FONDECYT “Vernáculo capitalista: development of the tower building in Chile (1978-2001)” and co-investigator of the Fondart “Vamos P'Arriba: the history of remodeling San Borja”. An academic director for the Master's Degree in Contemporary Project and research professor at LIA, Universidad Finis Terrae. and, even worse, we perceive it as “empty”, “with nothing”. We forget that all architecture is a disturbance that alters a tangled web of other forms of life that, in the end, are the ones that sustain us. All architecture is a disturbance, but this does not mean that it is always negative. It can destroy wetlands, forests, or dune fields, poison rivers and coasts; but, as a disturbance, it can also create improvements in damaged or deteriorating ecosystems. Following Bruno Latour, we can affirm that everything depends on having the right tools for the right job: “With a hammer or a sledgehammer, you can do many things: knock down walls, destroy idols, ridicule prejudices, but you cannot repair, take care, assemble or reassemble”. Beyond all hope, there is action, and that is precisely what we need. However, we must also think and imagine more than ever. Thinking of new concepts to open the conversation with other disciplines, in a dialogue that will allow us to leave the twentieth century for good, pay- ing the corresponding respects to its heroes (we will carry them in our memory, but the dead are dead). To imagine multi-species projects, in collaboration with other ways of existence that make Post-Sustainable Architecture possible, that is to say, that go beyond a development based on environmental compensation and mitigation, to imagine possible futures centered on reparation and regeneration. Because, as Haraway asserts, while we apply the prefix “post” to what we find conflictive, the future must be built under the prefix “re”, in order to regenerate, repair, rehabilitate, recover, reduce, and reintroduce life to our environments. We must hybridize knowledge in practices that integrate temporalities beyond the human, such as the cycles of life, focusing on architecture that, before anything else, become symbionts capable of disrupting deteriorated ecosystems and introducing the necessary changes for their regeneration. Where we imagine, rather than spaces, biotopes; rather than landscapes, ecosystems; rather than programs, entangled patterns of humans and non-humans. Imagine, before buildings, postnatural multi-species complexes, and, instead of cities, biological corridors, and bioregions. Thus returning to Lewis Mumford's proposed definition of architecture: any transformation on the face of the Earth made to sustain life. Osvaldo Moreno Flores
In April 2022, returning to the post-pandemic mobility after Covid 19, the Cautín River Urban Park was inaugurated in the city of Temuco. The design and implementation project was led by a team headed by Osvaldo Moreno Flores, an architect from the University of Chile, with a Master's degree in Landscape, Environment, and City, and a PhD in Architecture and Urbanism from the National University of La Plata. He is currently the deputy academic director and associate professor at the School of Architecture from Universidad Católica. In a conversation with AOA magazine, Osvaldo Moreno spoke ex- tensively about this project, which has had a positive impact on the Araucanía Region. CHALLENGES AND CONTRIBUTIONS Sebastián Rozas R When we were preparing this edition of the magazine, Alberto Teixidó remembered Cautín Park because it has less architec- tural intervention. That triggered the idea that perhaps there is a new perception because of course, as an architect, with a pencil in your hand you can do many things, the issue is when to put the pencil down. What is the equilibrium point? Osvaldo Moreno R The park as a project is an initiative that requires design, even when that design does not translate into work. The tools of landscape architecture do not begin with the work-oriented design but rather with the work associated with the representation of all the dynamics that occur in a place. That is to say, these dynamics have to be transferred to a format that allows them to be physically verified in context and with a spatial dimension because it is where the design operates. Thus the hydrology, temperatures, ventilation currents, and how communities move must be designed for a landscape project to take place. Probably, this set of representations will give way to a work of art. Regarding the Cautín Island Urban Park, there were two major chal- lenges. One was to control overflow flooding in the urban area and contribute to the city's green infrastructure to improve environmental conditions in terms of air quality. The other one was to provide a sig- nificant public space to a city and a region that has serious social and multicultural integration problems. In over two years of observing the park's behavior in the urban community of Temuco, I would dare to say that in the Araucanía region, the ability for multicultural integration has been strengthened. Sebastián Rozas R How can a project such as the Cautín Island Urban Park contribute to urban resilience in a changing climate environment? Osvaldo Moreno R This whole approach has been personally built from different approaches developed during a master's degree, then in a PhD where we have questioned the role of landscape in the face of major disasters in our country. This point of view supports this vision, which is to understand landscape architecture beyond the approach linked
Interview by: Yves Besançon, José Rosas, Sebastián Rozas & Alberto Texidó Edition: Soledad Miranda
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