The Open City, was founded in 1970 on the grounds of Ritoque, north of Valparaíso, born out of the encounter between poetry and architecture, rhyming word and action. Its origin dates back to the School of Architecture and Design at the P. C. University of Valparaiso in Chile, which in the early 1950s, opened its own studio space and reflection on their own work.
In 1965, a journey made by architects, designers, poets, artists and philosophers, all over the (South-)American continent from Cape Horn to Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia, revealed a large uninhabited area that made them wonder about them being American.
From this experience, the Open City was established as a place in America, which inherites the tradition of poetry in action. Thus, first there was built the agora (place to talk), then the hospederías (place to live), then public spaces (place to go), and finaly a cemetery (final resting places).
The construction of an act of celebration is a craft and a mode of design. It is not a matter of projecting (advancing) a space and then materializing it (building it), but the merging of both moments: collectively projecting and constructing, „thinking with the hands“ in the scale 1:1, and illuminated by the poetic word in successive poetic acts, which are the consecutive pulses building the architectural space for hospitality in the Auepark of Kassel.
The School of Architecture of the P. C. University of Valparaiso, together with the Open City Collective Chile, has been invited by the curatorial team of the Documenta 14 to present a work that accounts for their unique approach to architecture.
The task consists in building the Hospitality Pavillion as a space of congregation, speach and celebration, a project part of the Documenta in cooperation with the School of Architecture of the P. C. University of Valparaiso and the Open City Collective.
Prof. Jens Ludloff, Leopoldo Saavedra M.Sc.
