Germán Valenzuela (Chile 1972), architect, master’s degree in Architecture, Ph.D. candidate at the Universidad de la República, Uruguay. Germán is co-founder of the School of Architecture at the University of Talca, Chile. He is the director of the “Seminario del Territorio al Detalle” and has published several texts and books. His book, “Del territorio al detalle,” won the Best Publication at the Ibero-American Architecture Biennial 2022. He served as an architectural advisor for the Chilean pavilion at the 15th Mostra Internazionale di Architettura (Venice 2016). His work on students’ degree projects has earned him various recognitions, including the Archiprix awards in 2013 and 2017. Germán has been a visiting professor worldwide, including at the National University of Córdoba, Argentina, the University of the Republic, Uruguay, and the Università degli Studi Roma Tre, Italy. He has been visiting professor in the School of Interior Architecture at the University of Tennessee (Knoxville, USA) since Fall 2022.

1. You have mentioned the work of the Chilean poet Nicanor Parra and his Antipoems as an influence for you- do you see his work connected more to the Spanish language or as visual sketches?

Parra is an innovator in the Spanish language and arguably the boldest, most local, and most global of modern Chilean poets. By resorting to colloquial and down-to-earth language, he creates an entirely new form that transcends the national and embeds itself in the history of great Spanish-language poetry. Parra’s work is always pushing the boundaries of poetic language, daring to experiment by intertwining sculpture, drawing, collage, and installation with poetry as means of expression, constantly adapting and evolving. This precisely refers to the visual aspect you mention; the language Parra uses in his work, not only in ‘Antipoetry’ but in the entirety of his creation, is always hybrid, colloquial, and direct. Full of humor and irony, brimming with wordplay to conceal other meanings, always utilizing various figures and mediums; saying ‘one thing for another’ places the reader in front of a play of mirrors that both conceals and reveals. Here’s an example from his book ‘Poetry and Antipoetry’ from 1954, where he refers to his own actions as a poet in search of expression and identity, complicated by reality, entangled in day-to-day life. This quest, sometimes blind, feeling out the elusive and difficult-to-interpret reality, moves me and has often led me to reflect on the fact that it is precisely in reality and in the everyday where the contemporaneity of the arts resides.

PUZZLEⁱ
I don’t give anyone the right.
I adore a piece of cloth.
I move graves around.
I move graves around.
I don’t give anyone the right.
I am a ridiculous guy
Under the sun’s rays,
Scourge of the soda fountains,
I die of rage.
I am beyond remedy,
My own hairs accuse me
On a makeshift altar.
The machines show no mercy.
I laugh behind a chair,
My face fills with flies.
I am the one who expresses himself poorly,
Expresses for what purpose.
I stutter,
With my foot I touch a kind of fetus.
What are these stomachs for?
Who made this mishmash?
It’s best to play the foolⁱⁱ.
I say one thing for another.

2. Can you expand on the idea of anti-architecture as a comment and reflection?

The term “anti-architecture” may not be as widely recognized as “anti-poetry,” but it can be used to describe certain architectural movements or approaches that challenge or resist traditional norms and conventions within the field of architecture, going against the grain, so to speak. Similar to the concept of anti-poetry, anti-architecture could be defined as a deliberate departure from established architectural principles and a rejection of elements of the international style, a different, “other” departure from the dictates of modernity. Movements such as Deconstructivism can be considered a form of “anti-architecture” when considering their strong ties to the philosophy and literature of the 1960s and 1970s, which precisely explored alternatives to the modernist straitjacket. Deconstructivism challenges traditional notions of symmetry and harmony, opting instead for fragmented and non-linear designs that often appear chaotic and unpredictable. In my opinion, it is not far removed from what we now call “postmodernism,” but in literature and architecture, they signify different things. Although postmodernists often incorporate historical elements, diverse styles, and eclectic features, both movements defy the rigid aesthetic and functional ideals of modernism, and they could be considered in a direction similar to what Parra proposes in his poetry; however, it is not enough.

Other movements have attempted to break free from the modern enclosure by incorporating more participatory and responsive design processes, interacting more directly with communities, or responding more assertively to places, challenging the hierarchical approach associated with more traditional architectural practices. Parra also shows a high environmental awareness in his prose, and probably, readers in architecture schools draw from this perspective.

Having said that, I think it is important to mention here a particular work much more interesting than any of the previous ones due to its interconnectedness with Parra’s work. I refer to Gordon Matta-Clark’s an-architecture, an American artist and architect who, in his work, uses architectural paradigms and tools to transcend them. While he left no written text on the subject, the work “Splitting” (1974) could be considered his manifesto:

Splittingⁱⁱⁱ
322 Humphrey Street
As it was left
Abandoned

Cutting the house in half
Two parallel lines
One inch apart
Passed through all
Structural surfaces

Beveling down
Forty lineal feet
Of cinder blocks
To set half the building
Back on its foundations

Removing intact
All four corners
At the eaves

Demolished and removed
September 1974

3. What is your connection with Pre-Modernist architecture?

In the same sense that Giorgio Agamben gives it in “What Is the Contemporary?” one is contemporary to the present only if one is capable of perceiving the archaic that prevails in the present. My interest in that extensive pre-modern past is the key to considering other possible futures. Let’s say that modernity and the subsequent postmodernity, particularly in architecture (because in literature it’s a different matter), ended up becoming a great paradox: while their ideology aimed to liberate humanity and provide infrastructure and habitation, overcome poverty, and improve quality of life, what has ultimately happened is precisely the opposite. We have not done anything but destroy everything that our ancestors handed down to us in pursuit of promises that never became a reality. Reconnecting with the pre-modern past is also a way of rethinking the future, and I don’t mean any nostalgic or origin-centric view but the possibility of reconsidering the past as part of what we still are, just like Agamben tells us “As the embryo continues to function in the tissues of the mature organism and the child in the psychic life of the adult”.

4. Can you discuss how traditional craftsmanship can be useful in the Post-Modern world?

The crisis provoked by our economic model is unprecedented, but it involves an even deeper, ontological issue, oriented toward infinite growth and limitless consumption. The flip side of this modern idea that everything from the past is negative and must be replaced needs to be replaced by a revaluation of the local in material and cultural terms, without giving up the possibility of the new. It’s not about redeeming the folkloric as an escape but about reconnecting with the “genius loci,” not to recover any style or reproduce any specificity of the past but to deeply understand the interconnections that the “place” offers.

A few years ago, I carried out a small project in a remote location, a small room and a covered outdoor space for a community of women potters to teach their craft and sell their products to tourists. Bringing any materials meant a significant effort in both money and time, both of which were scarce at that time. The solution was to use the potters’ techniques in working with clay mixed with lightweight steel structures that we prefabricated in the laboratory. We managed to create highly resistant walls using just under half of the material commonly used, minimizing costs. With the money the community had, they wouldn’t have been able to build anything. The local material knowledge and construction techniques that we could develop at the university resulted in something completely new, and we all learned.

5. What is the third way beyond the common categories of either Commercial or Community uses of Architecture?

I’m going to be quite general here because the response could be very extensive. Commercial architecture, whether good or bad, is always related to what was once called the “international style” as a deliberate way of abandoning localisms that hindered the development of a global industry. It was accompanied by the development of reinforced concrete, aluminum, glass, plastic, among others, and these are the main cause of the tremendous environmental impact that architecture and construction have. An extremely significant part of architecture schools, construction, and some of engineering and economics are focused on the development of this area, and they have been as successful as they have been destructive. In this environment, architecture is just another player, and its influence is diminishing, while the overall quality of what we call “standards” is very low.

On the other hand, community or “social” architecture has been focused on addressing urgent needs, generally led by institutionalized organizations on different scales. There are thousands of good and bad examples, successes, and failed attempts. This is easily visible in housing, education, or public spaces. The vast majority of the population today lives in cities with a very low quality of life. We cannot abandon cities, but we have to change them. Architecture can play a fundamental role if it manages to break free from the institutionalization that currently

acts as a straitjacket. This involves revaluing the communal and allowing a significant part of the decisions to return to the neighborhood scale while rethinking how available resources are used. A bottom-up strategy that allows us to stop waiting for projects that never arrive and start acting from the grassroots.

However, this requires a level of small-scale organization that sometimes seems impossible. Still, there are many good examples of communities that have taken the initiative and have completely changed the history of their spaces. This is precisely where all the theory and practice that Salvador Rueda has developed for years originated, transforming the way we understand the city of Barcelona today. Many of these ideas emerged from a marginalized and highly polluted neighborhood, but with a community willing to change everything.

6. One usually thinks of Space and Light as the fundamental elements of Architecture but you have often discussed the role of Time- can you elaborate?

After the advent of the international style, architecture, as a discipline, turned towards abstraction, composition, functionality, and program. Reinforced concrete allows for a plasticity that made practically any form and size possible. This abstraction of creative processes has been tremendously generative of new and brilliant ideas, but as a counter-narrative, it has meant a detachment from the world. I believe that today it’s about finding a balance between the dichotomies: Abstract – Material, Modern – Archaic, Future – Past, to stop understanding them as absolutes placed on a timeline that always points forward, leaving everything we discard behind. Since the theory of relativity onwards, we know that time is multiple, and both the past and the future do not exist properly as an immovable object but as a flow from which we feed.

On the other hand, time is not just money; in the enduring cultural construction, time has to be on our side to understand that what we do today will be inherited by others.

7. You have also worked on Architectural Film projects- at an institutional level can you comment on some areas where Architecture and Filmmaking could be combined?

I don’t have much experience in this field; I’m just beginning to undertake my first projects in film with the documentary “Maulenauta.” However, I’ve always been closely connected to cinema, more so fiction than documentary. The truth is, I believe that the way of understanding time and space is common in both disciplines, and it’s a fact that they mutually influence each other, sharing Eisenstein’s idea that “Architectural space is filled by the time of man. Cinematic space is filled by the time of film.” They are disciplines that touch each other on the back, but both cinema and architecture are the “art of organizing spaces.”

On the other hand, architecture and cinema share common concerns about visuality and spatial perception. Cinematography can highlight architectural details or entire settings, even lifestyles, transforming the way we perceive and experience space. While some films could be shot in different locations than the ones chosen, what would “La Dolce Vita” be without the Fontana di Trevi? And on the other hand, how famous would this particular place in the city of Rome be without those magnificent sequences? Cinema has been decisive in transforming the perception of space, which is also constant, impossible to fix. Cinema also influences the behaviors and particular lifestyles of a place that are exported through the image, such as Hollywood and the small, ridiculous Miamis we find in different parts of the world. For better or for worse, cinema and architecture constantly influence each other. The city thus becomes a space where architecture and cinema converge to portray modern life.

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ⁱ personal translation

ⁱⁱ The original text says “it is better to do the indian” (Lo mejore es hacer el indio) which is a Chilean colloquial figure to refer to pretending that one has no idea what is happening.

ⁱⁱⁱ See: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/398954

 

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Interview December 2023 by-

Kazim Rahman:

Kaz Rahman has worked extensively as Visual Artist, Filmmaker and Academic with both commercial and public institutions, festivals and broadcasters over the last 20 years. His work has played in film festivals and venues such as Anthology Film Archives (New York City), National Film Board of Canada (Toronto), India Habitat Centre (New Delhi), Salar Jung Museum (Hyderabad), Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh), The San Jose Museum of Art

(California), Bogazici Film Festival (Istanbul), SUFICINE Festival (Konya) and broadcast on TV24 (Turkey) and has been featured in publications such as The Times of India, The Hindu, The New Indian Express (India), Daily Sabah and Star Gazette (Turkey). Rahman has an MFA in Media Arts (writing/directing) from City College (CUNY), New

York City and has taught at universities and colleges around the world including in India, USA, Turkey and the UK. He is currently Lecturer in Time-Based Art at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.