Ciudad Abierta (Open City), founded in 1970 north of Valparaíso, was born from the encounter between poetry, architecture, design, and the arts. Its origins go back to the School of Architecture and Design of the Catholic University of Valparaíso in Chile, which at the beginning of the 1950s opened its own study space from where it has reflected on its own work in the light of poetry. In 1965, professors, architects, designers, poets, artists, and philosophers took a trip across the American continent from Cape Horn to Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia. They posed the question about what it means to be American. From this experience, embodied in the poetic manifesto Amereida, the Open City was established as a place in America that accepts the tradition of the poetic act and that serves as a starting point for the act of construction.
Ciudad Abierta
Participatory group performance at the theatre play “Hip, hip… ufa!“ Teatro Aleph, 1972 © Teatro Aleph Archive
Performatives Turnament at the Open City, 1979 © Archivo Histórico José Vial Armstrong
First Year Reception of the Open City, Ritoque, 1997 © n.a.