Open City’ [artists’ pages]

In a series of word-and-image pages, we reflect on our site visit to the Open City in Valparaiso, Chile. Situated in the sand dunes just off coast of the Pacific ocean, this radical pedagogical experiment was founded in 1971 by the Chilean architect Alberto Cruz and Argentinean poet Godofredo Iommi. Open City is as much a school as it is an urban laboratory and the embodiment of a utopian ideal. Here architecture is constructed on a foundation of poetry and shifting sand and we, as students of the Open City, examined the place in detail. Here we present our findings through a loose taxonomy: a configuration of words and lines; a cifra reflective of our study of site that marks the beginning of our story of Open City.