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7/16/07: Divining the Open City

A holiday weekend, a "Veranito de San Juan" and the Gallinita and I packed the bikes and took off north along the coastal highway to the Ciudad Abierta de Ritoque (Open City in Ritoque), a sort of architecture and outdoor sculpture workshop along a 1.5 mile section of the coast run by the Universidad Católica and the Corporación Cultural Amereida<7p>

The "Open" is more likely the free experimentation that the giant spaces permit, a park of peculiar structural solutions unhindered by patronage or context or the economic limitations that would constrict any "real world" design. Here we see beach houses with bowed walls, a giant flute sculpture played by the wind, a precarious looking wooden sight-seeing deck, a just-started or never-completed outdoor sculpture. It brought flashbacks of Donald Judd's Chinati Foundation, the giant ranch of outdoor scultpure in Marfa, Texas. But here, the expansive land is more a workshop than a sculpture garden, unsanded edges, tools lying all around and remnants of late night asados with all the sculptor's friends.

The site is closed off and tucked away. It seems to exist more as an error in beach front real estate - a railroad runs between the coast and the highway, bringing a sudden halt to the sprawling weekend condiminiums contaminating their way up the coast from Viña del MAr and Con Con. All that greets you from the highway is an ultra-designed white gate (easy to miss even on a bicycle). We entered the Open City like a couple of barbarian invaders, curiously poring through the empty half-started projects in the alien landscape. Later, a couple of resident dogs led us across the train tracks and out to a picnic on a desolate beach.