Pedagogical anarchitectures: critical practices and territorial contestations in the Spatial Academy of Santiago de Chile

Vergara-Perucich F.; Boano C.

Abstract

This paper learns from the Spatial Academy at Universidad de Las Am & eacute;ricas in Santiago de Chile, reflecting on it as a model of radical pedagogy that challenges traditional architectural training within contexts of neoliberal inequality. Through the use of interviews with teaching staff and documentary analysis, it identifies its practice as a pedagogical anarchitecture, going back to Gordon Matta-Clark's nomenclature, an approach that dismantles individual authorship, technical solutionism, and disciplinary authority. Its core is the design-build project, wherein students and communities co-design ephemeral interventions that prioritize relational processes over physical products, thereby activating collective memory and territorial conflicts. This pedagogy operates through four shifts: (i) from individual authorship to collective production; (ii) from the object to the process; (iii) from technical solutions to conflict as a driving force; and (iv) from rigid curricula to critical action. This experience offers a replicable framework for the Global South by training architects as socio-spatial mediators capable of contesting urban injustices through situated and collaborative practices.

Más información

Título según WOS: Pedagogical anarchitectures: critical practices and territorial contestations in the Spatial Academy of Santiago de Chile
Fecha de publicación: 2025
Idioma: English
DOI:

10.1093/cdj/bsaf029

Notas: ISI