Advisor: Fernando Espósito
Dissertation: Smiljan Radic: Beyond Matter. Imagination and Built Reallity in the Projectual Process
Defense date: 31/05/2019
Abstract
Smiljan Radić is a Chilean architect who has stood out internationally for
his enigmatic works. His practice is marked by experimentation with raw matter
and the investigation of its social, sensorial and symbolic meanings, where the
interest is concentrated in creating atmospheres that trancend the common sense of
architectural visuality. His rhetoric as well as his authorial production, composed
of textual and imagistic narratives, evidence the subjective and poetic character of
his work, adding an underground ingredient that makes his works directly related
to the fields of the imagination, the unconscious and memory. The argument
implied here is that in the architecture of Smiljan Radic, or at least in part of it, the
function of the real and the function of the unreal merge into an innovative
architectural whole. In order to deal with the works of the Chilean architect and his
creative processes, we delve into the formation bases of the Chilean architects
generation of which Radic is a part. On the other hand, we find in the surrealistic,
situationist vanguards and in the set of groups that have been called Radical
Architecture, an important part of the practical and theoretical referential that point
to a condition of mutual infiltration between the domains of reality and imagination.
It is from this point of view that the methods and creative processes of Radie will
be investigated. Thus, from the analysis of two relevant works from the beginning
of the millennium – Restaurante Mestizo and Casa para El Poema Del Angulo Recto
– we identify and develop themes inherent to the binomial approach to the
imagination + built reality, seeking to draw relationships between its creation
processes and construction, and the theoretical reference approach, as well as to
identify the effects caused by these works in the scope of experience.