Politics of the Dunes - Poetry, Architecture, and Coloniality At the Open City

Founded in the late 1960s on Chile's Pacific coast, the Open City (la Ciudad Abierta) has become an internationally recognized site of cutting-edge architectural experimentation. Yet with a global reputation as an apolitical collective, little has been discussed about the Open City's relationship with Chilean history and politics. Politics of the Dunes explores the ways in which the Open City's architectural and urban practice is devoted to keeping open the utopian possibility for multiplicity, pluralism, and democratization in the face of authoritarianism, a powerful mode of postcolonial environmental urbanism that can inform architectural practices today.

List of contents

Introduction

Chapter 1. On So-Called Non-Political Urban Environmentalism: The Architecture of the Open City, Politics, and the Political

Chapter 2. Refashioning Latin Americanism: The Foundations of the Environmental Urbanism of the Open City

Chapter 3. The Eruption of the Political?: Politics, the Political, Hospitality, and the Foundation of the Open City

Chapter 4. Thinking Otherwise: Keeping the Open City Open in the Dictatorship

Chapter 5. On Subaltern Historiography: Thinking the Open City Historically

Chapter 6. Towards a Decolonial Environmentalism: The Limits and Openings of the Open City's Environmental Urbanisms

Conclusion: Socialities, New Openings, and the Lingering Question of Capital

Index

About the author

Maxwell Woods is a member of the Faculty of Liberal Arts at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Viña del Mar, Chile. His work has appeared in Social and Cultural Geography, Cultural Dynamics, Cultural Politics, and Literary Geographies.

Summary

Politics of the Dunes explores the ways in which the Open City’s architectural and urban practice is devoted to keeping open the utopian possibility for multiplicity, pluralism, and democratization in the face of authoritarianism, a powerful mode of postcolonial environmental urbanism that can inform architectural practices today.

Product details

• Authors: Maxwell Woods, Maxwell Woods Woods
• Publisher: BERGHAHN BOOKS, INC
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.11.2020
• EAN: 9781789209013
• ISBN: 978-1-78920-901-3
• No. of pages: 238
• Series: Space and Place
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art > Architecture; Social sciences, law, business > Political science > Political science and political education; Politikwissenschaft, Architektur, Chile, Nationale Befreiung und Unabhängigkeit, Postkolonialismus, POLITICAL SCIENCE / History & Theory, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, Politics / Current Events, ARCHITECTURE / Urban & Land Use Planning, Sociology & anthropology, History of the Americas, Society and culture: general, Urban communities, Sociology and anthropology