GAME (ON) SANTIAGO

Pedro Ignacio Alonso, Programme Director_ AA Visiting School Santiago

In Chile the construction of new sports infrastructure to house the 2014 South American Olympics – ODESUR – is being treated as an unparalleled opportunity to transform a range of environments. Sponsored by the Chilean Olympic Committee, and by taking a critical look at the ambitious plans currently under development, the workshop proposes design alternatives, aiming at defining strategies applicable at different scales. This design research will encourage explorations ranging from material properties, construction processes, parametric design and digital fabrication, right up to the urban and landscape scales taking account of the local cultures and Chile’s landscape.

Students investigate landscapes-urbanism strategies experimenting with new tools and concepts for mapping, indexing and diagramming different types of information (infrastructural, ecological, social) extracted for urban fields. These conditions will be articulated through the design of prototypical models and applied in the creation of urban scenarios for a site in central Santiago, which will serve as the test-bed for team-based design exercises.