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Learning from the Interior Sea: Facing the Coloniality of Urbanisation through Travesías de Amereida’s Geo-Poetics

par Mercado Jara, Alvaro
Président du jury le Maire de Romsée, Judith
Promoteur Grulois, Geoffrey
Publication Non publié, 2022-06-29

Thèse de doctorat

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Résumé :

This dissertation focuses on unfolding the origins of the South American geo-poetic design approach created by the School of Architecture and Design of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso through the Travesías de Amereida, a collective and situated educational design study that has been ongoing since 1984 across the vast South American hinterland poetically named the Interior Sea.This subject has been approached as an original contribution to a significant current debate in design studies focused on questioning the alienation and erosion of nature and borderline cultures triggered by the modern urbanisation processes of the hinterlands, especially in the Global South. This scenario, critically highlighted by the discourses of the Anthropocene, the Capitalocene, the Planetary Urbanisation and Decolonial Studies, requires questioning the role of design as the means to return to the ground, namely, to re-encounter human and non-human others and to explore other modes to see, know and act with multiple realities that coexist beyond the metropolis. Furthermore, it challenges design studies to overcome the Modernity/Coloniality rationale embedded in its epistemological and ontological bases.Accordingly, the main objective of this research is to delve into how the association of poetry, design and ontological questions about South American identities became the ground for developing an original approach for design studies at the Valparaíso School to question the coloniality of urbanisation embedded in the hinterland on a regional and planetary scale. Furthermore, this research unfolds how the poetic and design experiences of being (travelling), studying (mapping) and working (building) during the Travesías represented a means to learn from the Interior Sea, thus offering alternative ways to delink from the epistemological Modernity/Coloniality rationale.The research strategy consisted of tracing, recomposing and discussing historical archives about the ontological, poetic, geographical and epistemological rationale grounded on the Travesías de Amereida (1940–1984) and the origins of this South American geo-poetic design approach. To this end, I analyse the historical documentation by encompassing three key events or periods—not strictly chronologically; (i) the Proto-Travesía de Amereida, which covers the poetic journey across the South American hinterland performed by the Santa Hermandad de la Orquidea (1940–1941) until the Travesía de Amereida (1965); (ii) the Travesías de Amereida, which includes the former Travesía of 1965 and the five performances in 1984 when it became an educational design experience; and (iii) the Post-Travesía, which comprises more theoretical research studies conducted after the Travesía experiences (specifically after the Travesía of 1965).Besides, in an attempt to delve into the South–South relations drawn from the South American geo-poetic design approach created by the Valparaíso School, this research uses the delinking notion introduced by decolonial studies to recompose the case study methodologically in a situated regional rather than a universal Eurocentric context. Therefore, this dissertation represents an attempt to delink from that trajectory of studies focused on reconstituting the already clarified links between the Valparaíso School and the North Atlantic epistemologies and ontologies. Furthermore, this methodological research approach is applied in the dissertation since it has been noticed that the South American geo-poetic project embodied in and emanating from the Travesías de Amereida represents an original form of delinking and relinking from the Eurocentric, canonical and metropolitan logics that characterise design education and research within traditional South American post-colonial institutions.The research shows that notwithstanding the limitations of the South American geo-poetic design approach grounded at the Valparaíso School, it represents a relevant contribution to the transformative pedagogical design practices and theory necessary to challenge the current destructive tradition of colonising nature, knowledge, and beings through modern urbanisation processes. The dissertation argues that through the invention of poetic tropes and actions that continuously inquire into the being of Latin and South America, this geo-poetic approach has been sustained during more than fifty years of Travesías, in which the notion of the Interior Sea brings to the fore the possibility of an open epistemological attitude to unlearning the traditional Western academicism in architecture, urbanism and design.