English versions of the following articles are available online

Title: Expansion 1
Author: Edi Hirose. Graduated from the Antonio Gaudí photograph institute, Lima. His latest work addresses the consequences of the Peruvian landscape, affected by last decade’s economic growth. His work has been exhibited at the São Paulo Biennial 2012, Estambul Biennial 2013, Lima Photography Biennial 2012 and 2014. In 2017 was chosen by the Magnum Foundation Fund to develop his Ananay project, on informal mining in Puno. His work is part of the Société Générale Collection, MoMA, Venancio Blanco, Teo Millán, Blanton Museum, MALI and private collections.
Abstract: Half a century after John Turner admired Peruvian neighborhoods and set them as an example in his book Freedom to Build, the formal freedom produced by self-construction has turned into a distinctive urban landscape for Perú. The photographs in this series allow us to appreciate the beauty in the freedom with which houses expand and how, in doing so, reconfigure the image of public space.
Keywords: freedom; city; processes; research; Lima.
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Title: Cautionary tales from the land of freedom
Author: Felicity Scott Architect and professor, director of the Ph.D. program in Architecture, and co-director of the program in Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices in Architecture (CCCP) at GSAPP, Columbia University, New York. In addition to publishing numerous articles, she has published Architecture or Techno-Utopia: Politics After Modernism (MIT Press, 2007), Outlaw Territories: Environments of Insecurity/Architectures of Counter-Insurgency (Zone Books, 2016), and Disorientations: Bernard Rudofsky in the Empire of Signs (Sternberg Press, 2016).
Abstract: Instead of freedom, we should talk about freedoms, Felicity D. Scott argues in this interview. With the book Outlaw Territories as a starting point for this conversation, Scott warns us about the cynicism or ambivalence inherent in the notion of freedom which, in the USA, has been raised a flagship argument by almost everyone: from hippies to corporations, or even from drop-outs to libertarians.
Keywords: freedom; idea; history; critique; interview.
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Title: Torture and detention in Cameroon: The dark side of the us-backed war against Boko Haram. Salak & Fotokol, Cameroon 2017
Author: Forensic Architecture. Forensic Architecture is a research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London, consisting of architects, artists, filmmakers, journalist, software developers, scientists, lawyers, and an extended network of collaborators from a wide variety of fields and disciplines. Founded in 2010 by Eyal Weizman, Forensic Architecture is committed to the development and dissemination of new evidentiary techniques and undertakes advanced architectural and media investigations on behalf of international prosecutors, human rights and civil society groups, as well as political and environmental justice organisations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’tselem, Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and the un, among others.
Abstract: By using architecture as material evidence as well as architectural tools to unveil facts that can be presented publicly, Forensic Architecture has turned disciplinary knowledge into a liberation device. For if public truth is technologically, architecturally, and aesthetically produced in the service of power, then the knowledge for unveiling such constructs sets a path towards freedom through architecture. In the end, only truth will set us free.
Keywords: freedom; idea; history; critique; interview.
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Title: Prison to Prison. Uruguayan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2018
Author: Sergio Aldama. Studio professor at FADU, UDELAR. Coordinates and produces projects that work with architecture and domains that transcend it. Co-founder of cau studio, a platform that works with architecture, urban planning and collaborative projects.Federico Colom. Architect, FADU, UDELAR, 2016. Studio professor at FADU, UDELAR. Co-founder of CAU studio. Diego Morera Architect, FADU, UDELAR, 2017. Urban planning professor at FADU, UDELAR. Member of mapa studio, works with videos, digital images and the city.Jimena Ríos Theater designer, Multidisciplinary School of Dramatic Art Margarita Xirgu, 2011. Museologist, Faculty of Humanities and Education Science, 2018. Professor at fadu, udelar. Works with performance, political art and feminism.Mauricio Wood Architect, FADU, UDELAR, 2017. Postgraduate studies in urban mobility, Escola da Cidade – Arquitetura e Urbanismo, São Paulo, Brazil. Works with the city, public space and the political.
Abstract: If architecture is the knowledge necessary to build places in which humans live, the jail – a place in which human beings are forced to live without being able to leave – is architecture at its purest definition. The fact that the biggest building built in Uruguay in 2017 was a jail, and that this jail’s neighbor was another ‘freer’ jail, are the starting points for a project that questions and reflects on the convoluted relationships between architecture and freedom.
Keywords: freedom; building; critique; processes; design
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Title: Stadium. Chilean Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2018. Venice, Italy
Author: Alejandra Celedón Architect, Universidad de Chile, 2003. MSc Advance Architectural Studies, the Bartlett, ucl (London, UK), 2007. PhD Architectural Association (London, UK), 2014. Curator at Stadium, Chilean Pavilion at the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale. Her latest publications include Stadium: A Building to Render the Image of a City (2018) and “Chile’s National Library, a hundred years late, a hundred years after” (ARQ). Has lectured at the Royal College of Arts, The Architectural Association and The Berlage and dictated post-graduate seminars at Torcuato di Tella University (2017) and the University of Navarra (2018). Currently works as a teacher and researcher at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
Abstract: An event in which a dictatorial regime entitled informal dwellers as owners is the lens through which the difference between freedom and liberalism is exposed. The place that hosted this event – Chile’s National Stadium – is the architecture of a paradox: the same panoptical layout that served as a detention campus in 1973 became, six years later, the stage for the biopolitical formalization of urban inequality by granting ownership in the periphery of Santiago.
Keywords: freedom; city; building; development; project
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Title: Work, body leisure. Dutch Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2018, Venice, Italy
Author: Marina Otero-Verzier. Director of Research Het Nieuwe Instituut, Netherlands.
Abstract: Liberation from work is an old desire. Today, however, when technological advancements bring us closer to that possibility, we start to witness the dark aspects of this idea. As a testing ground for new forms of labor and technology, the Netherlands allows us to evaluate those trajectories and the contemporary complexities of a life without work. Nonetheless, by putting the body at the center of this relationship, this project subtly reminds us we should still aim to counter the sadly famous slogan “work sets you free.”
Keywords: freedom; idea; critique; processes; design
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Title: All-at-once & all-in-one: illusion of freedom in creative and technological corporations
Author: Borja Ganzabal Cuena. Architect, ETSAB, Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya, 2012. Master in Advanced Architectural Projects, ETSAM, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 2015. Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley (2018) and curator of “Meet Myths: Young architects with Fine Arts Academics” (ETSAM, 2016). His texts have been published in Summa+, Revista MAPEO and Vivir 100 Años: Longevidad y Ciudad Futura (2015).
Abstract: Since the Dadaists demonstrated that individual freedom could be productive – that is, that production might not require discipline – the question that remained unanswered was how to capitalize on the free individual. The following article states that technological companies, along with the architecture of their corporate buildings, were the ones able to exploit the idea of emancipation through workspaces that provide an illusion of freedom.
Keywords: freedom; building; critique; design; essay
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Title: Seven degrees of freedom: policies, architecture, political architectures. Arica during the long decade of the sixties.
Author: Horacio Enrique Torrent Schneider Architect, Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Argentina, 1985. Master in Architecture, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 2001. Doctor in Architecture, Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Argentina, 2006. Has authored a significant number of articles on Latin American modern architecture and contemporary Chilean architecture. Conducted research at the Canadian Center for Architecture, the Getty Institute for the Arts and the Humanities, the National Gallery of Arts in Washington, and the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut in Berlin. Was awarded the Research Prize at the Ibero-American Architecture and Urbanism Biennial, 2006. President of Docomomo Chile. Tenure Professor at the School of Architecture UC.María de la Paz Faúndez Architect, Master of Architecture, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile 2017. Among her topics of interest are the development of modern architecture in Chile and the relationship between gender studies and architecture. Has worked as a teaching assistant for different courses in the area of theory, history and criticism. Currently serves as instructor professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and research assistant in the Fondecyt project 1181290.Javier Ruiz Architect, Master of Architecture, Pontificia Universidad de Chile 2018. Author of the essay “From Utopia to the Island on the Laja” (Anales de Arquitectura 2017-2018, Ediciones ARQ, 2018). He currently works as teaching assistant with Cristóbal Amunátegui and Rodrigo Pérez de Arce at MARQ UC.
Abstract: If modern architecture advocated – at least conceptually – for an emancipating horizon in political terms, its ultimate goal would be verified in the degrees of freedom it was able to deliver. Analyzing the case of the city of Arica in the sixties, this text shows how those degrees of freedom surpassed the conceptual level implemented in concrete architectures.
Keywords: freedom; city; history; heritage; research
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Title: The Domestic Generic
Author: Brittany Utting Architect. Master of Architecture, Yale University, 2014. Bachelor of Science in Architecture, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2011. Director of the design collaborative home-office, she explores how our built environment overlays with economies of labor, leisure, and production. Currently teaches architecture at the University of Michigan, where she is a member of the editorial board of cartha Magazine and 2017-2018 Willard A. Oberdick Fellow.
Abstract: Although the real estate catalog supposedly promotes freedom of choice, in practice it reduces it by converting it into a mere combinatorial system between predefined options that, in turn, suppose standard life forms. Taking advantage of the typological indifference of the real estate catalog, this proposal uses the same tool – the catalog – to emancipate the subjectivities instead of reproducing them. Thus, architecture could help to recover that freedom of choice that today is only illusory.
Keywords: freedom; city; design; research; housing
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Title: What if we tear the wall down? Empowered owners, mutant houses and the twilight of confined architecture
Author: Tomás Errázuriz Historian, Doctorate in Architecture and Urban Studies, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Has been a researcher for Milenio (ICM), Fondecyt, Fondart and has been awarded other funds, scholarships and prizes from institutions such as Conicyt, Mecesup, University of Sydney, The Society for the History of Technology, Guggenheim Foundation, and T2M, among others. Additionally, he co-directs Editorial Bifurcaciones, a publishing house devoted to urban cultural studies, and the collective Cosas Maravillosas. He is currently Associate professor at Campus Creativo Universidad Andrés Bello and partner at Reddo Arquitectura. Carolina Sepúlveda Architect, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (2014). Candidate for the Master in Design Studies, Harvard University GSD (2020). Her work focuses on the interception of art, architecture and design, with a focus on contemporary issues such as politics, gender, the media, or social movements. Has worked as a coordinator for different architectural exhibitions, such as Housing, What’s Next? (Washington DC, 2018) for the idb , the Chile’s Architecture and Urbanism Biennale (Valparaíso, 2017), and El espacio entre las cosa, by the architects Emilio Marín and Juan Carlos López for liga DF (Mexico City, 2014).Juan Guillermo Bravo Architect, Bachelor of Arts, Universidad Andrés Bello (2018). His projects and research work focus on the relationships between public space and social housing, especially in vulnerable urban sectors. Has also developed projects on the role of architecture in educational institutions, with an interest in the relationships between architecture and politics, philosophy, or psychoanalysis.
Abstract: As long as it does not affect others – as in the public space or in society’s self-imposed rules – an owner is free to do whatever he wants within his property. Architecture does not always contemplate that kind of freedom, to the point that it could go against its own values. The survey of the changes made to a house by Luciano Kulczewski allows observing how freedom to intervene operates indifferent to architecture.
Keywords: freedom; building; processes; essay; domestic space
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Title: Cohousing: independence under restriction
Author: Juan Pablo Urrutia Arquitecto, Universidad de Chile, 2008. Magíster en Dirección y Administración de Proyectos Inmobiliarios, Universidad de Chile, 2011. MPA, London School of Economics and Political Science, Londres y Sciences Po, París, 2014. Premio Arquitecto Joven 2018 y ex Secretario General del Colegio de Arquitectos de Chile. Editor de Guía para la formulación de planes maestros integrales de recuperación de barrios y viviendas (fau, Universidad de Chile, 2017) e Idea Política Pública: 20 ideas de arquitectura, ciudad y territorio para Chile. Autor de «¿Allegamiento o Co-residencia?» (CA, 2016). Profesor Asistente del Departamento de Arquitectura y Jefe de Carrera, FAU, Universidad de Chile. Co-curador de la XXI Bienal de Arquitectura y Urbanismo de Chile 2019. Michelle Cáceres Ledesma Arquitecta, Universidad de Chile, 2017. Diploma en Hábitat Residencial en Contextos de Vulnerabilidad Social, Universidad de Chile, 2016. Coordinadora del proyecto «De allegado a vecino», Fondo Valentín Letelier, Universidad de Chile, 2016. Colaboradora en «Pericentro y revitalización de barrios», Guía para la formulación de planes maestros integrales de recuperación de barrios y viviendas (FAU, Universidad de Chile, 2017).
Abstract: When scarcity of space and resources seems to condemn low-income families to lose their networks and neighborhoods, the freedom of inhabitants themselves filters through the system’s rigidity. Through observing the logics of allegados in the city of Santiago, this research shows that users’ inventiveness is capable of delivering degrees of freedom where they were not supposed to exist.
Keywords: freedom; building; design; processes; research
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Title: The unpredictable and the BC house
Author: Rodrigo Valenzuela Jerez Architect, Universidad de Chile (2003), Master of Arts, Visual Arts Major, Universidad de Chile (2011), and Msc in Advance Architectural Design, Columbia University USA (2014). Between 2005 and 2010 co-leads Murúa-Valenzuela architects. Has been awarded the Grand Biennial Prize, XVII Chilean Architecture Biennial for the co-design of Licantén Public Library (2010). Since 2014 has developed architecture projects through EstudioRO – (E)Studio Futur@ and rvjaa. Has been an assistant professor at Columbia University usa (2014-2015), visiting professor at Universidad de Chile (2012) and assistant professor at Universidad Diego Portales (2008-2010). He is currently Associate Professor and Coordinator of Design Area at Universidad de las Américas, Chile.
Abstract: When it means the carefully planned restriction of possibilities, control is the opposite of freedom. But what architecture usually does is precisely that: under the goal of giving place to certain predicted activities, design limits movement and, therefore, it blocks or hinders possibilities. As a way to achieve higher degrees of freedom, this house shifts the focus: by welcoming unpredictability it shows a way of designing in which control is rendered unnecessary.
Keywords: freedom; building; design; history; project
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Title: SESC 24 de Maio
Author: Paulo Mendes da Rocha Architect, Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie, São Paulo, 1954. His 1957 Clube Atlético Paulistano gymnasium brought him public recognition, winning the Grande Prêmio Presidência da República award at the 6th Bienal of São Paulo (1961). Together with Vilanova Artigas, he joined the School of Architecture of the usp in the 1960s. In 1968 won the national project competition for the Brazilian Pavilion at Osaka Expo 70. Has been awarded with the Mies Van der Rohe Foundation Prize, the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2006, and the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale. MMBB Founded in 1991 by architects Fernando de Mello Franco, Marta Moreira and Milton Braga (current partners are Marta, Milton and Maria João Figueiredo), MM BB has consolidated a comprehensive professional performance, encompassing the development of public and institutional buildings, infrastructure and urbanism. Their Jardim Edite social housing complex has been awarded by the IX Ibero American Architecture and Urbanism Biennale in Rosario (2014) and the São Paulo Art Critics Association (2013), while the Watery Voids proposal won the Best Entry prize at the 3rd International Architecture Biennale of Rotterdam (2007).
Abstract: When it comes to intervening on heritage buildings, the degrees of freedom are usually few because of the order and restrictions imposed by the existing structural skeleton. This building, however, shows an interesting strategy to overcome the limitations posed by the preexistent: adding a parallel structure to increase the degrees of freedom for design while allowing the architects to define a new order for the existing piece.
Keywords: freedom; building; design; history; project
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Title: Liberalisms
Author: Agustín Squella Lawyer, 1973. Doctor in Law, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 1976. Between 1990 and 1998 was rector at Universidad de Valparaíso. In 2009, obtained the National Award of Humanities and Social Sciences of Chile. He is currently Professor of Philosophy of Law at Universidad de Valparaíso.
Abstract: Cities are not only the place where we encounter with difference, but also the one that allows exchange (of goods, knowledge, or work). Both conditions have been key to the liberal project of spreading reason and reducing esotericism. Since mid last century, however, the ideal of freedom was equated with the withdrawal from the city, whether to utopian communities, suburbs or enclaves aimed at minimizing friction, weakening the virtues of the urban life. At the beginning of this century – after the attack on the Twin Towers – another anti-urban discourse was installed: the fear of difference and the restriction of liberties as a way to provide security. Thus, with globalization as a backdrop, a drastic contrast between the capital’s freedom of movement and the restriction of people’s freedom of movement was generalized. Recently, under the freedom of expression argument, the public sphere has been occupied by discourses that further exacerbate the fear of difference and cast doubt on the model of liberal democracy. Curiously, however, episodes such as the promises of walls (U.S.A.) or the army on the streets (Brazil) seem to enthuse those who advocate for economic liberalism. Thus, if liberalism developed hand in hand with the Enlightenment project as a way to reduce fear to the unknown through knowledge and rationality, we may ask: where is the concept of freedom left in an environment that promotes its restrictions? How do we explain the current dissociation between political and economic liberalism?
Keywords: freedom; city; critique; processes; debate
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Title: Navigating Liberalism
Author: Lucas Sierra Lawyer, Universidad de Chile, Chile. Master of Law, Yale University, U.S.A. Ph.D. in Social and Political Sciences, Cambridge University, England. Was member of the Valech Commission and the Engel Commission. Member of the Chilean Bar Association and arbitrator at the Chamber of Commerce of Santiago. Currently serves as deputy director of at cep and associate professor at the Law School, University of Chile.
Abstract: Cities are not only the place where we encounter with difference, but also the one that allows exchange (of goods, knowledge, or work). Both conditions have been key to the liberal project of spreading reason and reducing esotericism. Since mid last century, however, the ideal of freedom was equated with the withdrawal from the city, whether to utopian communities, suburbs or enclaves aimed at minimizing friction, weakening the virtues of the urban life. At the beginning of this century – after the attack on the Twin Towers – another anti-urban discourse was installed: the fear of difference and the restriction of liberties as a way to provide security. Thus, with globalization as a backdrop, a drastic contrast between the capital’s freedom of movement and the restriction of people’s freedom of movement was generalized. Recently, under the freedom of expression argument, the public sphere has been occupied by discourses that further exacerbate the fear of difference and cast doubt on the model of liberal democracy. Curiously, however, episodes such as the promises of walls (U.S.A.) or the army on the streets (Brazil) seem to enthuse those who advocate for economic liberalism. Thus, if liberalism developed hand in hand with the Enlightenment project as a way to reduce fear to the unknown through knowledge and rationality, we may ask: where is the concept of freedom left in an environment that promotes its restrictions? How do we explain the current dissociation between political and economic liberalism?
Keywords: freedom; city; critique; processes; debate
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Editorial. Freedom: practice versus space

In 1926, Walter Gropius presented a diagram of housing densities that calculated the distance between buildings based on a ratio of their height, so that each block of houses received an appropriate amount of light. Shortly after, in 1931, Adams, Lewis and Orton argued that the beauty of Manhattan’s skyline was due to the ‘mass effect’: a set of buildings with different heights, shapes and facades, placed close to each other ^{(Koolhaas, 1994)}. While the first image insists on the value of rationality, the second argues in favor of a lack of rules. One stands in favor of order while the other in favor of anarchy. Both express the debate between planning and freedom. Architecture has usually been closer to the first, since both its tools (design and preview) and its goal (the definition of an order) make it hard for its products to encompass the unpredictability of the second. In fact, if that spontaneity has come to be discussed in architecture, it has been because someone has found it outside of it, like when Rudofsky surveyed vernacular constructions or when Turner offered the Peruvian slums as a model. However, freedom is much more than a debate represented through architectural images. Freedom is not an aesthetic choice. It is a political issue.

In such terms, speaking of freedom would force us to position ourselves between ends: between a laissez-faire where, in the name of individual freedom, everyone does whatever they want, and a totalitarianism where individual freedom is lost in favor of a greater cause. Both ends have dark areas. The laissez-faire that allowed Manhattan’s skyline has also enabled a suburban process that has collapsed metropolises and economies. But also, when it has been brought to reality in large housing complexes, the rationality of Gropius’ diagram has generated alienation at an urban scale. Given the unfeasibility of both extremes, the obvious solution would be the ‘right balance.’ That politically correct standpoint – clear, for example, in the arguments of the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale called “Freespace” – is precisely what this issue of ARQ intends to avoid.

Thus, in this edition, we review three national pavilions that examined the naive tone with which the 2018 Venice Biennale addressed the topic of freedom: “Work, Body, Leisure” (Netherlands), “Prison to Prison” (Uruguay), and “Stadium” (Chile). But we do not stop there. We also review other sides of the problem. In the interview, Felicity D. Scott warns about the ambivalence of the concept of freedom. Forensic Architecture uses architectural tools to uncover the truth in cases where freedoms are breached. Borja Ganzabal argues that current corporate interiors capitalize on the illusion of their employees’ freedom. Torrent, Faúndez and Ruiz introduce a case where architecture allowed degrees of freedom at different scales. Britanny Utting examines the alleged freedom of choice offered by the real estate catalog. Errázuriz, Sepúlveda and Bravo observe how users freely intervene a house. Urrutia and Cáceres study degrees of freedom in examples of cohousing. Rodrigo Valenzuela presents a house where users have the freedom to define the program. Mendes da Rocha and MM BB show how to modify an existing structure to achieve maximum programmatic freedom. Finally, the debate analyzes the basis of current discussion on liberalism, in a context that increasingly bounds people’s freedoms while promoting absolute freedom for capital. Here, Squella describes liberalism as a tree with three trunks (political, ethical and economic) while Sierra seeks to present the coordinates that synthesize its diversity.

In the lectures that Michel Foucault gave at the Collège de France between 1978 and 1979, however, the validity of this diversity is questioned. Analyzing the origins of neoliberalism in Germany after the Second World War and seeking to differentiate it from Milton Friedman’s ‘anarchic-liberalism’ (the neoliberal variant that arrived in Chile), Foucault observes that there is no direct connection between classical liberalism and 20th-century neoliberalism. In the latter, freedom is neither the guiding principle nor the ideal to be achieved through a political, economic or ethical system; rather, it is the argument used to transform an economic agenda into a form of governmentality – that is, to exercise power from the State. Thus, since this model seeks to establish an economic principle – competition – as the core of social life, the French philosopher indicates that: “Neoliberalism should not, therefore, be identified with laissez-faire, but rather with permanent vigilance, activity, and intervention” ^{(Foucault, 2010:132)}. This not only explains the Chilean paradox – where a dictatorship established a model aiming at was economic ‘freedom’ – but also leads to a better understanding that laissez-faire and totalitarianism are not two opposite ends. Hence, there is no ‘right balance’ between both, because between the two sides of the same coin there is no possible space.

Freedom, then, would not be a space between anarchy and planning, nor an ideal that defines society’s direction. Rather it seems to be a practice of resistance against conventions that, like any practice, must be permanently redefining its meaning. It is to this redefinition that this issue of ARQ aims to contribute, even if it comes from architecture – a discipline so fond of cherishing restrictions.
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Bibliography
KOOLHAAS, Rem. Delirious New York. New York: The Monacelli Press, 1994 (1978).

FOUCAULT, Michel. The birth of biopolitics: lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979. New York: Picador, 2010.