TACTICAL TECTONICS

Tactical tectonics is a approach that emerged from the exposure of architectural practice to antarctic conditions. Being situated in the critical translation of strategies into operational actions provoked an organizational logic embracing prefabrication, deployability, and a philosophy of zero impact. The architectural activity was freed from the responsibilities of permanence and place making, allowing it to focus on the production of situations where performance is fundamental and always associated with a timeline.

This tactical logic of antarctic design has developed into a specific approach to making operational spaces. Architecture becomes instrumentalized, providing strategic solutions to specific situations, that are often transitory, and frequently executed in remote places where deployability is essential and environmental concerns are keynote. A “just in time” logic emerges, where space and shelter are generated, actions take place, and then the situations often dissolve.

It is a way of making the spaces of a contemporary society that is continually reinventing itself, and its objectives. It can be opportunistic, and is often highly efficient and economically sustainable. Space is generated where and when required, often at the periphery of the already consolidated. Ideas are tested, and can rapidly generate feedback loops and evolve at speed. What is left is the trace of sequences of processes, ideas that extrude trajectories of materialization.

This site is the product of over twenty years of experimentation with all the freedom that the chilean architectural medium affords. Its utopianism was first understood in the Open City of Valparaiso, co-habiting with the Amereida Group and collaborating on assembling the House Of The Names in the sand dunes in 1992. Its dynamic situationism was formed in the event culture associated with the emergence of the Chilean electronic scene in the 1990’s, where running hard with clear objectives produced extraordinary moments of collective communion. Academic explorations in the digital universe proposed by the newly formed architecture department at the Santa Maria University then allowed for the formulation of theory and strategy, and provided a platform for technological investigation. Antarctica was decisive as the emerging context, allowing giant steps forward and maximizing exposure. The bungydome generated an alternative model of economic sustainability that allowed the freedom to continue exploring free from institutional paradigms and constraints. The present tense is an evolving combination of these strands, sequences of intensive collaboration interlaced with  extended solitary reflection, and family, all within constantly shifting geographical locations. Tactical tectonics is inclusive, the subject is never outside the practice, and it is also provisional: the next stage is previewed but never certain.

lockdown_carrer de la llum_esporles_mallorca

april 2020