Walk the Line
Located in the Open City, Ritoque, Chile, a site for experimental architecture, Walk The Line is a small shelter for visiting scholars and students.
This project is located in Ritoque, Chile, within Corporación Amereida’s Open City, a site that the School of Architecture and Design of the Catholic University of Valparaiso’s has been using for over fifty years to build a town and its unique brand of experimental architecture. The Open City now houses many of the school’s staff and some of its students, and contains a chapel, a cemetery, theatre, music room and many public spaces and facilities.
In 2012 The Scarcity and Creativity Studio was invited to contribute three works to the Open City. One of these is Walk the Line a fully insulated little living unit with a bed and desk and an outdoor terrace. The genesis of this small shelter was Le Corbusie’s ‘house for an artisan’. The extended gangway above the living unit rests on two slim columns at one end and spans 12,9 meters to rest on the living unit. The «underspan» bridge construction has the capacity to take 2,7 tons of load. The direction of the gangway follows the path of the sun, from the sunrise in the dunes of the Open city at one end, to the sunset onto the Pacific Ocean at the other.
Architecture students and scholars frequently come to visit The Open City in Ritoque to study this unique architectural experiment, Walk the Line provides accommodation where visitors can spend a few nights.
