Cohabited space: Proposals on the spatial ambiguity of Valparaíso

Abstract

The city being built today and the market model preceding it seem to be ever reducing the spaces available for day-to-day encounters and a variety of person-to-person relationships. The creation of "non-places", housing standardization and the proliferation of ubiquitous infrastructure predominates in a landscape of excess and vacuity. This is why a city like Valparaíso emerges as an anachronic and apparently obsolete model on the surface, but in its depths reveals a diversity of forms of urban relationships.

What gives Valparaíso such singular qualities?

The following article tries to explain the incidence of self-build housing on the diverse day-to-day relationships within the city, which in turn come to constitute new, ambiguous and complex forms of cohabitation. The study is based on the results of experiential research work in the Cerro Cordillera titled "the unfinished house".