Colour and light in Open City. The spatial appropriation of territorial extension

The use of colour at the Valparaiso School of Architecture and Design constitutes a state of the art that has hitherto not been recognised. Since its foundation, the chromatic phenomenon that can be found in the School's projects has been analysed as an experienceable action of light on architecture. It is taught through innovative techniques that are summarised in a double-entry analytical matrix linking teaching models to chromatic purposes. The issue of colour and light in the Open City has the publicity it deserves as the test laboratory that it is. The sense of being American in the Valparaiso School is assimilated to the notion of the stake point as an original way of inhabiting a continent, where the chromatic reaches its built space. The consciousness of Americanity is concentrated on a vertical horizon, expressed by the interaction of light and space in coloured atmospheres that make a territory's diversity and complexity visible. A place is built using light limits, whose colours are in a light full of attributes, thus determining the particular nature of each place. The objective of this sensory immersion is to reveal the basic components of the effects of colour on a space made visible as light of a continental nature. Architecture reinvents itself in ecologically coloured light-filled spaces as a concise and cultural reading of a site. The Valparaiso School's innovative pedagogical approach performs experiments using light and colour as the structural axis of the materialisation of the territory's extension. It thus teaches architectures in a playful manner. The methodology is of a universal nature and its aesthetics represent a constant poetic questioning regarding the condition of the American continent. The colours of the light enable building horizons in the architectural framework. These colours, together with bodily presence, linked to the creation of the place through play and words, partly contribute to the renewal of an innovative spirit predisposed to the architectural project.