Antonio del Giudice is an architect and independent researcher currently based in London.
His work focuses on processes of commoning, environmental conflicts and design strategies that promote democracy and inclusivity with the aim to undermine crystalised and conservative power structures.
Before joining MA Environmental Architecture at the RCA he has worked with different architecture practices, like architecten de Vylder Vinck Taillieu and June14 Meyer-Grohbrügge & Chermayeff.
For centuries indigenous communities living in the northern regions of Chile have been facing the continuous threat of losing their land due to the invasive presence of the mining industry which, together with the right wing political coalitions are conscious inheritors of the Pinochet constitution.
Through the use of different media and through interactions with the people on the front line, I have attempted to reveal the complex apparatus of multiscalar issues and policies that render indigenous life in their ancestral territory an every day struggle. The first part of this work focus on the way government regulation over land and resources, has generated a series of disputes that are forcing people to leave their hometown in order to seek better life conditions.
I have also dedicated a particular attention on how the Chilean educational system has failed so far to understand indigenous culture and what are the different measures, economic policies and social inclusivity measures put in place for that part of the student body that belongs to indigenous groups.
The first part of this project aims to show how knowledge and territorial presence or performed territoriality, as Gabrielė Grigorjevaitė argues in her work “Territorial disputes and the neo-extractivist paradigm”, are being eradicated and made disposable for the benefit of industries and the conservative right-wing agenda of the last government coalitions.
The last section, the design strategy, speculates on the architectures and territorial tactics that may emerge through processes of listening, tracing and drawing together, virtually and physically, with those living on the front lines of social and environmental conflict in Chile.
The concatenation of social and environmental conflicts in a regions like the Atacama desert is clearly not a fertile ground for what the ILO (Internation Labour Organisation) convention n.169 has set out in 1989 regarding education and means of communication: "Article 27 stipulates that education programs for indigenous peoples shall be developed and implemented in co-operation with them to address their specific needs. such programs shall incorporate their histories, knowledge, technologies, values systems, and their social, economic and cultural aspirations."
The program of this new pedagogical platform should not be considered as fixed and permanent, but can vary depending on locations and environmental conditions. In fact, this network is conceived as an open device which always aims to adapt to the continuous feedback flow. Humans, weather, soil condition, social agreements, design feasibility so on and so forth are active parts of the strategic approach which will characterise this platform.
As the physical infrastructure will take place in different locations, unfolding itself with different spatial characteristics, so will the curriculum and the program in order to avoid dynamics like crystallisation of power/authority and homogenisation.
‘In this non-anthropocentric vision of a theatrical geography, the earth is perceived as a composite of intelligent, transformative forces. This active earth establishes different perceptual fields for its inhabitants than those of the technological West. Human beings see themselves not as controlling geography, but as interacting with the earth to form ever new, reciprocally generated, heterotaxic, many dimensioned “charts,” always with qualitative, sacred, ritual, metaphoric, rhythmic implications. Dancing and singing enact and reconfigure the circumambient topocosm.’
Claudette Kemper Columbus - Map, Metaphor, Topos, and Toponym: Some Andean Instances.
