”Ways of teaching-with in architecture” Lecture Series
For the past ten years, the School of Architecture at Universidad de las Américas has developed, through its Community Intervention Program, a series of built projects in both the central areas and the periphery of Santiago. These interventions are conceived collaboratively by local communities and the academic community, seeking to challenge the traditional dichotomy between theory and practice.
The program brings students closer to the complex issues and challenges facing the discipline of architecture in the twenty-first century. While academic work is often criticized for its distance from the urgencies of contemporary life, engaging directly with society through spatial practice allows us to act in the world and, in doing so, to confront the complexities of everyday life through both the built work and the processes that make it possible.
In Chile, there is a long-standing tradition of academic projects that seek to establish a dialogue between ideas and their concrete implementation in the real world. The Community Intervention Program builds upon this legacy, understanding architecture not only as a field of knowledge and speculation, but also as a form of action capable of engaging with specific communities, contexts, and realities.
Bio
Juan Pablo Corvalán Hochberger
Architect from the Ecole d'Ingenieurs de Geneve, Switzerland and the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the Universidad de Chile, Master of Excellence in Architecture, Berlage Institute Rotterdam, The Netherlands, and PhD at the Institute of Geography at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
He is a co-founder of Supersudaca, an international group focused on urban is one of the co-founders of Supersudaca, an international urban and architectural think tank and research group, and of Susuka, its practical version of architecture in Chile. He has taught at several international universities, presented lectures and conducted workshops in Lima, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Copenhagen, Guadalajara, Rotterdam, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, Sydney, San Diego, Mumbai, Cambridge, and New York, among other cities.
He was selected in Panorama Emergente Iberoamericano IV in 2004, participated as part of the Chilean Pavilion at the 12th Venice Biennale, 2012. His work Casa Kiltro was a finalist for the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize in 2014.
He is co-affiliated with the sound and space project [Sindicato de] Urbanistas Planetarios. Juan Pablo Corvlán is currently dean of the Faculty of Architecture, Animation, Design and Construction at the Universidad de las Américas in Santiago, Chile.
Rodrigo Valenzuela Jerez
Rodrigo Valenzuela Jerez, graduated in Architecture from Universidad de Chile (2003), received a Master of Fine Arts with a Major in Visual Arts from Universidad de Chile (2011), and a Master of Science in Advance Architectural Design from Columbia University (2014).
He has been an adjunct professor at Columbia University (2014–2015), a visiting professor at the Universidad de Chile (2012 & 2019), and an assistant teacher at Universidad Diego Portales (2008–2010) in Santiago, Chile. He has also been a visiting professor in the Master of Architectural Design program at Universidad Central del Ecuador (2020–2021) and at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (2023). He is currently an associate professor at Universidad de las Américas in Santiago, Chile (2017–2025), and since 2021 has served as Director of the School of Architecture at UDLA.
In addition to teaching, he has engaged in practice-based research and scholarly artistic creation through articles, book chapters, interviews, exhibitions, audiovisual productions, and other publications. He has co-edited the books Esto no es Arquitectura (2023) and Casos, Cosas, Casas. Unscripted Depictions of a House (2024).
Since 2014, he has developed an independent practice that conceives architecture as an expanded field, working under RVJ Proyectos.
