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Radu Tîrcă and Ștefania Hîrleață are students at University of Architecture and Urbanism 'Ion Mincu', Bucharest. At present, they lead their theoretical research on the subject of thermal towns and diploma projects in Govora Baths under the guidance of Stefan Simion, Irina Tulbure and Ilinca Paun Constantinescu. As students, they won second prize and best student project in a BeeBreeders international architecture competition - Mango Vynil Hub, third prize in a Zeppelin national competition - Prototip pentru comunitate, as well as other mentions in other competitions.
A Brief History of Amnesia
Rodrigo Pérez de Arce
This article was published in Ediciones ARQ, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile, 2016. Author and photographs: Rodrigo Pérez de Arce.
The story – which concerns urban developments in Santiago de Chile – is bracketed between two significant urban plans (one by the French engineer Amedeé Frezier published in Paris in 1716, the other drawn by Agustín Rengifo in 1902 for the ‘Maipo and Mapocho’ canal shareholders) plus an account of certain garden city type districts circa 1960. It is about amnesia because it recalls things forgotten over a short span of time. It also gathers personal mementoes, for it feeds upon memories of the house and garden my father designed in 1950, a somewhat typical case of a landscaping ideal that combined fruit trees and ‘ornamental’ planting.On a broader basis, this enquiry questions the status of the residential garden, issues of ornament and productivity, their different embodiments, and the subject of the garden as an index of urban practices, sensibilities and expectations.
It begins with Frezier’s 1714 Plan of Santiago (published two years later), remarkable in account of two aspects: firstly, the rendering in frontal view of the Santa Lucia hill (a rocky outcrop located to the eastern urban limit, illustrated as if no buildings merited to be shown) and, above all, the depiction of the cities dual urban matrix, a checkerboard pattern that overlaid streets and water streams. Both converged topographically, for the ‘island hill’ is in fact the summit of a much larger bulk, which lies half buried under a flow of sediments that constitutes the floor of Santiago. This alluvial flow also conducted all surface waters, including those that irrigated all urban blocks (Fig. 1). Water was diverted from the river into parallel streams; one following the street axis, whereas the other followed the urban block median line splitting it in halves and flowing across private backyards. Such binary layout simultaneously fixed the street network and water supply, in a simple geometric synthesis. The scheme thus articulated a public water system, and a private one, so that, well in advance of piped water, it supplied running water to every plot, although of course only for irrigation, drinking water being obtained from public fountains and home delivery. Following the lie of the land, these parallel streams flowed on an east to west course, from the massive Andean sources towards the coast. Said Frezier:
…water channels (acequias) are administered with the purpose of irrigating and refreshing – whenever required - all streets; a singular convenience rarely found in European cities... …those laid on an east to west alignment take their waters from the first river canals and those that cross from north to south take it from those that run across the gardens... without their help nothing could be produced in the orchards because of the absence of rain in eight consecutive months... this way one finds in the city all the conditions required in the countryside for fruits and vegetables…
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Fig. 1
Acequias, it should be noted, is a Spanish derivate of an Arab term; as such, it links irrigation cultures. Patios rather than pavilions were the predominant urban type, following widespread colonial practice.The best houses in Santiago featured a sequence, their functions spread in hierarchical progression from the urban front to the semirural rear. Representational quarters were located upfront, cultivation and domestic labor towards the backs. Planted with orchards and vegetables, rear patios supplied the household with food. The degree of domestic autarky must have been high for, as pointed by Frezier “one found in the city all the conditions required in the countryside for fruits and vegetables.
An unexpected hierarchal order surged from the double grid however, as it became evident that east-west lots were better supplied than north-south ones, for only the former spread across the space between the street and the streams by the rear. It soon became apparent that the north-south streets (crossed streets, or calles atravesadas as they were called) were less desirable, thus attracting lesser buildings. This way, the conceptually homogenous grid acquired heteronymous values.
The dual matrix made Santiago into an irrigated oasis amidst a vast semiarid territory, whilst the management of water became, in the course of time, a complex and demanding task, as it required a fair supply to all stakeholders, citizens and farmers. Some authors relate the overall management required over water rights to the institutional stability at a national level; after all, negotiating these rights was no easier than negotiating political conflicts.
Thus, the master narrative of the grid with its associated ideal qualities combined with hydraulic management priorities. Until the late 19th century, most urban vegetation was held behind walls. Highly geometrized streets that were denominated ‘secas,’ that is to say ‘dry,’ made a foreground to the exuberant foliage confined to patios that burst above the rooflines (Montserrat Palmer formally likened to precast acequias). Such was the horizontal distribution of greenery, for as we will see, there was a quite different mode whereby distinct species came to be distributed over topographic strata.
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Fig. 2
Common local parlance distinguishes riego (irrigated soils) from secano (dry lands, those outside the reach of artificial irrigation). This dual armature accounts for the basic territorial structure of the country’s denser areas, including the metropolitan one. Following the force of gravity, riego is confined to the valley basin, within reach of the infrastructure, whilst secano belongs to the hills, outside the reach of gravitational irrigation. This simple formula had profound territorial consequences, for it drew a landscape divide; anyone could easily discriminate that limit between the artificial oasis and the dry hills, a sharp line, roughly incised over the land contours where these almost contradictory landscapes met.
Delineated years later by Agustín Rengifo, the 1902 Plan of Santiago was commissioned by the shareholders of the extensive canal network. Following the urban expansion, its enlarged frame embraced a significantly greater area than Frezier’s. It accounted for the new supply availed to Santiago’s hinterlands by the Maipo River located some miles south with waters diverted by a canal that was first conceived in colonial times, but only inaugurated in republican ones. The actual irrigated basin became significantly broader. Moreover, the accent was now placed upon agricultural fields. Rengifo’s mapping probably served the dual purpose of celebrating the collective achievement of this extensive network, whilst supplying – a much needed – updated description of the complex web of relations that bounded upstream and downstream landholdings. Because litigations were recurrent within the framework of this particular farming culture, visualizing the complex linkages between water holders was indispensable. This was a contractual landscape of accords as much as a farming system of subdivisions. It described Santiago’s agricultural hinterland and its prime supplier of foodstuff.
As shown in the 1902 Plan, the infrastructure of irrigation canals at the time comprised a dense network of streams spreading over city and country, always following gravitational criteria. Placed firmly by the river, and surrounded by fertile soils, the city of Santiago expanded over its hinterlands, increasingly consuming areas until then devoted to agriculture.
Irrigation canals are always coupled with pathways, as they serve the management of sediments, thus creating de-facto communication networks across fields. In the case of Santiago, this subsidiary network supplied the key to new street alignments so that agricultural criteria led some decisive 20th century urban patterns, as these frail hydraulic networks set the armature for the expanding street network.
Urban roads consolidated following the irrigation patterns, so that, in utter contrast with the abstract inner city template, this mode of growth surged from organic and factual circumstances, instead of planning, abstraction, and foresight. Henceforth, the gravitational rationale of water streams and rural land subdivisions gave way to new networks of streets and urban blocks. In this pattern of urban inversions, the streets that were overlaid upon farming outlines did no longer hold to straight alignments, but accommodated instead to the lie of the land, the resulting plots being slightly irregular: this was the basis for many garden suburbs, industrial belts, and also the extensive low income working class areas. The taste for the picturesque favored these departures from the gridiron.
By virtue of its extension the city could not any longer be perceived at this juncture as a single entity; it became more like a landscape and less of a figure.
But there was another pattern of inversions simultaneously operating, one that was at least as relevant as the ones affecting its urban morphology, for in this new state of affairs, residential villas replaced patio houses, the free standing suburban house gradually favored, over the older house types embedded in the urban blocks. The city landscape was thus recast following from these principles: primary road networks henceforth laid in accord to hydraulic patterns, and house building in accord to the pavilion type.
It was the time for the greening of Santiago, with the emergence of parkways, country clubs and extensive private gardens, especially along the eastern foothills (social divides followed water divides, the upstream districts gathering the bulk of the privileged quarters). Lining streets and avenues, trees were no longer confined to cloistered interiors but rather conceived as public utilities. The substitution of the colonial grid for a mode of urban extension that obeyed to pragmatic conversion of agricultural lots was now fuelled by Anglo-Saxon models. Lingering aspects about the old matrix persisted, however, in this new state of affairs, such as the open ditch irrigation system, which watered the tree lines in most garden suburbs. Acequias, now cast in precast concrete units, were embedded, to this purpose, alongside the front parterres. Open irrigation networks so construed were still enforced in the mid 1950s garden city districts thus enshrining a Municipal tuition over street planting. These urban trees were ‘ornamental’ not ‘productive’ as they did not bear fruits, neither were they conceived as a source of timber.
Garden city districts led the modernizing of Santiago’s residential types, for it was in these areas (as it is still the case) where the tenets of the singlefamily house were tested (collective living being mostly confined to social housing). Following from international trends, the discourse was now about an integration of gardens and interiors, whilst new social practices flourished in the outdoors. A Mediterranean climate that endowed Santiago with similar ecological characteristics to southern California eased the borrowing of residential models, in a post-war scenario where Hollywood was setting trends about the good life.
However, memories about the interface of urban and rural practices lingered in garden city districts, for private gardens used to combine ornamental stock with horticultural production. Moreover, rural overtones were still strong in mid-20th century Santiago if only because of the massive presence of rural migrants, in search of prosperity. In addition, certain aspirations – largely based on the ideal of the villa as a place in the city that gathers the pleasures of the country – fuelled the residential garden’s dual nature. Practical reasons also accounted for the hybrid garden model, for, before the advent of the supermarket in 1957, seasonal fruit provision was not always at hand. Likewise, as if recasting the old patio typology, well-to-do suburban backyards were informed with a utilitarian agenda with outdoor kitchen extensions, laundry spaces and domestic service quarters converging. It was not uncommon for poultry to be cared in these spaces with cats and dogs adding to the aural landscape. These tokens of rural life had an even greater presence in low-income districts, where, by way of custom and need, selfsufficiency was a must.
At its most nostalgic, this was the ideal of the casa quinta, which was cast into the mold of the suburban dwelling. But the garden-suburb modern agenda introduced the values of light and greenery, with an emphasis upon rational planning, as well as the articulation of indoor and outdoor spaces.The subject directly leads to personal memories, for in the modern house my father designed, the garden was conceived upon the hybrid mode. Two vines (vitis vinifera) and a fig tree (ficus carica), both of biblical remembrances, two apricot trees (prunus armenaicas) carrying Middle Eastern memories in its colloquial name ‘Damasco,’ one kaki, (diospyros kaki), and a walnut (juglans regia) shaded the front garden, whereas the backyard featured two peach trees (prunus persica). Seven fruit trees in all, thus planted within the lot. It had no ornamental trees.
Summertime was therefore a period of plenty, its celebration consummated in the outdoors, but also at the dinner table. The fruit specimens typically represent a complex web of trade, transport and acclimatizing, for none were native to the land. Much like the Spanish implantation that gave birth to our city, the cultivated stock of the irrigated oasis retained its exotic flair, until naturalized by custom, whilst the native flora retreated to the spaces of secano, up above the surrounding hills, beyond the water line, at some distance from the city proper. Severed from the city, in an unexpected twist of fate, native plants became now remote (Fig. 3).
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Fig. 3
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This pattern represented a common state of affairs in affluent garden districts. Most foodstuffs were provisioned to the city by its farming hinterland and, even though this receded as an effect of the urban onslaught, rural memories lingered in gardens, as well as in the open-cast irrigation network which was common to residential streets. Neighborhood shops, often run by immigrants, (Italian, Spanish and Croatians in our particular case) supplied most day-to-day needs, whilst ameliorating the single function quality of the garden suburb.
Such was the representative scene in many suburban quarters whilst collective housing was becoming a significant residential alternative, particularly so for the social-housing sector. The latter, received a boost with the 1970 San Luis high-density mixed-use quarter, which was implanted by the eastern fringes, upon barely urbanized lots. CORMU was the state agency in charge of this initiative, which was led by architect Miguel Eyquem.
Following the spirit of the times, the architects emplaced the housing blocks amidst extensive gardens; yet these were conceived as fruit tree orchards, expected to aid toward maintenance costs, thus solving the vexing problem that afflicts collective housing gardens. It was as if a wartime ‘victory garden’ was implanted on a vast scale: San Luis advocated an economic model whereby the land became productive at the same time as it delivered pleasure. It conjoined horticultural and ornamental values, yet besides the expected gains, its landscape vision embodied an enhanced perception of seasonal cycles and a – perhaps nostalgic – vision about farming rituals.
Following from worldwide economic trends, as from 1957, supermarkets gradually replaced local shops; introducing bulk shopping patterns and a particular rhythm of shopping excursions by car. Be it for this reason or for other – probably more complex motivations – at about the same period residential gardens came to be solely conceived as agents of ornament with the total exclusion of production. As an example, the innovative houses designed by architect Jaime Sanfuentes in the exclusive Jardín del Este district featured not a single fruit tree in their gardens. This was clearly not due to oversight, for in crafting the communion of indoors and outdoors he was keen about the choice of every single element that construed the desired continuum.
“Ornamental” we may add is the adjective by which plant nurseries designate species of no horticultural value. Although it is obvious that their landscaping use does not preclude considerations about ambiance and wellbeing, we are just contrasting such values with the notion of productivity and practical purpose.
In the Theory of the Leisure Class, Thorstein Veblen claimed it to embody certain symbolic values, cherished by those privileged members of society, who by dint of their social position were excluded from labors and production. Their recourse to ornament was all about differentiating their “conspicuous leisure” away and above the mandates of productivity. Ornament celebrated “conspicuous consumption,” parading privilege in the form of particular attires, architectural forms and gardening. Ornament was – as we know – chastised by modern architects, also because it was in essence quite antagonist to the very notion of functionalism. Yet whilst being banished from building and objects it assumed a new guise in modern garden conceptions.
It would be farfetched to attribute a full consciousness about these ideas to the professional and amateur landscape architects who furnished Santiago’s garden districts with these novel outdoor scenarios. Neither could it be credited to their patrons, but Veblen’s interpretation is poignant about the opposition of ornamental to use values, which just suggests the possibility of underlying motivations behind the exclusion of the latter from garden spaces. As we have seen, these had not been regarded as opposites in the earlier landscape mode, but priorities had changed. Ornament came to prevail in the conception of Santiago’s domestic landscapes to the detriment of production. As from the 1960s or thereabouts, the gardens that embellished its best houses were totally devoid of fruit trees whilst other uses of planting were never contemplated.
On a broader front, over the second half of the 20th century, water rights were increasingly purchased by private companies, hence rendering obsolete the open irrigation system that had hitherto watered Santiago’s urban trees, consequently placing the care of street trees in the hands of private households. The severance from the earlier half -rural model was by then complete. The process gained momentum with neoliberal market options: provided a generous budget, you could now purchase food produced from almost any locality. Fruit became aplenty, whilst its origins were rendered ever so opaque.
Distance and a certain sense of abstraction came to characterize the relation of consumers to products – including foodstuff. Water too, lost visibility as it was removed from the public scenario, precisely when its provision became critical as a consequence of greater demand and prolonged draughts. This kind of abstraction became typical of a new political and economic landscape. If anything, the word ‘flow’ now primarily denoted capital exchanges. As in the transit from old mechanisms to new ones, the clarity of the parts that composed the old system vanished on the face of technically superior structures. Sealed, and often inscrutable, these infrastructures became opaque as regards the management of water, and the origin of goods.
In paradise, as it is known, one finds the original garden; yet biblical descriptions overlook the distinction between the productive and the ornamental. Quite on the contrary, these often highlight the role of the edible at the very source of the garden experience, and of fruit bearing trees as recurring metaphors for fertility, and barren trees denoting instead human disgrace.
Of course, plants yield a plethora of by-products: yet it is odd that precisely when sustainability becomes topical, the domestic landscape – that genetic component of vast urban territories – becomes unfashionable. The issue is not so much about urban farms, neither it is solely about the edible, but rather about transcending the dichotomy of the ‘productive’ and the ‘ornamental.’ Formerly linked, as we have seen, these dimensions came to be split. Hence our amnesia. Yet what we may call the hybrid garden offers valuable potentials attuned to our present circumstances. Who knows; aside from the private garden, the notion of a productive landscape may even boost the planting of trees along barren streets (of which we have too many in Santiago), barren hillsides (the same) and empty lots, in exchange for fruits, organic matter, timber cellulose, environmental improvement, and above all, urban quality and considerable pleasure.
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1 - Translation by the author from an original that in Spanish says: “Se administran acequias para regar los jardines y refrescar, cuando se lo desea, todas las calles, comodidad inestimable que solo se encuentra en muy pocas ciudades europeas… las que van de E a O … toman sus aguas de los primeros canales del río y las que cruza de norte a sur de aquellos (canales) que corren por el centro de las manzanas… sin este auxilio los huertos nada podrían producir por la falta de lluvias por ocho meses consecutivos… de esta manera se encuentran en la ciudad todas las condiciones del campo para las frutas y las legumbres…” Frezier Amedeé François, Relation du voyage de la mer du sud a côtes du Chily et du Perou fait pendant les années 1712, 1713, 1714. A Paris MDCC XVI. Spanish edition Amadeo Frezier. Relación del Viaje por el Mar del Sur, Biblioteca Ayacucho. (Venezuela: Editorial Arte, 1982). p 100.
2 - Ibid., p.XX.
3 - The point is developed by Astaburuaga (2002), who makes it extensive to the urban matrix of other Chilean cities. The surveyor (alarife) has to take care of the correct functioning of the hydraulic system as much as the laying of the streets and plots. See: Astaburuaga, Ricardo. Morfología de Chile y sus ciudades. (Santiago: Ril editores, 2002).
4 - This can also be clearly observed in the Instituto Geografico Militar 1895-1905 Plan of Santiago.
5- Up to about 1872, Santiago could be entirely grasped from the vantage point of the Santa Lucia hill; not just its visual prospect but also one imagines its aural and olfactory traits as well.
6 - The new pattern was emerging in Santiago by 1910 with sets of villas lining up Avenida República, a fashionable district under development in the vicinity of Santiago’s Hockey Club; see: Parcerisa, Josep; Rosas, José. El canon republicano y la distancia cinco mil. (Santiago: Ediciones UC, 2016). In such a massive process, it is clear that not all subdivisions followed farming outlines and the configurations of canal networks, but the fundamental liaison of street to canal alignment accounts for decisive urban patterns.
7 - Palmer traces the early process of formation of the garden districts. A common pattern was the individual villa, the other was the planned housing estate destined to create tightly packed enclaves, often formed around a cul-de-sac street. Based upon small subdivisions, these enclaves departed from the ideal of the casa quinta. See: Palmer, Montserrat. La ciudad jardín como modelo de crecimiento urbano: Santiago 1935-1960. (Santiago: Facultad de Arquitectura y Bellas Artes, Universidad Católica de Chile, 1987).
8 - Who takes care of the elements placed within street spaces is an interesting issue. Schivelbusch (1988) demonstrates how the care of street lighting oscillated between private homeowners – each one caring for those fronting their property – and centralized agencies. The same is true for street planting. See: Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. The Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century. (Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press, 1988).
9 - The dual usages present in the extensive poplar tree lines planted on farmlands beyond the city. Aside from offering shade, poplars acted as windbreakers, whilst also supplying fuel and building material. Poplar tree planks became the standard element in scaffolds and formworks until circa 1960s.
10 - With the exception of the Austrian born landscape architect Oscar Prager, who included native flora in many of his garden designs. See: Viveros, Marta; Lanata, Liliana; Vilches, Eduardo. Oscar Prager, el arte del paisaje. (Santiago: Ediciones ARQ,1997).
11 - CORMU was a powerful government agency entrusted with all issues of “urban development.” Conceived between 1970 and 1975 as a mixed development, with a housing provision for 65,000 people, the 180 hectares San Luis scheme became decisive in the structuring of the new suburbs. Walnut trees planted along streets and productive orchards were considered as sources of income and pleasure. See: Eyquem, Miguel. El proyecto de la obra: de la gravedad a la levedad. (Santiago: Ediciones ARQ, 2016)
12 - Till the military takeover in 1973, there were two competing chains, one private the other a cooperative of consumers and farmers. These were replaced by two mega-distributors of farm produce.
13 - For an exhaustive description of Sanfuentes houses and gardens in Jardín del Este see: Portugueis Carolina. Reciprocidad entre arquitectura y arquitectura del paisaje: la obra de Jaime Sanfuentes en Jardín del Este (1959-1967), Master in Landscape architecture thesis, Universidad Católica de Chile, 2014. Palmer singles out the estate designed by Emilio Duhart and in particular the houses designed by Sanfuentes as a good exponent of a secondgeneration garden suburb; see: Palmer, Montserrat. La ciudad jardín como modelo de crecimiento urbano: Santiago 1935-1960. (Santiago: Facultad de Arquitectura y Bellas Artes, Universidad Católica de Chile, 1987).
14- Veblen, Thorstein. The Theory of the Leisure Class. (New York: Prometheus Books, 1998).
15- Exception should be made of certain schemes where allotments were considered (certain German siedlungen for example): the point is that on the whole it was the pastoral mode that furnished modern garden models.
16- Water rights were privatized across the entire country.
Rodrigo Pérez de Arce graduated as an architect from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile in 1972. In 1973, he emigrated to London, where he earned a Diploma in History and Theory from the Architectural Association two years later. In 2011, he obtained a Doctor of Architecture degree from the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas. Since 1990, he has taught at the School of Architecture at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. He has also taught at the Architectural Association and at the universities of Bath, Pennsylvania, and Cornell. In addition to his academic role, he has contributed to the design of several architectural projects in Chile through public competitions. These include the Cultural Center Estación Mapocho, in collaboration with Teodoro Fernández and Montserrat Palmer, the remodeling of the Plaza de Armas in Santiago, the Crypt of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Santia162go, and the renovation of the Puerto Market in Valparaíso. In 2021, he earned third place in the design competition for the Cerro Calán Observatory Park in Chile. In 2022, he was awarded the Sergio Larraín García-Moreno Prize by the College of Architects of Chile, recognizing his distinction in the academic and research fields.