Manuel Casanueva
(1943 – 2014): Architect, scholar, and experimental researcher. After graduating as an architect from the School of Valparaiso in the Seventies, he was immediately awarded a professorship at the same institution, where he taught the workshop Cultura del Cuerpo (Culture Body Course). It was from here that his renowned Tournaments arose: Playful exercises where the concepts and structures of the game were aimed at generating different situations of bodily and spatial interaction, with an emphasis on collectivity and chance. As a professor, Casanueva taught at the Finis Térrae University, the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, the Oceanic University, and the University of Talca. Experimenting with materials and building on real dimensions was a constant in his creation workshops, realized through exercises based on the propositions of his most important theoretical work: Tesis del Arquitecto Orfebre (1991). As a student, he participated in Chile's university reform of the 1960s, a revolutionary movement in social and academic terms. After this process, together with a group of Argentinian, Chilean, and Uruguayan artists and intellectuals, Casanueva founded Ciudad Abierta (Open City): A field of architectural experimentation where he lived for 12 years devoted to his practice and research.
