Interiors Design Architecture and Culture· 2026Q2
The table as architecture: thresholds of hospitality in Ciudad Abierta
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- Q2SCImago
- 2026year
Short summary
In Ciudad Abierta, Chile, tables serve as the architectural nucleus of guest houses (hospederías), structuring hospitality by enabling encounter and dialogue while mediating between public reception and emergent domesticity.
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Key points
- Tables are identified as the foundational architectural element in Ciudad Abierta's hospederías.
- They serve as a spatial nucleus that enables encounter and sustains dialogue.
- The table mediates between the public vocation of hospitality and the emerging domestic condition of permanent residents.
- Hospitality is presented as a core architectural concept in Ciudad Abierta, with the table as its physical manifestation.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
This article explores the table as an architectural and relational structure of hospitality in Ciudad Abierta, Chile, a community founded in 1970 by members of the Valparaíso School of Architecture. Drawing from documentary sources and the photographic collection of the José Vial Armstrong Historical Archive, which documents over five decades of life in the hospederías (guest houses), the study investigates how the table sustains the original public vocation of the hospederías while accommodating the domestic condition that gradually emerged as some of their guests became permanent residents. In Ciudad Abierta, the table acquires a foundational role within an architecture conceived through the practice of hospitality. It constitutes the spatial nucleus around which the first hospederías were designed and built: a void that enables encounter and sustains the word of the other. The table consequently operates through several intertwined registers: a surface that sustains the voice, a framework for conviviality, and a spatial condition through which permanent dwelling coexists with the continuing possibility of receiving others.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Interiors Design Architecture and Culture, 2026 · DOI ↗
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Field: Architecture
ArchitectureEngineering