VIEW IN PLANT VALPARAISO
VIEW IN PLANT (2010). View In Plant is an unfinished project partially developed at the Subercaseaux Palace in Valparaíso, Chile. It is an attempt to explore and intervene an spontaneous garden, most of it made of weeds as they are popularly called. They are plants lacking of aesthetic value from the architectural point of view due to many reasons, however the title of the project refers to the architecture terminology and its relationship with nature or the tension between architecture and nature. The plants took over the palace for a period of three years, after it was shut down due to a gas explosure that destroyed the interior of the place, leaving standing just its neoclassic facade. In the whole process more than 24 different species of weeds were found, most of them originally from Europe and Africa, as well as Australia and North America. The purpose of this project was to open to the public a botanical garden with pedagogic material related to each species found, indexes, illustrations and origin map routes. After the earthquake on February 28th 2010 this project was interrupted. However I consider important the coincidence of this event with the project and that fact reinforced one of the main interests, the power of nature witnessed by the way these resistant plants take over areas that were built by and for mankind.