As dwellers of big cities, we tend to be dragged into a very fast-paced lifestyle. Surrounded by monumental buildings and infrastructure, we can easily lose sight of key spaces that connect us with our neighborhood and provide us with rare moments of peace and enjoyment. Appropriation of the environment we inhabit becomes an uncommon circumstance.
República Portátil is a creative architecture and design company founded by Universidad del Biobío (Concepción) architecture graduates Luis Felipe Maureira, Julio Suarez, and Valentina Torres, alongside industrial designer Andrés Moreno and publicist Cristina Vergara. In this interview, they discuss the origins of República Portátil, when its members, then university students, gathered to generate spatial experiences designed to disrupt the everyday and transform urban environments:
...the construction of space was defined by symbolic elements such as sound and light, rather than rigid material elements. I believe that all that work prior to us (República Portátil) gave us a certain lightness and freedom to approach the development of spaces through situations. Thinking that the construction of a moment was just as important as the construction of a space through a material.
