Radić's fortune in Vilches

Authors

  • Suelen Camerin Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul image/svg+xml https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4598-1354
    • Conceptualization
    • Methodology
    • Investigation
    • Writing – Original Draft Preparation
    • Writing – Review & Editing
    • Funding Acquisition
  • Carlos Eduardo Binato de Castro Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul image/svg+xml https://orcid.org/0009-0004-2416-3557
    • Conceptualization
    • Investigation
    • Methodology
    • Writing – Original Draft Preparation
    • Writing – Review & Editing
    • Funding Acquisition

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_zarch/zarch.20262612275

Keywords:

Smiljan Radić, Vilches, ruin, landscape, experimentation, impermanence

Abstract

Architect Smiljan Radić's (Santiago, Chile, 1965) interest in the accumulation of ruins is a long-standing manifesto. In one of his first published texts, "Frágil fortuna [Fragile fortune]“ (1998), he thus titles the "sowing of dust" that makes up the "world as remains" he claims we inhabit. "Fragile" refers to the "state of physical calamity, a widespread infection of memory" of the buildings cited in the text, and "fortune" seems to allude to Georges Perec's famous work Espèces d'espaces [Species of Spaces] (1974), in which the author notes a "placid small thought" in which he calls "my fortune" the collection of ordinary objects accumulated by the passage of time in its own history. This article takes as its fortune the collection Radić amassed in Vilches since the beginning of the 1990s — the houses Chica (1995-96), A (2007), for the Poem of the Right Angle (2010-12), and Transparente (2010-12), Heidegger's Cabin, and the Corral Studio (2014-15). The following text chronicles the appearance and disappearance of the pieces that comprise this fortune, their processes of construction, demolition, or renovation, and explores the different relationships that each of the works establishes with the topography and landscape. Furthermore, it seeks to show how this collection of works, which tells the story of Radić's production, also records his intentions and design recurrences, in addition to serving as a kind of experimental field for his architecture.

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Author Biographies

  • Suelen Camerin, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul

    Suelen Camerin (Bento Gonçalves, Brazil, 1989) is an architect from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (2012). She has a Master’s (2016) and Doctoral (2022) degree in Theory, History and Criticism of Architecture, professor at the Department of Architecture and at the Program of Research and Post-Graduation in Architecture, PROPAR/Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil. She is a researcher of modern and contemporary architecture in Latin America. 

  • Carlos Eduardo Binato de Castro, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul

    Carlos Eduardo Binato de Castro (Rosário do Sul, Brazil, 1986) is an architect from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (2014). He has a Master’s degree (2018) and is a doctoral student in Theory, History and Criticism of Architecture at the Program of Research and Post-Graduation in Architecture, PROPAR/Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil. He is a researcher of modern and contemporary architecture in Latin America, especially since the 1980s in Brazil.

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Published

2026-06-30

Issue

No. 26 (2026): Memory, design and landscape construction

Section

Topic papers

License

Copyright (c) 2026 Suelen Camerin, Carlos Eduardo Binato de Castro

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

Camerin, S., & Binato de Castro, C. E. (2026). Radić’s fortune in Vilches. ZARCH. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Architecture and Urbanism, 26, 218-233. https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_zarch/zarch.20262612275