A House For Che Guevara

Description

Le Corbusier posited, for us, the following two options: Revolution, or Architecture.

But what about Revolution AS Architecture ?
Could the architect be some kind of Che Guevara today ?
We will pay homage to him this year, on the occasion of half a century since he was shot to death, by firing squad.
He himself, it seems, was no stranger to some form of cruelty, we were told… but in his case, if this was indeed true, cruelty was balanced by compassion. And it was compassion that brought him to the fore.
Perhaps we all have dualities, but not equally intense.
How would A House for Che Guevara look like, today ?

It is difficult to answer.

Indeed, can we envision an Insurgent Architecture ?
Wolf Prix pointed in this direction in his polemical lines: Architecture must Burn, Architecture must Blaze, Architecture could even Break.

Architecture against itself ?

Perhaps yes… but paradoxically exactly at the breaking point architecture regains itself, just as Che Guevara understood that strangely perhaps death nourishes life…
South America… the continent of exacerbated feelings.
Che Guevara… whose portrait inspired what some called the most famous photograph in the world, the one depicting him as the quintessential revolutionary… the romantic warrior.
That he was no stranger to anger was proved in various ways, not the least being that he was nicknamed FUSER, when he played rugby, a contraction of El Furibundo (raging) and his mother's name, de la Serna...
So at a time when we feel tempted to imagine a FERAL ARCHITECTURE, maybe trying to envision A HOUSE FOR CHE GUEVARA might not be inappropriate.
Essentially, such a house would be the quintessential Anti-Bourgeois house…

But isn’t the house, almost by definition, “bourgeois ?”

Perhaps… but if it is so, then we invite you to imagine an ANTI-HOUSE.

A HOUSE FOR CHE GUEVARA.

A house for the one who wanted to give birth to a “new man…” He was not alone in this, of course, but as opposed to the philosopher, or the poet, Che Guevara ACTED. He acted not just through the act of writing, but also through the act of war.
Perhaps war and poetry do not mix well, and indeed here might be a perplexing matter.
But this perplexity could actually enrich the meanings of THE HOUSE OF CHE GUEVARA.

We invite you to NOT avoid the contradictions, the paradoxes, however painful they might be… between compassion and cruelty stands Che Guevara, the revolutionary who still inspires something hidden within our souls.
Please send us your work by October 9th, when there will be exactly fifty years since his premature death. Please register before sending us your work, in order to receive a registration number with which to anonymously identify your work. Please send your work digitally to works@icarch.us. We prefer format A0, portrait. If you have any questions, please contact us at the same e-mail address.