The pursuit of public interest through meaningful architecture and urban infrastructure has been the comprehensive focus of studio oP_opera pūblica, a research-practice platform coined with the Latin term for public works.

oP studies and applies the knowledge derived from the transferring process of technical and symbolic responsibilities from the community to the state who carries out the public work on their behalf, passing along the imaginary universe associated with it. Involving buildings and people, oP encompasses a political dimension of architecture, which includes public interest issues and contemporary challenges—social, economic, environmental—of the megapolitan city. oP’s armature has been defined through three critical establishments that initially outlined past, present and future courses of action: as a morpho-political construction, in its micro-territorial articulation, and through an architectural extimacy. It went on from articulating the disciplinary domain of the architectural materials and knowledge and its relationship to life through collaborative public practice to formulating the intersection of public and intimate contexts in the city, traversing their critical breach.

oP’s current developments radically amplify its previous theoretical investigations and public built applications in an sequel that overturns the positive principles that patiently composed the public and intimate urban life, building laboriously on the absurd conditions of the ‘Unhuman Desolation’ in the city, rambling over the latest hyper-capitalist developments. The more we approach the objects of architecture, the more they emerge; and even though their boundless appearance could not be clearly seen as a human expression anymore, it becomes, however a clear reflection of the compulsive and irreversible self-constructing collective world. Accepting building as the foundational and ultimate act, the construction work as the core of human development pursuing to establish the necessary common grounds to assemble new promises and surpass the current state of organized discord.

oP’s works attempt to rigorously concretize intimate human experience and turn it out transpiring as a knowledgeable collective object, crafting them to coincide in its urban spatiality, materiality and body. As an object (and also event), architecture construction in the city is a generous and measurable act that could be constantly and methodologically traced, mobilizing the sense of otherness to become togetherness, turning unhuman desolation into factual communion. It is the vital principle and ontology that exceeds at once object and subject, bounding in solidarity by symbiotic transmutation of buildings and people (buildings are people!) and involving all their consummated and failed links.

Moreover, the work focuses on a joining, or more accurately a short-circuiting, of two apparently distant aspects: the intimate, that which is the most constitutive of an object, and the public, that which lends a sense of otherness. The foundation for this pairing lies solely in the fact that while they initially present themselves as opposites, the intimate, ingrained or immanent and the Other, outer and transcendent are only different and not inherently contrarian. Instead of reducing this critical public/intimate breach to a dialectical synthesis, oP offers the pairing as a continuous description (a spectrum in its totality) that doesn’t combine but rather bridges in hopes of revealing the concerted dimension of the Real.

(Fragment of “[vitae rerum] still life within”, Claudio Vekstein 2021)

Claudio Vekstein is an architect, founder and principal of the public architecture studio oP_opera pūblica, operating mainly in Argentina and Latin America since 1995, residing in Arizona USA where he is a full Professor of Architecture at The Design School, Arizona State University since 2002, and Berlin, Germany.

He has recently received a Doctor Honoris Causa (Honorary Degree) granted by the National University of Rosario, Faculty of Architecture, Planning and Design, Santa Fe Province, Argentina.

As an academic, he has been also a Visiting Researcher at the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture in Espoo, Finland, and has been Visiting Professor at the National Universities of Rosario, Littoral in Santa Fe, Córdoba, Buenos Aires and Torcuato Di Tella in Argentina, University of Montevideo in Uruguay, Talca in Chile, Encarnacion in Paraguay, Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, Lima in Perú, Quito and Cuenca in Ecuador, Chihuahua in México, Johannesburg in South Africa, Frankfurt in Germany, and Copenhagen in Denmark.

His radical practice includes among its latest built works, the Memorial Space to the 100th Anniversary of the Farmers’ Revolt in Santa Fe, Argentina and the Montessori School in Lujan, Buenos Aires. Other built public works, also widely published and exhibited, include the Memorial Square to Ernesto “Che” Guevara and the Mill Cultural Factory, both in Santa Fe, Argentina, the Forum for Arts and Sciences, the Emergency Room for the Municipal Hospital, the Institute for Rehabilitation of the Disabled, De la Cárcova Art Museum, the River Coast Park, Amphitheater and Monument Homage to Amancio Williams, all in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

His work received several awards including the Public Practices Award granted by the International Architecture Biennale of Argentina, the Baukunst Architecture Award granted by the Stiftung Städelschule für Baukunst, Germany, the S.ARCH International Architecture Award, Hong Kong, the National Award to the Built Patrimony by the International Centre for the Preservation of the Architectural Heritage, the Latin-American Award on Hospital Architecture and Engineering by the Association of Hospital Architecture, Argentina, the Design Award by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, USA, the Biennale Prize for Architecture, Urbanism and Theory by the Architects Council of Buenos Aires, and the Vitruvio Award for Integration of Art and Architecture by the Argentine National Fine Arts Museum.

The works have been also published and exhibited in Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Mexico, United States, Canada, Spain, Germany, Holland, Austria, South Africa, Korea, having participated by invitation in the last three editions of the International Architecture Venice Biennale (2021, 2018, and 2016), in Venice, Italy.

Prof. Vekstein was the last disciple of master architect Amancio Williams in Argentina, completed Master Studies at the Städelschule Academy of Arts Frankfurt, Germany under Profs. Enric Miralles and Peter Cook, and undergraduate studies at the School of Architecture, Design and Urbanism from Buenos Aires University, Argentina.

Marcelo Barreiro, Pablo Beitia, Elina Bianchi, Claudio Cesar, José Antonio Choy, Silvana Codina, Mario Corea Aiello, Aldo Walter Cristaldo, Wanda Dalla Costa, Roberto Damico, Hernán Díaz Alonso, Luis Etchegorry, Kristina Floor, Quique Franco, Germán Germinale, Eric Goldemberg, Florencia Grillo, Michael Groves, Henry Hess, Heidi Hesse, Karl Jensen, Ned Kahn, Andreas Keller, Edmund Klimek, Cynthia Kopf, Federico Lerner, Francesco Lucifora, Eduardo Maestripieri, Enric Miralles, Martín Olabarrieta Pablo Peirano, Atilio Pentimalli, Ivan Schwartz, Roberto Segre, Marcelo De Simone, Catherine Spellman, Gustavo Stecher, Walter Taylor, Marta Tello, Juan Carlos Tello, Karl Unglaub, Alejandro Vaca Bononato, Ana Valderrama, Nora Vitorgan Maltz, Eugenio Xaus

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Belén Agostini, Isabel Amiano, Ana Laura Arlia, Frank Arnold, Gonzalo Artes, Marcos Mariano Asa, Mihir Bavishi, Dolores Bartol, Dennis Bartolomeo, Colin Billings, Ricardo Bodini, John Borowicz, Santiago Bozzola, María Avalos de Brunet, Michael Candio, Damian Capano, Martina Carballo, Joshua Carter, Maca Cerquera, Daniel Cifuentes, Benjamin Collins, Florencia Colombo, Vanessa Córdoba, María Cortopassi, Dolores Cremonini, Mauro Cuffaro, Daniel D’Andrea, Daniel Díaz Merchan, Natali Drajnudel, Morgan Ellig, Bryan Esparza, Luis Etchegorry, Lea Faber, Eugenia Frías Moreno, Martin Flugelman, Susan Franco, Arturo de la Fuente

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Mario Gagliano, Pamela Galan, Daiana Gallardo, Ramiro Gallardo, María Paz Gargano, Sean Gaspar, Lucas Geya, Tulio Gines, Alejandro Goldemberg, Ryan Grabe, Onesimo Armando Guerra, Kyron Hardy, Rhonda Harvey, Carlos Hernandez, Juliana Herrero Martinez, Philip Horton, Mariana Ibañez, Victor Irizarry, Brigitte Jacques, Ariel Jacubovich, Ankur Jain, Kurt James, Susanne Kiesgen, Catherine Knapp, Cynthia Kopf, Gernot Koza, Stefan Krüger, Hernán Landolfo, Andreas Lengfeld, Matías Lien Benítez, Jim Lloyd, Roberto Lombardi, Inés López

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Pedro Magnasco, Cecilia Maier, Susana Maio Sasso, Juan Pablo Margenat, Selina Martinez, Patrick Mayers, María Mc Cormick, Santiago Mendibour, Clara Miguens, Tierra Miller, Malca Mizrahi, Leah Morgan, Natalia Muñoa, Florencia Muñoz, Taku Nagamatsu, Angelica Navarro, Franco Neira, Dan Noonan, Jonas Norsted, Silvana Ovsejevich, Pablo Peirano, Atilio Pentimalli, Mercedes Peralta, Silvina Pietragalli, Mariana Pons, Georg Ponzelar, Devan Porter, Gabriel Quipildor, Martín Ramirez, Oliver Romo, Alisha Rompre

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Dana Saez, Tomás Saraceno, Nicolás Sartori, Marcelo Saus, Brian Schroeder, Zubin Shroff, Guadalupe Sobral, Florencia Spina, Angelika Storck, Rosario Talevi, Carolina Telo, Corinna Toell, Santiago Tolosa, Gabriel Tyszberowicz, Ana Valderrama, Carolina Van der Meulen, Shaghayegh Vaseghi, Adriana Vazquez, Stephen Wanderer, Felipe Xaus, María Xaus, Haotian Xu, María Yoma, Milagros Zingoni, Pablo Zunzunegui

Claudio Vekstein, Principal oP_opera pūblica 207 W Clarendon Ave Phoenix, Arizona 85013, USA info@claudiovekstein.com

Claudio Vekstein, Professor TDS, Arizona State University 810 S. Forest Mall DS 125 Tempe, Arizona 85287, USA claudio.vekstein@asu.edu