A SCHOOL OF THEATRE FOR THE CITY OF VALPARAISO.CHILE Part 1 Project 2000 Javiera Pizarro University of Valparaiso Valparaiso | Chile A SCHOOL OF THEATRE FOR THE CITY OF VALPARAISO.CHILEThe subject I choose starts on the understanding of what the city, as a living and ever growing entity is capable of giving to the architectonic concern itself.We began searching those facts that we could find in Valparaiso apart from the architectonic and topographic ones. What we found was that the urban ritual as a public event had been long installed in the colective memory.The idea of the ritual fused to the concept of what the city was longing to recover, made me conceive this project as a whole. The reciclyng of a historical building, next to the most representative square of the "gold period" in town, became part of an entire new concept for us: not only the recovery of the architectural element but of the urban one altoghether, through the teaching of theatre as the conducting nerve. Ms Pizarro`s project is deeply enrooted in the city where she lives and studies. In fact, this 'school of theatre' is installed in the foundational district of Valparaiso and in a traditional building which preserves its urban values and whose interior she recicles in order to shelter the new practice.The neighbourhood where this project is developed has been declared of Historical Interest and is in process of being propossed to the U.N.E.S.C.O. to be declared Patrimony of Humanity.We consider two special merits of this workshop: first, the conjunction of the poetic values that the theatre has as the specific subject that it is with the city itself, and second, the complexity of having to fix the whole idea of merging the new and the old in one completely different building.