The table as architecture: thresholds of hospitality in Ciudad Abierta

This article explores the table as an architectural and relational structure of hospitality in Ciudad Abierta, Chile, a community founded in 1970 by members of the Valparaíso School of Architecture. Drawing from documentary sources and the photographic collection of the José Vial Armstrong Historical Archive, which documents over five decades of life in the hospederías (guest houses), the study investigates how the table sustains the original public vocation of the hospederías while accommodating the domestic condition that gradually emerged as some of their guests became permanent residents. In Ciudad Abierta, the table acquires a foundational role within an architecture conceived through the practice of hospitality. It constitutes the spatial nucleus around which the first hospederías were designed and built: a void that enables encounter and sustains the word of the other. The table consequently operates through several intertwined registers: a surface that sustains the voice, a framework for conviviality, and a spatial condition through which permanent dwelling coexists with the continuing possibility of receiving others.