The Main Square in Osorno Revisiting Oscar Prager’s project

Abstract

The city is a space for representation where specific preexisting conditions of the context, added to the vision of urban developers and architects, become entangled to give it its modern shape. Revisiting the 1930's Main Square project in Osorno -the work of Austrian landscaper Oscar Prager- reveals its underlying urban operations. Likewise, the process can help define the conceptual framework within which they are inscribed to establish, as theoretical grounds, the work of urban developer W. Hegemann about civic art, added to his own experience as a park planner in the United States. 
Since there are no records of planimetry or of related projects, a deductive method was used to interpret the basic building blocks in the municipal minutes. A paradigm was identified, referring to the close relationship among a city that was thought, projected and built and, which, even today, can be seen in one of its landmark projects.