When thinking to the work of Smiljan Radić, Foucault’s laughter comes to my mind: the one sparked by a passage of Borges that shattered ‘all the familiar landmarks’ of our thought founded on the ‘age-old distinction between the Same and the Other. This passage quotes a certain Chinese encyclopædia in which it is written that ‘animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies’.
   In the introduction of The Order of Things, Foucault highlights that such an improbable collection of things is only possible through the act of enumeration, by the space that brings them together. This can be understood as a heterotopia – a space where the boundaries between the Same (what is familiar) and the Other (what is alien or different) blur or co-exist, creating a critical, juxtaposed space of multiple, often contradictory, realities. 
   Back in the day, Smiljan Radić started collecting fragile structures and scattered remains found on the streets of Santiago. Later, his interest in utopia led him to gather drawings originating from the heroes of the Radical Architecture of the ‘60s. And there is also the fantastic collection of his imaginary museum comprising works and texts by poets, painters, musicians. This vast reservoir of cultural fragments has evolved into an extremely biographical collection. Here, the collectibles are sometimes unexpectedly other, but once you become familiar with his work and his houses, they stand together as one; the resulting imaginarium casts a special light – sometimes disorienting – on his projects, infusing them with an intense horizon of meaning intimately connected with heterotopia.
   When reflecting on the work of Smiljan Radić, a certain subversive artistic strategy begins to take shape, drawing on two possible references: a) the fortuitous encounters in Marcel Duchamp’s art, where chance events converge to create unexpected meanings and redefine perception; b) a profound poetic connection with heterotopia, as Michel Foucault states: ‘Heterotopias are disturbing, probably because they secretly undermine language, because they make it impossible to name this and that, because they shatter or tangle common names, because they destroy syntax in advance, and not only the syntax with which we construct sentences but also that less apparent syntax which causes words and things [..] to hold together’.  
  The subversive nature of language, intersecting ideas, and eclectic references in Smiljan Radić’s work instills it with poetic strength; his houses resist easy explanations and unilateral understanding. ‘When it is explained – it becomes banal.’  His architecture transcends the familiar world by opening passageways to fictional, yet inhabited realms. ‘Architecture often does not need a place: it needs a territory that can be physical or intellectual’.
                                                                                                                                         ***
   Here is a series of images, thought-texts, and projects – realistic or fantastical – that belong to his deeply personal universe and way of thinking. 
                                                                                                                                           *
   ‘Fragile’ is the name given to a tower of wine glasses that was presented in conjunction with the model of the House for the Poem of the Right Angle in 2010 at the ‘Global Ends’ exhibition at the Ma Gallery in Tokyo. This construction reflects the princess’ tower in The Brothers Grimm’s fairy tale, ‘The Sea Hare’, illustrated in a 1969 series by David Hockney. This building is a tribute to Constant A. Nieuwenhuys’ towers.