Abstract
Located in central Santiago, the Gabriela Mistral Cultural Centre (GAM) is in fact the latest renovation of a building that embodies several historical shifts affecting Chile since 1972. Originally conceived as an emblem of modernisation during Salvador Allende’s presidency, it became the headquarters of the Pinochet military junta after the 1973 coup d’etat. In present times, due to the October 2019 social protest movement, the building has been transformed by activists into an impromptu platform for protest art. This essay explores the discursive and spatial relationships between the latest renovation of the GAM building and past events through an analysis of the renovation’s design, its socio-political and cultural context, and its impact upon Chilean collective memory. Archival research for the essay encompasses governmental documents, press releases, and architectural drawings – in conjunction with newspaper articles and television clips. Furthermore, three figures involved in the renovation were interviewed: Christian Yutronic, one of the architects responsible for the redesign; Felipe Mella, the current director of GAM; and Caiozzama, a prominent protest artist who has transformed the building’s facade. This study reveals the links between architectural form and collective memory in contemporary Chile, interweaving topics such as remembrance and erasure, the conservation of ‘difficult’ heritage, and the role played by ideology within current architectural discourse.
Highlights
How would I like to see Chile? In democracy
I intended to expand the analysis by locating the renovation of Gabriela Mistral Cultural Centre (GAM) within a theoretical framework that addresses the socio-political aspects of memory, both through the conception of the reshaped building and its subsequent popular appropriation and perception
Aldo Rossi, when discussing the value of monuments, asserted that ‘a city has never intentionally destroyed its own greatest works of architecture’ [47: p. 92]. This claim might be contested if we look at GAM’s renovation
Summary
How would I like to see Chile? In democracy. I’d like to see it in democracy I just love asking the impossible. [1: p. 210]Under the weathered Cor-ten steel façade of the Gabriela Mistral Cultural Centre (GAM) lies a building that has been at the heart of Chile’s modern history (Figure 1). Properties of architecture helps to revise the cultural, political and social structures that lie behind these selective memory operations and the impact of the renovation in collective perception.
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