Chilean Architecture Research Articles

Inheritance or Reference?: Reflections on the Traceability of Contemporary Chilean Architecture

Inheritance or Reference?: Reflections on the Traceability of Contemporary Chilean Architecture

Iniciar un (des)aprendizaje del canon formativo desde los feminismos. Relatos desde las escuelas de arquitectura chilenas

This article presents the preliminary results of a survey that begins the work of identifying initiatives that, from Chilean architecture schools, open up possibilities for unlearning the educational canon. Just as we need to rethink how we inhabit and design, we must also review how we teach and learn architecture. The emphases of feminisms offer us some evident clues in two currently active initiatives identified in regional universities. The case of Mujeres Autoconvocadas FARCODI (MAF) encourages collective and interdisciplinary reflection, while the feminist initiative ProfesorARQ reclaims the narratives of female teaching, motivated by the concerns of current generations of students.

Between Propaganda and Dissent: Postmodern Architecture in Pinochet’s Chile

Postmodern forms and tendencies that appeared in Chilean architecture in the 1970s not only overlapped with Augusto Pinochet’s neoliberal dictatorship that lasted from 1973 to 1990 but also are closely connected to the political and economic vision fostered by the dictatorship. Postmodern forms found in banks, hotels, and other commercial buildings and spaces populating Chilean cities in the seventies and eighties aided the government’s political agenda as they helped to normalize painful neoliberal reforms and create an image of prosperity and progress. Moreover, in projects such as the Plaza de la Constitución in Santiago de Chile (1980–1982) and the Congreso Nacional de Chile in Valparaíso (1988–1990), postmodern aesthetics and philosophy were used to project an image of an open democratic country. In these realizations, postmodern tropes such as the symbolic potential of architectural form and references to architectural tradition were used to fabricate a vision of history and society desired by the Pinochet government. Simultaneously, the same architectural currents embraced by Pinochet for propagandistic purposes were utilized by Chilean architects who considered themselves opposed to the dictatorship. This can be seen in the work of CEDLA (Centro de Estudios de la Arquitectura, Center for Architectural Studies), an independent collective of Chilean architects established in 1977 in Santiago de Chile. The members of CEDLA promoted a version of a politically and socially engaged postmodernism that could counter the neoliberal agenda of Pinochet. This paper discusses both ways in which postmodernism was interpreted in Chile during the dictatorship. Investigating Chilean postmodernism helps us rethink the dominant portrayal of postmodernism as politically indifferent or conservative and as part of Jameson’s ‘cultural logic of late capitalism’.

Within Aquatic Life. Beyond the Anthropogenic Maritorium Prospect

Enquiries into non-anthropogenic cultural landscapes, such as marine environments, reveal unsuspected dynamics due to the resurgence ofecosophies that are alien to the globalised economy and territorialisation as a basis for appropriation and subsequent indiscriminate exploitation. Disturbed by the wanderings of geo-engineering, several regions of the world have recently touched on key arguments with points in common that could revitalise nonhuman biospheres and, in them, human ones. When considering maritime dynamics, the ocean must be seen as an entity. Following the ever-inspiringhistorical literatures of Fernand Braudel and expanding on the “mediterraneity” he formulated, we would be testing another concept involving a change in mentality of governmentality: “maritoriums”, a conceptualisation from 1970s Chilean architecture. Based on case studies, we will discuss significant examples in the Mediterranean, the Caribbean and Asian oceans and rivers that contribute to the current debate on.

Incremental Pathways of Post-Disaster Housing Self-Recovery in Villa Verde, Chile

Housing reconstruction is considered the backbone of disaster recovery. The increasing losses in housing due to disasters challenge conventional top-down schemes and call for people-centred approaches to acknowledge their agency and self-recovery resources. This paper examines the pathways for housing self-recovery through resident-controlled incremental housing development. This paper focuses on the Villa Verde settlement built in the Chilean city of Constitución, which was severely impacted by the 2010 Chile Earthquake. Villa Verde, designed by the Chilean architecture studio Elemental, is one of the most notable incremental housing projects worldwide that encourage residents to extend their houses within a provided structural framework. This research aims to provide clarity in the much-needed understanding of disaster-affected people’s agency to self-recover, noted by researchers as one of the crucial elements for improving the humanitarian response in the aftermath of disasters. Through capturing the evolution of incremental housing construction, this paper presents multiple complexities resulting from the variety of households’ characteristics and needs in their process of post-disaster housing self-recovery. The resident-controlled process studied evidence that the people’s capacities and dedication to self-recover challenged the established housing framework with extensions beyond the designers’ parameters requiring further evaluation of the long-term implications of self-help constructions.

Enseñanza de la arquitectura en Chile, 1999-2019. Potencial ecológico y sentido político colectivo de las prácticas del proyecto

Over the last two decades, the higher education system has visibly tended to standardise university parameters and this process has also affected the internal functioning of Chilean architecture schools. Nevertheless, the political and collective sense reflected in the demands of the new student generation has challenged public policy and the discipline’s pedagogy. In a context of institutional inertia, architecture schools have failed to show reactivity and have not always responded to students’ concerns in a thoughtful and purposeful way. We can observe, however, three pedagogical actions in Chile which – following a radical line proper to the sixties – challenge the normative thoughts, thus questioning and reorganising disciplinary aspects. In so doing, they lead to a rethinking of the ecological potential of the training communities. In such cases, teaching is understood as a central practice, relying on a different relationship between teachers and students. They mix practice with research as they seek to strengthen the collective idea of a community through the academic exercise of a project. In this article, we describe and analyse the conditions that allow these pedagogical actions to emerge and the ecological potential of practice, as they bring about a political and collective meaning that can re-signify the architectural discipline via training.

University model and teaching practices: An introspective glance to eight Chilean architecture schools

University model and teaching practices: An introspective glance to eight Chilean architecture schools

Imagining Polynesia

Rapa Nui’s prehistoric Polynesian heritage is iconic. From the later twentieth century the island’s economy has been dependent on the tourism its prehistory attracts. However, until recently there has been little link between the modern built environment of Rapa Nui and its prehistoric past. This article tracks how during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the island’s traditional domestic architecture was supplanted first by colonial then early modern Chilean architecture. The remains of this transformation are fast disappearing through contemporary demolition and an associated rejection of the past that the introduced architecture represents. We highlight how contemporary Rapa Nui architecture instead actively references its iconic prehistoric Polynesian past and positions Rapa Nui in a Polynesian context, for the first time detailing this trajectory and identifying how elements of past artistic and architectural traditions have become incorporated into the architecture of the present. Instead of presenting the intervening period as one of loss of traditional identity, this in fact emphasises a subtle continuity of Rapanui (indigenous Rapa Nui islander) identity. The study is relevant to exploring how the interacting demands and expectations of identity politics and heritage tourism (here in a Polynesian context) can impact on contemporary local architecture and the visitor milieu, reflecting modern concepts which promote the preservation of some architectures and cultural attributes over others.

Identity and inclusion. The housing complexes made by the Chilean architect Luciano Kulczewski (1922-1956)

Luciano Kulczewski was a professional who played a key and distinctive role in the first half of the 20th century, a period considered as crucial for the development of Chilean architecture, since it is the moment that brought the advent of modernity to the country. One of the most eloquent illustrations in this regard is the corpus, that collects more than a dozen housing complexes aimed for the middle and the working classes. Today, we recognize in these solutions not just the fact that they are in sync with the web of social, political, cultural, and economic processes that characterized the beginnings of the past century in Chile, but that they also have, among their most notable merits, having been conceived in terms of what we would understand today by “inclusion”. This article seeks to investigate these parameters, which range from urban proposals - that approached the city in "inclusive" terms - inasmuch as they did not push for these housing proposals to be in the metropolitan peripheries - to more particular issues, such as the stylistic management of homes as a tool to serve identity causes, in order to achieve the integration of the user with their environment.

Free to Choose

Ignacio Gatica cements the translation of theory into practice in sculptures recreating the covers of books by the economists Friedrich A. Hayek and Milton Friedman. The covers of the selected books make reference to the development of the neoliberal model that had an enormous influence on the politics and the economy of postdictatorship Chile, an effect that was felt in most Latin American countries at the time, as well.The covers, recreated as massive cement blocks, contrast starkly with smaller adobe pieces placed on the floor, each of which bears the letter ñ inscribed on one side. The use of adobe and the inscription refer to a vernacular technique present in Chilean architecture but also to an element that distinguishes the broader region through the Spanish language: the letter ñ. The opposition between the concrete and the adobe elements defines a friction between what is local, proprietary, and representative of identity, on the one hand, and what is foreign, imposed, or alien, on the other.

Modern architecture in Chile. The case of the Consistorial Palace of Valdivia, by Angela Schweitzer

Does modern Chilean architecture exist? What works are part of it? For Montaner (1999), in countries like Chile, modern architecture began to develop in the 1930s and 1940s, from the teaching of architects who studied in Europe or the United States. In the Chilean case, he mentions the architect Emilio Duhart and we can also add Roberto Davila Carson. For the author, in modern Latin American works it is possible to notice a marked influence of the most monumentalist Le Corbusier with a brutalist use of concrete; and to a lesser extent, the teachings of Gropius, van der Rohe, Wright, and Aalto. However, in them the search for an interpretation of the rationalist language is present. In accordance with this, in this article it is proposed that the Palacio Consistorial de Valdivia is an example of modern Chilean architecture and Angela Schweitzer, its author, one of the first modern architects in the country.

Beyond the freedom to build: Long-term outcomes of Elemental’s incremental housing in Quinta Monroy

Abstract In 2003, the Chilean architecture firm Elemental began to revisit the idea of partially completed housing harnessing the productive capacities of the informal process within a more formal framework. The Quinta Monroy project in the northern Chilean city of Iquique was the first such project and involved the in-situ replacement of an informal settlement. The desire of residents was for a middle-class house that was beyond the scope of their budget or the subsidy. The Elemental project at Quinta Monroy comprised 93 expandable houses designed in parallel buildings and organized in four courtyards aiming to promote community interaction and maintain neighbors’ affinities. This paper investigates the process of housing adaptation through self-construction twelve years after the residents received their homes in 2005. The strategy to promote resident-driven expansions has been successful as 92 out of 93 households expanded their homes. The most significant concerns focused on the deterioration of living standards due to progressive and uncontrollable extensions which might have significant impacts on the settlement development. The findings from this paper focus on the neighbors’ negotiations for housing extensions and the risk of the re-creation of precarious living environments evidencing limitations for unassisted or spontaneous incremental schemes of housing development.

Developing a benchmarking system for architecture design firms

PurposeThe construction industry’s business model is mainly based on the interaction among the architecture office, the engineering office and the construction company. The performance and practices of architects’ offices, unlike those of the other actors, are difficult to characterize and there have been few studies on these issues. To better understand architects’ performance, the purpose of this paper is to develop a benchmarking tool based on real practices identified by managers of Chilean architecture offices.Design/methodology/approachThe research method includes a complete literature review, followed by a study of a sample of nine Chilean architecture offices, with whom a series of four workshops was developed, to establish both performance indicators and relevant management practices. Finally, these metrics were applied in an architectural office as a pilot case.FindingsFour management dimensions were defined: client management, external coordination, internal organization and human resources. Key performance indicators were divided into process, financial and quality indicators. The workshops carried out with the architectural offices demonstrated the relevance of benchmarking tools such as the one developed, which enables the systematic measurement of both management practices and performance indicators.Originality/valueAlthough there have been several efforts to create benchmarking tools for the construction industry, few efforts have focused on architecture offices. Therefore, this research aims to explicitly identify management practices that can be used for this type of organization and to coordinate among multiple actors to find the best way to measure their performance, other than the fulfilment of schedules and budgets.

La Bienal de Arquitectura y la implantación del Neoliberalismo. La paulatina transformación de la profesión del arquitecto en Chile, 1977–1983

The relationship between the production of architectural debates and the implementation of the neoliberal model in Chile, is especially relevant to analyze considering that the vectors of the early implementation of the neoliberal model –such as policies oriented to the deregulation of the market, the reduction of the State and the weakening of civil organizations– found in the urban space a key resource. The forging of a “neoliberal urbanism” –in addition to a political process of broad and violent cultural transformations– directly affected the architect’s professional practice, obliterating his public role and transforming the social perception of the discipline. In this context, the essay explores how the professional and pedagogical debates of architecture changed, in relation to the cultural transformations imposed by neoliberalism in Chile. To do that, it focuses on the definition and the outcomes of the Chilean Architecture Biennial, a surrogate public sphere developed in the context of the dictatorship, where the professional clash between a social and a market oriented professional practice is rendered through the record that the biennial offers of the encounter between architectural discourse and public policies, pedagogical projects and conceptual frameworks of architecture.

1916: Italia-Chile, Barison-Schiavon y sus edificios en el centenario

Se analiza la obra edilicia de los arquitectos italianos Barison y Schiavon en Chile, aportando nuevos datos sobre dos edificios construidos en el año 1916. En el llamado palacio Baburizza se asumieron elementos vernáculos presentes en la arquitectura chilena de finales del siglo XIX, más allá del uso de repertorios liberty italianos; mientras que en el palacio Valle no se copiaron las formas de la arquitectura veneciana medieval, tal y como se ha repetido en la historiografía. Al contrario, sus modelos están en las obras decimonónicas “neomedievales” y, con mayor incidencia, en los repertorios de la arquitectura coetánea de la Liguria, de donde era originario el promotor de la obra. Finalmente se aportan otros datos inéditos sobre la trayectoria de estos dos arquitectos, especialmente a partir de sus relaciones con constructors coetáneos, como Esteban Harrington Arellano y Josué Smith Solar.

Public Private Partnerships for Internationalization of Services: Chilean Architecture Industry

In the last decade, Chile has prioritized export promotion policies for the service sector - traditionally focused on trade in goods- as a result of global dynamism of trade in services and the need for diversification of the Chilean economy towards higher value-added industries. For these reasons, the present study evaluates the results and identifies the factors that explain the performance of the public private partnership implemented in Chile to promote architectural services. The analysis suggests a poor performance, mainly as a result of the inertia on the preservation of strategies developed for goods to intangibles as services, affecting the design and implementation of the programs; also, the private sector present, among others, collective action and associativity issues that govern the capability to develop market research and business models.

El discurso de la arquitectura contemporánea chilena. Cuatro debates fundamentales

The article proposes to give an interpretation to the important attention that the contemporary Chilean architecture has received, through four debates that base, in part, the quality of the works as the innovative programmatic, spatial and material solutions that can be observed, in twenty years of experience. The careful review of Chilean and international disciplinary journals gives an overview to support the theoretical proposal, which reorders a critical view on the development of works and authors. Thus the exceptionality of Chilean architecture is put into perspective, by concepts that explain common architectural strategies: Manifestos, Monomaterial, Refund and Landscape. These four concepts specifically refer to groups of works, which manage to find meaning beyond the specific solution of each building, and proposes to understand common logics that underlie and give a broader sense to contemporary production.

Innovación constructiva a principios del siglo XX: preámbulo a la modernidad arquitectónica y arquitectura subestimada

The first decades of the 20th century represent an especially important period in the history of Chilean architecture in general, particularly in the architecture of the country’s capital city Santiago. It is a phase qualified as a transitional one, when avant garde foreign models that answer to different social and cultural realities were reproduced locally. This phenomenon has not been studied with the appropriate depth of analysis, and frequently the ideology and models of the so called Modern Movement are highlighted as the sole source that launched the local architectural modernity. Nevertheless, there are other factors that, even with a less evident revolutionary character, contributed significantly to the burst of historical and architectural modernity in the country. That is the case of the innovation in building technology that prior to the appearance of the modern architecture itself, started to pave the way for, make possible and demand the modernizing change to follow. The introduction of reinforced concrete, both as a material and as the new building conception that it implies, is a good example.

Arquitectura moderna en Chile. El caso de Roberto Dávila Carson

Modern Architecture that began in Europe at early XX Century has reached Chile through publications, but also through the travelling of Chilean architects to Europe. Trying to apply the modern principles in Chile, those architects have found a strong resistance of the high society which was used to style architecture. That’s the reason why, in Chile, modern architecture has began as one style amongst the other existing ones. However, rationality, economy and rapidity of that new architecture make it attractive to a State willing to endow the country with infrastructure. Dávila has travelled to Europe in a study commission in 1930. He visited Le Corbusier´s first works, took courses with Georges Vantongerloo and Theo Van Doesburg (De Stijl), and took formal postgraduate studies in Austria, obtaining his architecture degree by the Viena Academy of Beaux Arts in June of 1932. This year, the architecture magazine “Modern Bauformen” published his works. Back in Chile, Dávila has became Professor and Dean of the “Universidad de Chile”. Dávila has never embraced extreme modern architecture, trying always to adapt the principles of modernism to the local reality, supporting modernism critics, mixing modern architecture concepts with tradition represented by colonial Chilean architecture. Even though it has failed in form, it is the beginning of a search for a new cultural identity for Latin American architecture.Key words: modern architecture, European vanguard, critical modernism.

Cohesión social como programa arquitectónico: genealogías tentativas del edificio UNCTADIII/CCMGM

The Centro Cultural Gabriela Mistral is a singularity in the Chilean architecture, but this is not an isolated project. The author offers a genealogy for the ideological background of this building.