Chilean Architecture!

It’s been a month and a half since I started my life here in earnest.

My library life:

Chilean architecture is going in several directions, and my thesis that Chile for a variety of reasons builds intrinsically more sustainable residential architecture seems to be equally parts true and untrue. I think the trajectory of architectural design can best be described in a chronological tale:

Chilean architecture earnestly absorbed Le Corbusier modernism in the 1950s. In Chilean architectural writing, this era gets characterized as the ‘heroic period,” with large-scale government-commissioned spare but monumental urban designs. Political ideals and social consciousness were closely tied into the architecture community. As strongly as the Corbusien modernism tried to disavow from classical architecture, the symmetrical form, the pure white, the piloti and the civic consciousness all characterized both early modernism and many of its descendents, including architects working Chile. Various government buildings by Emilio Duhart, the church Nuestra Senora de Fatima by Caveri and Ellis, The Benedictine Monastery in Las Condes outside of Santiago by Jaime Bellata, among others, are all characteristically civic-minded projects that were designed in accordance with the notion that well-designed and built public places and improve the quality of civic life.
It’s been a month and a half since I started my life here in earnest.

My library life:

Chilean architecture is going in several directions, and my thesis that Chile for a variety of reasons builds intrinsically more sustainable residential architecture seems to be equally parts true and untrue. I think the trajectory of architectural design can best be described in a chronological tale:

Chilean architecture earnestly absorbed Le Corbusier modernism in the 1950s. In Chilean architectural writing, this era is often characterized as the ‘heroic period,” during which both the Catholic Church and the government commissioned many monumental civic buildings. Political ideals and social consciousness were closely tied into the architecture community. Various government buildings by Emilio Duhart, the church Nuestra Señora de Fatima by Caveri and Ellis, The Benedictine Monastery in Las Condes outside of Santiago by Jaime Bellata, among others, are all characteristically civic projects that designed around ideals of social progress and the possibility of improving life through the built world.

For reasons more political than architectural, this era came to a close and a rise of conservatism, accompanied with military coups in all southern South American countries between the mid 1960s (Brazil) and 1990 (when Chile democratized). The unilateral, singular push of ‘heroic’ modernism was never directly replaced, but instead fragmented as the progressive era was replaced by one of political repression and social conservatism. The military coup and ensuing dictatorship between 1973 and 1990 led to a long lull in architectural design and creative expression. Many architects left Chile for the duration (some of whom never returned) and civic and intellectual life were sequestered and quieted for that time. A large recession in the 1980s, further reduced creative design projects in the country. Mostly because of this lull in design, Chile didn’t follow suit the same as the United States, whose post-modern backlash still is the main influence in mainstream suburban development across the country. Chilean architecture, perhaps lacking the existing precedent of high-classic Spanish architecture typical of most of Latin America, was able to continue with variations on its original modernism.

The Open City and the Catholic University of Valparaíso was the first group (that I know of) to consciously search for a separate Chilean architectural identity separate from both the Spanish and the European modern precedent. Chile, somewhat isolated from the direct effects of Corbusier’s 1950s tour and the orbit of influence of Colombia, Venezuela or Brazil, was a decidedly good place to search for a separate architectural identity. A group of poets, architects and designers formed a group at the Catholic University of Valparaiso in the early 1950s and in the beginning of the 1970s bought land to begin their experiments. For the past 35 years, on 500 hectares of sand dunes and coastal hills, architects and others have been design-building houses, communal buildings, workshops, cottages, cemeteries and sculptural spaces scattered across the property. As Professor Jolly, a resident of and professor at the Open City noted, (with upmost seriousness, despite his last name): “here at the Open City, if a building doesn’t leak it’s not successful.”

This is not to say that the work and ideology of the “Open City” was or could be apart from outside ideology. The conscious mix of poetry with design and the political ideology surrounding it (or conscious lack thereof) was derived from ideas in French modernist poetry (and architecture, to a lesser degree) and its attempt to engage the present in process rather than search for ethereal beauty (as was the historic tradition with previous religion-bound poetry). The belief that poetry/poetic practices can cause architectural form is an attempt to invert ‘heroic’ values that were derived from the western ideal of the planned city bettering life. The founders of the Open City hoped to recover man’s relationship with nature (and their understanding of how Pre-Columbian Chilean society was) by transforming the built world’s relationship with its landscape.

The degree to which this small and isolated school of thought has affected the wider architectural culture away from the Catholic University of Valparaiso is part of what I’m trying to understand. More on this soon to come…and more on the Open City, which I just returned from yesterday after a four day stint exploring wandering the 100-odd-person-gated/utopian community.