CHILE

Chile is characterized by geographic isolation. Elongated and narrow, the country is
confined by strong natural barriers: a bleak desert on the north, the freezing Antarctic
area on the south, the towering Andes mountain chain on the east, and the Pacific Ocean
on its entire western side. This separation, combined with the absence of a strong pre-
Hispanic culture such as those that highly influenced other Latin American countries,
greatly shaped the nation’s architecture during the 20th century.
Because the population is mostly of European origin, there is a
discontinuity between the cultural links with a different continent and the
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great distances from all the major centers of Western civilization.
Architects and planners struggle to find Chile’s own image, with very little
historic precedent.
In the first two decades of the 20th century, Chilean architecture was dominated by a
strong academic tradition. The influence of the École des Beaux-Arts produced important
institutional and residential buildings. The Palace of Beaux-Arts (1910), by Emilio
Jecquier, combined Bourbon language and diverse ornamental motifs. Jecquier also
produced the buildings for the Catholic University in Santiago (1914), a complex of
excellent harmony and urban significance. Any reaction to the academic style was slow
and marked by discontinuity. Diverse movements were adopted according to the
circumstances dictated by client needs or representational purposes, but the intense
theoretical debate and the search for newness that characterized turn-of-the-century
European architecture were absent in Chile.
The most important architects of the 1920s and early 1930s were Luciano
Kulczewsky, Ricardo Larraín Bravo, Miguel Dávila, and Ricardo González Cortés,
architects who exemplified a variety of current trends, including Art Nouveau, neo-
Colonial expressions, and Art Deco tendencies.
The democratic government of Alessandri Palma in 1920 and later the dictatorship of
Carlos Ibáñez began the process of modernization as well as the growth of administration
and public services. In 1928 an earthquake hit the city of Talca. All these factors
intensified Chile’s modernization and brought rationalization in construction techniques.
A representative Art Nouveau building, presently used as the College of Architects of
Santiago, was designed by Luciano Kulczewsky (1920). His own house (1920) was
designed in the Gothic Revival style, another indication of Chile’s conservative tastes.
Looking to regional traditions, another prominent architect, Ricardo González Cortés,
combined decoration inspired from aboriginal Mapuche forms and Art Deco. Two
representative pieces of this tendency are the Caja de Crédito Hipotecario (1930) in
Santiago and the Building of Public Services (1935) in Talca. This combination of
regional forms and European styles indicated a desire to define a representative style.
Concurrently, the influence of the Chicago School manifested in the growing cities of
Santiago and Valparaiso. The first skyscraper, the Ariztía (1921), was built in Santiago
by Alberto Cruz Montt and Ricardo Larraín Bravo.
Rationalist architecture arrived in Chile when a new generation of architects returned
from Europe after visiting important Modern monuments. Representative of this
generation, Rodolfo Oyarzún, Roberto Dávila, Sergio Larraín, and Alfredo Johnson
combined classical compositional devices with elements of modernism. Among the first
modernist buildings, the Oberpaur (1930) in Santiago, by Sergio Larraín and Jorge
Arteaga, incorporated elongated windows and a free plan. Similarly, the Hotel Burnier
(1930) in Osorno was designed in a modernist language by Carlos Buchmann.
In his important and influential 1929 visit to Argentina, Le Corbusier met the Chilean
diplomat Matias Errázuriz; the following year Le Corbusier designed a small vacation
home for him, located in Zapallar. Together with the house for Madame Mandrot, near
Toulon, the project for the Errázuriz house (unbuilt) was a radical departure from the
white, purist architecture of the 1920s. Although the impact of this new style of house
and the use of local materials did not immediately influence architecture in Chile, once
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regionalist styles were legitimated outside the country (in Finland and Mexico), they
gained acceptance among Chilean professionals.
The assimilation of rationalist principles and a purist language characterized the
1930s. Rationalism dominated in the work of Sergio Larraín, Roberto Dávila, and
Alfredo Johnson. These efforts were furthered when Dávila worked with Peter Behrens
and Le Corbusier in 1932. The restaurant Cap Ducal (1936), by Roberto Dávila, is
located in Vi a del Mar, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and exemplifies the modernist
Chilean style. The Santa Lucia Building (1934) in Santiago, by Sergio Larraín and Jorge
Arteaga, uses forms of refined modernism including circular windows. The Hogar Parque
Cousiño (1939), by Aguirre and Rodríguez, isolated from any other urban reference,
shows the assimilation of Bauhaus-designed elements—such as asymmetrical
composition, pilotis (stilts), elongated windows, a terrace garden, and a free plan—combined
with a rationalist formula.
In 1939 an earthquake in Chilián, the presidency of Aguirre Cerda, and the beginning
of World War II created a new context for the development of a modern architecture in
Chile. During the 1940s architects in Chile continued their experimentation with
modernist forms. The Maritime Biology Laboratory in Montemar (1944), by Enrique
Gebhard, shows the strong influence of Brazilian modernism. Also important were the
Hogar Social Hipodromo Chile (1941), by Gebhard and Aguirre, which used modernist
materials such as glass, brick, and concrete combined with a regional stone for its walls.
The publication of Arquitectu ra y Construción magazine, the incorporation of Chile in 1946 to CIAM (Congrès
Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne), and Josef Albers’s visit to the country in 1953
established modernist ideals in Chile. In the 1950s the proposals of CIAM influenced
several habitation complexes, among them the Unidad Vecinal Portales (1957) by Carlos
Bresciani, Fernando Castillo, Carlos Huidobro, and Hector Valdéz, a building that
incorporated for the first time in Chile the separation of vehicular and pedestrian
circulation.
After World War II the influence of American culture and the dominance of the
International Style were evident. The new typology of a platform and tower appeared, as
in the case of the Plaza de Armas building (1955), by Sergio Larraín, Emilio Duhart,
Osvaldo Larraín, Sanfuentes, and Jaime Larraín. Another example is the Arturo Prat
building (1956), by S.Larraín and Duhart. Parallel to the full incorporation of the
International Style in the 1950s, some architects began to pay more attention to
significant differences in architecture throughout the many regions of Chile. For example,
the Hotel Antumalal (1952) in Pucón, by Jorge Elton, combines aboriginal craft,
materials from the area, and landscape.
The 1960s were characterized by a new generation of architects and a diversity of
tendencies. Emilio Duhart, who studied under Walter Gropius and later, in 1952, worked
for six months with Le Corbusier in the project for Chandigarh, applied his experience to
the building for the United Nations in Vitacura, near Santiago. Known as CEPAL
(Comisión Económica para America Latina), it was designed in 1966 in collaboration
with Christian de Groote. Duhart proposed a strong geometry with a simple square shape,
an elongated body with a sculptural conic shape and expressive details. The building
recalls the enclosed shape of Chandigarh’s Palace of the Assembly. The strong plastic
shapes contrast in their abstraction with the presence of the Andes in the background.
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The lasting influence of Le Corbusier is seen in the Benedictine Monastery in Las
Condes, Santiago de Chile. This monastery was built in a time spanning almost 30 years.
The unity reached through diverse interventions is the most important lesson of the
complex. The monastery was designed by Jaime Bellalta in 1954 and the cemetery by
Brother Martin Correa in 1954. In 1964 P.Gros planned the hostel, and in 1965 Brothers
Martin Correa and Gabriel Guardia designed the church. Jorge Swinburn planned the
refectory (1974), while R.Irarrával designed both the access plaza (1975) and the library
(1980). The complex is related to the topography of the hill and built with exposed
concrete, white stucco on brick, and details in wood. The most prominent feature of the
monastery is the church, consisting of two cubes slightly rotated that create a strong yet
simple space for prayer and ritual. Light generates a serene atmosphere and provides the
space with its spiritual character. This simple and austere church constituted a key piece
in Latin American architecture, comparable to Cavari’s Fátima church in Argentina,
Oscar Niemeyer’s church in Pampulha, and Eladio Dieste’s church in Atlántida.
Process and collaboration throughout time characterize the Open City in northern
Chile. In the 1960s a group of architects from the Catholic University of Valparaiso
began to question both the principal tenets of the International Style and the relationship
between client and architect. This challenge would culminate in the 1970s with the
remarkable experience of the Open City. Located in the dunes of Ritoque, overlooking
the Pacific Ocean, the buildings were erected without plans and based on a collaborative
design inspired by the Maudés poets of France, a movement that proclaimed
responsiveness to life and emancipation from rules.
Throughout the 1960s and part of the 1970s, Christian democratic and socialist
governments emphasized the need for housing and other social programs. Among others
it is important to mention the complex CORVI (1960), by Bruna Camus, Calvo Barros,
Perelman, and Sepulveda, a project inspired by Le Corbusier’s Unite d’Habitation at
Marseilles.
Since the 1980s, the term appropriate modernity , coined by Cristian Fernandez Cox, has taken center stage
in Latin American architectural debates. Apropiada denotes both the appropriations of modernity’s
values and ways to make it suitable to the Latin American context. A new sensibility
characterized this architecture of the 1990s: a conscious effort to recover typologies
rooted in the region, the search for cultural identity, the use of traditional technologies
combined with modern devices, and the exploration of the unusual sculptural qualities of
ordinary materials.
Edward Rojas’s work exemplifies this approach. In his Modern Art Museum in
Chiloé, outside the town of Castro, Rojas restored a warehouse built by Isaac Eskenazzi,
who in the 1970s combined Modern aspects with regional typologies and materials. Rojas
renovated the structure of the roof and floor and added a new building, a modest wooden
shed. The combination of minimalist devices and regional types created a rich and simple
museum adapted to the needs of the site and locale.
Mathias Klots’s Hotel Terrantai in San Pedro is equally context driven. Located in
Atacama, a dry, northern area of the country, the small hotel was structured around a
communal space. The project incorporated an existing house and kept the low profile of
the context, composed mostly of adobe constructions. Inside, the structure combines
broad expanses of glass and bleached timber floorboards with Andean-style terracing and
textured walls.
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The Consorcio-Vida Building (1999) by Enrique Browne and Borja Huidobro, is
located in an elegant area of Santiago. The western facade, elongated and rounded, has
staggered steps and trellises that generate a vertical garden of 16 levels. Protected by
trellises that add a second skin, plants reduce up to 60 percent of solar heat gain. The
building represents an appropriate modernity, as it incorporates recent tendencies and
languages with an attention to sustainable design, local influences, and the economic
reality of the country. The El Cerro House (1994), by Cristián Undurraga and Ana Devés,
exemplifies a subtle reference to several precedents and a respect for the site. Two
elongated walls, submerged in the hill, contain all the functions of the home in several
levels and a terrace. Because all access is lateral, the only portal in the facade opens to
the garden. Refined and minimal, the project refers to multiple figurative types.
Enrique Browne speaks of the permeability of Chilean culture, also characterized by
the lack of direct relationship between sociopolitical events and architectural production.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the principles of rationalism were not fully
understood. As in many other Latin American countries, Chilean architects were attracted
to modernism by its technical appeal rather than the Utopian and political origins that
characterized contemporary changes in Europe.
Although 60 percent of the population is concentrated in the metropolitan area of
Santiago, the country is geographically expansive. This situation has created a fertile
ground for exploration of differences in materials and traditions as well as the regional
adaptability to the rigors of extreme climatic conditions. An uncritical acceptance of
modernist postulates has been transformed to a new respect for architectural heritage and
the environment. One of the most important elements of 20th-century architecture in
Chile is the tension and permanent dialectic between universal tendencies and the spirit
of the place. Chile, with its economic prosperity and innovative spirit, is considered one
of the most dynamic and active architectural cultures in Latin America.