CHINA

The development of architecture in 20th-century China followed closely its political
evolution. Starting out as an imperial regime nearly colonized by Western powers, China
was declared a republic in 1911, only to fall into the chaos of the warlord period a year
later. With the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, the country was engaged in eight
years of warfare. When the Communists first took power in the country in 1949, after
four years of civil war following the Japanese surrender, China enjoyed ten years of
stability. A series of political campaigns took place between 1959 and 1976, disrupting
the normal functioning of the country. In 1979 China adopted an economic opendoor
policy; foreign and multinational companies were invited to invest and trade in the
country. This resulted in a booming economy and strong foreign trade in the last decades
of the 20th century. Architectural style, spatial conception, architectural symbolism, the
choice of architect, and construction technology were all directly influenced by the
country’s political, commercial, and cultural development.
Up until 1911, most buildings constructed in China were of the distinctive
traditional style with a timber post-and-beam structure supporting a heavy
and curved tile roof. In-filled wall between the timber frames was of
timber, brick, or pounded earth construction. Buildings were normally of a
single story; only an exceptional structure such as a pagoda or a town
tower was of two- or multiple-storied construction. Several buildings were
arranged around a courtyard, and a few courtyards lined up along a central
axis or two or three axes made up a complex. Building types were
extremely limited in traditional China, which included palaces, princes,
and official residences, government offices, temples and altars, shops,
academies, ancestral halls, houses, and gardens all sharing the same form,
construction, and spatial layout. Western architecture appeared in China
with the introduction of new building types from the West. These included
churches, custom houses, railway stations, and commercial offices. Fine
examples of churches include the neobaroque Catholic South Church in
Beijing of 1657 and the neo-Gothic Holy Trinity Cathedral in Shanghai,
designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott and constructed in 1866. A small
railway station was built outside the imperial gate of Beijing in 1900. The
introduction of Western-styled buildings at the beginning of the 20th
century set the scene for Chinese architecture and more dramatically, the
International Style had by the end of the century completely obliterated
the traditional architectural environment in the cities. The remaining
Chinese characteristics are seen only in the buildings of nationalistic style.
The architectural development can be divided into four periods: the
introduction of Western-styled architecture (1900–28), the Modern
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movement or national style (1929–49), a period of pragmatism coupled
with the search for a new national identity (1949–79), and a period of
intense internationalization (1979–2000).
1900–28
With the signing of the Nanjing treaty with Great Britain in 1842, five port cities were
designated for foreign trade where Western merchants could set up trading houses. In
1850 the British set up the first concession in Shanghai, and Western-style buildings and
city planning began to appear in major cities of China. Most Western-style buildings in
China in the 19th century were neo-Gothic and neoclassical churches, arcaded shop
houses, embassy buildings, and industrial buildings. Many houses, shop buildings, and
offices were also built in the Colonial style first seen in the British colonies of India and
Southeast Asia. After the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, the influence of Western powers in
urban China became more apparent, expressed visibly through the increased number of
foreign concessions filled with Western-styled buildings. These buildings were designed
by foreign architects and engineers following closely the stylistic development of
European architecture. These foreign professionals brought with them the specialized
discipline of architectural design, which hitherto had been carried out by master builders
of the craft tradition.
Church buildings were designed according to denominational preference. The twintower
Xujiahui Cathedral in Shanghai was completed in 1910, designed by British
architect W.M. Dowdall in French Gothic for a Jesuit missionary. English redbrick
Gothic Revival style can also be seen in many Protestant churches throughout the
country. The Catholic church in the former French concession in Tianjin was built in the
French Romanesque style and completed in 1916. These buildings with tall spires
dominated the low skylines of traditional Chinese cities. In prosperous trading cities,
however, more and more bank and commercial buildings reached greater and greater
height. Many early bank buildings were in the neoclassical style, as in the West. The first
bank building to be erected on the Bund in Shanghai was the St. Petersburg Russo-
Asiatic Bank, completed in 1901 and designed by H. Becker. This was the first building
in China to be constructed with reinforced-concrete, equipped with modern conveniences
and an elevator. However, the most impressive of bank buildings in this age must have
been the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank building designed by British architects Palmer
and Turner and completed in 1923. This seven-storied steel-framed building was
decorated in the neoclassical style surmounted by an imposing dome.
Apart from these buildings that are shadows of their European prototypes,
ecclectic-style buildings mixing traditional Chinese architecture with the
Western style were also attempted. The earliest example in this style is the
Peking Union Medical College in Beijing, designed by Harry Hussey
between 1916 and 1918. The scale and proportion of these buildings are
clearly Western classical in inspiration, whereas the details and the
gigantic roof are Chinese. Many foreign architects adopted this style for
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residences, churches, and colleges, among whom the most accomplished
was American architect Henry K.Murphy (1877–1954), who completed
many university campus projects in what he called “Adaptive Chinese
Renaissance” style (Cody, 1989).
1929–49
This period of modernist nationalism in architecture is significant in the development of
20th-century Chinese architecture in that many Chinese architects trained abroad returned
to make important contributions to the architectural scene. Among these were Zhuang
Jun, who returned from the University of Illinois, Urbana, in 1914; Liu Dunzhen returned
from Japan in 1923; and Yang Tingbao, Tong Jun, and Liang Sicheng all graduated from
the University of Pennsylvania and returned to China between 1927 and 1930. These
architects either taught in the first architectural schools in China, worked for foreign
architects in China, or formed partnerships in private practice. Their monumental designs
with minimal decorations were a direct result from their monumental training in the
Beaux-Arts tradition in the West. In this they followed the Hungarian architect L.E.
Hudec, whose modernist architecture was first seen in a church completed in 1925 and
some residences. The Chinese architects were increasingly given major commissions,
such as government buildings, banks, hotels, commercial buildings, and academic
buildings. Some high-rise buildings along the Shanghai Bund are also modernist in spirit.
Chinese architects influenced by the Bauhaus also designed buildings with clean lines
and devoid of decorations.
The other architectural style seen in this period was developed from the
Chinese ecclectic style of the foreign architects working for foreign
missions. With the Chinese style roof as the prominent feature of the style,
it was considered as a national style promoted heavily by the newly
formed national government at the end of the 1920s. Many government
buildings were constructed in this style in the new capital, Nanjing
(designated in 1927 and the planning of which was undertaken by Henry
Murphy). In 1929 a competition for the mausoleum for Sun Yat-sen, the
father of nationalistic China, was organized, and the brief clearly asked for
a nationalistic style. The winning design submitted by Lu Yanzhi displays
a symmetrical monumentality based on the Lincoln Memorial while
incorporating distinctive Chinese elements, including the roof, bracket
system, window surrounds, and decorative architrave. Just as the foreign
architects saw in the style the representation of Chinese tradition, the
government used the style for nation building. However, the style was
increasingly criticized by the advocates of the Modern movement for
being wasteful in material and for not representing the spirit of the modern
society China was moving toward. Heated debates were fully argued in
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architectural journals for many years in the 1930s, only to be abruptly cut
due to the Japanese occupation of eastern China between 1937 and 1945.
1949–79
After the setting up of the People’s Republic of China, institutional buildings were
designed following closely the Russian Monumental style. Between 1949 and 1957,
Russian experts helped in building the new China by promoting the principle of
neoclassicist monumentality with Chinese characteristics. Together with the first Fiveyear
Plan, many new functionalistic buildings were constructed for the new social order.
Invariably, these buildings are symmetrical both on the facade and in the internal layout.
Over the central entrance is usually a high tower. This form had a long-lasting influence
on the modern Chinese architectural style right through to the end of the century, due
partly to the influence of the centralizing symmetry of traditional Chinese architecture.
Two good examples are the Sovietdesigned Beijing and Shanghai Exhibition Halls of
1954.
With the Communist rule also came the reform of architectural practice.
Replacing the private architectural and engineering offices were many
state-owned design institutes, which are comprehensive professional
offices surviving to this day (Lin, 1988). At the end of the 1950s, Russian
experts were expelled from China, and the leading design principle
adopted was essentially nationalistic. However, unlike the earlier Chinese
Renaissance style of foreign architects or the national style of the 1930s,
the nationalistic style of this period was much restrained, using less of the
massive tiled roof and relying more on minor traditional decorative
elements. The ten major projects to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the
founding of the People’s Republic are important examples of this style.
Completed in 1959, some of these buildings are located at the heart of
Beijing, such as the Great Hall of the People (Zhao Dongri) and the
Revolutionary and History Museum (Zhang Kaiji). And others served
important political and infrastructure functions, such as the Cultural Palace
of Nationalities (Zhang Bo) and the Beijing Railway Station (Chen
Dengao). Other examples of this nationalistic style can be seen in other
parts of the country, such as the Great Hall of the People in Chongqing
(Zhang Jiade, 1954). Soon after the tenth anniversary, the country was
thrown into turmoil again with many political movements culminating in
the Cultural Revolution—all normal social activities stopped until 1976.
However, there were also pragmatic functionalist buildings constructed
even in this period, such as the extension to the Beijing Hotel (Dai Nianci,
1974).
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1979–2000
With the liberalization of the Chinese economy in 1979, the nationalistic style continued
to be adopted only for political purposes during this period of internationalization. This is
particularly apparent in buildings along the main east-west boulevard of Beijing,
Chang’an Jie, which are required by city officials to adopt national characteristics in their
form. This is accomplished by adding small Chinese pavilions on otherwise multistoried
modern buildings. However, there was also more genuine integration of the two forms,
such as the Beijing Library (Yang Yun, 1987), the Beijing West Railway Station (Zhu
Jialu, 1996), and the Peking University Library (Guan Shaoye, 1998). In these attempts
large tiled roofs appeared again on top of tall buildings, much like the examples from the
1920s. The search for a new Chinese architecture had found a new interpretation in the
Fragrant Hill Hotel completed in 1982. In it I.M.Pei used traditional elements from
southern China, such as diagonal windows and whitewashed walls, integrated in modern
and yet distinctive Chinese spaces. Similar examples designed by Chinese architects
include the Queli Hotel in Qufu (Dai Nianci, 1984) and a housing design in Ju’er Hutong
in Beijing (Wu Liangyong, 1990).
However, the most significant development of the period was the return of foreign
architects to the Chinese architectural scene in the last two decades of the century. They
were involved in joint ventures with local design institutes in the design of new hotels
operated by major Western hotel chains, such as the Beijing Jianguo Hotel (1982), the
Great Wall Sheraton of Beijing (1983), the Nanjing Jinling Hotel (1983), and the Crystal
Palace Hotel (1987). These buildings served important purposes of introducing the
International Style and modern construction technology to China, rapidly updating China
from its 20-year isolation from the rest of the world. In the 1990s other commercial and
cultural projects also benefited from international designers. These included the Beijing
Chinese-Japanese Youth Center (Kisho Kurokawa, 1990), the Shanghai Center (John
Portman and Associates, 1990), the Shanghai Grand Theater (Arte Jean Marie
Charpentier and Associates, 1998), the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China
Building, Beijing (Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, 1998), and the Bank of China, Beijing
(I.M.Pei and Partners, 1999). Some of these were the first facilities built to international
standards in China. The Shanghai Grand Theater has successfully utilized the curtain wall
both as a symbol of modernization in the day and a bright jewel at night. The curved roof
soaring into the sky is reminiscent of the traditional curved roof of south China and is a
source of inspiration for many buildings in China. Although some architects were
particularly sensitive to the local context, the majority designed massive curtain-wall
buildings totally out of context with the surroundings. Sadly, these buildings became the
icons of modernization and were copied all over China in a lesssatisfactory manner.
With the development of Pudong district in Shanghai, imposing skyscrapers, unseen
before in China, started to dominate the generally flat skyline. The two most notable
examples from this district are the 421-meter-tall Jin Mao Building (Skidmore, Owings
and Merrill, 1998) and the 460-meter World Financial Center (KPF Associates, 2000).
These projects were mainly won in an international competition, which was becoming the
norm for larger and joint-venture projects in the late 1990s. The foreign designers of
these projects were clearly sensitive to the Chinese tradition within which the buildings
are located. They often incorporated Chinese elements, motifs, or symbolism in their
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design. For example, the tallest building in China, the Jin Mau Building, was conceived
as a Chinese pagoda with a shimmering curtain wall, whereas the Word Financial Center
was designed to invoke the Chinese conception of the heaven as round and the earth as
square.
Other than the nationalistic and International Styles, there are Chinese architects who
boldly attempt architectural symbolism in building form. The Shanghai Museum is
designed in the shape of an ancient bronze cauldron (Xing Tonghe, 1996), and the
Memorial to the Victims of Japanese Massacre used a stark granite surface and dry
landscape to evoke the extreme horror of the massacre (Qi Kang, 1985). However, the
most controversial project that epitomizes the tension between internationalism and
nationalism in architecture is the winning entry of the design competition for the National
Grand Theater of China in Beijing. The design of Paul Andreu consists of a gigantic glass
dome covering three separate theater structures. Located next to the Great Hall of the
People, the heart of political China, this project has generated heated debates in the local
architectural community and was put on hold in 2000. The stark contrast of the
ultramodern structure with nationalistic architecture at such an important site and the
cultural symbolism of the glass dome are two major objections to the scheme. On the
other hand the supporters argue that China needs national icons of this sort to launch
itself into the new millennium. This is perhaps a clear indication that Chinese architecture
was standing at the crossroad at the end of the century. The desperate search for a
Chinese identity has so far yielded no satisfactory answer. In the meantime, the pressure
of commercial development has produced two extremes: well-conceived buildings
designed by international offices and big design institutes in major cities, and mediocre
buildings by the thousands all over the vast country.

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.
Entries A–F 465
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.