Archinect - News

MoMA exhibition on 20th-century Latin American design is a 'gem' says Michael Kimmelman

2024-04-05T13:31:00-04:00

The show is a gem. It focuses on domestic design from six countries (Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Venezuela), produced between 1940 and 1980. Latin America had entered a period of transformation, industrial expansion and creativity. Across the region, design was becoming institutionalized as a profession, opening up new avenues, especially for women.

Critic Michael Kimmelman has heaped praise on the 'Crafting Modernity: Design in Latin America, 1940–1980' MoMA exhibition in a new piece for The New York Times. As we reported in December of last year, the show looks at the growth of modernism through an industrial and entrepreneurial lens, using a selection of examples from well-known and revered architects and designers such as Joaquim Tenreiro, Lina Bo Bardi, and Oscar Niemeyer.

"The role that women and immigrants played in shaping professional design and developing a national design vocabulary in Latin America will be emphasized, including the work of designers such as Clara Porset in Mexico, Cornelis Zitman in Venezuela, and Susi Aczel in Argentina," MoMA said about their exhibition at the time.

Foster + Partners reveals master plan La Fabrica, its first-ever project in Chile

2021-09-15T14:53:00-04:00

A refurbished old factory building in the heart of Santiago will become the site of Foster + Partners' first Chilean project, according to renderings released by the firm yesterday.

The newly unveiled La Fabrica master plan takes the former textile factory as its centerpiece and expands to an adjacent site featuring a 550-unit, primarily timber residential complex that will be, in terms of material, the first-of-its-kind in the region, according to the architect.

Foster + Partners first extended the shopping mall that currently occupies the factory building and then added various diverse programmatic elements like low-rise offices, medical and entertainment facilities, and restaurants which are connected via a series of pedestrian walkways originating from the centerpiece.

Image courtesy Foster + Partners

The mixed-used site then flows seamlessly into the high-density residential development, which is anchored by an orthogonal square and also features street-level retail and dining ...

Arquine showcases the beauty of Chilean and Mexican architecture in two new books

2020-05-06T13:45:00-04:00

This post is brought to you by Arquine

Images of Contemporary Chilean Architecture

In the winter, 15 photographers visited some of the most iconic contemporary architecture projects that have put Chile on the map over the last three decades. A collection of new images presents the singularity of these works that have shaped the recent imaginary and brought visibility to this area of Chile’s cultural development. The photographs hover over details, forms, textures, lights and colors, in spaces, landscapes or natural environments.

Image © Iwan Baan. Courtesy of Arquine

Documentary excerpts show the ways of life, the relations between buildings and cities or natural environments. This new view of these constructions highlights their contributions, intrinsic value, and the possible contemporary currents affecting the local culture. This book is published on the occasion of the exhibition Winter: Images of Contemporary Chilean Architecture within the...

“In the fractured 21st century, we can respond to a human yearning to come together”: Baha’i Temple of South America by Hariri Pontarini Architects wins 2019 RAIC International Prize

2019-10-25T22:00:00-04:00

Built at the foot of the Andes near Santiago, Chile, the Baha’i Temple of South America by Hariri Pontarini Architects has attracted over 1.4 million visitors since opening in 2016. Tonight during an awards ceremony in Toronto, the RAIC announced the temple as the winner of their 2019 International Prize.

Established in 2013 by notable Canadian architect Richard Moriyama, the biennial CAD$100,000 prize — formerly called the Moriyama RAIC International Prize — honors socially transformative architecture and is open to architects worldwide. The temple was one of three competitive shortlisted projects.

Photo credit: Andrés Silva.

The domed temple plays a significant role for the local community by providing a welcoming space to gather and sit in quiet contemplation. Perhaps the building's most distinctive feature is the nine gracefully torqued wings that form an oculus at the top. The wings are made of an outer layer of cast-glass panels and an interior layer of translucent marble from ...

Architect Alejandro Aravena receives 2019 ULI J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development

2019-07-23T20:35:00-04:00

The Urban Land Institute (ULI) is a nonprofit organization that focuses on education and research initiatives supporting responsible land use and sustainability practices. This year the J.C. Nichols Prize has been awarded to Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena.

In a recent press release ULI trustee Jodie W. McLean shares, "One of Alejandro's greatest accomplishments is the process in which he's connected architecture and working with communities, taking care to include people's ideas on how to make a better environment to improve all parts of the community. He doesn't just draw solutions, he strives (for his work) to be part of the solution."

UC Innovation center - Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago. Image © Nico Saieh

Founder of the Santiago-based architecture firm ELEMENTAL along with Gonzalo Artega, Juan Cerda, Victor Oddo, and Diego Torres, many of Aravena's projects, have reflected a simplistic and holistic design approach. Aravena has shared with the UCI, "When we crea...

ELEMENTAL strikes a balance between luxury and altruism

2019-05-01T19:54:00-04:00

There is only a small handful of architects practicing today whose work can at once be described as lavish and another as altruistic - Michael Maltzan, Shigeru Ban and Kengo Kuma are a few of the names that come to mind.

Vacation Home, by ELEMENTAL. Image via Chile Sotheby’s International Realty

But perhaps it is the name of Alejandro Aravena, the Pritzker-prize winning architect behind the Chilean firm ELEMENTAL, that should come before others. The firm's work is always photogenic (the vacation home featured above being among their most exemplary), but one gets the strong sense that this isn't the main priority each time they take on a new project. Rather, as Aravena said in an interview, the firm's goal is to contribute to "a fair built environment where the common good can be guaranteed and balanced with individual gains."

ELEMENTAL, Alejandro Aravena. Published by Lars Müller.

ELEMENTAL, the monograph recently published by Lars Müller, highlights the delicate balance between lux...

Studio Libeskind to redesign Museo Regional de Tarapacá for Chile's Regional Anthropological Museum of Iquique

2019-03-21T19:46:00-04:00

Studio Daniel Libeskind released a few images of their proposed design of the new Museo Regional de Tarapacá for the Regional Anthropological Museum of Iquique in northern Chile. The project is part of a larger development plan led by Mayor Mauricio Soria Macchiavello and his team.

Dubbed by the studio as “El Dragon de Tarapacá”, the new 3,760m2 building will replace the old museum built in 1892, which can currently display only 20 percent of their collection. Featuring the signature sharp, angular forms of a Libeskind building, the new museum's design was inspired by the Atapaca Desert's stark landscape and Iquique's urban dune, the “Cerro Dragon”. Exhibitions in the new building will display 6,000 years of northern Chilean history.

Courtesy of Studio Libeskind.

A sloped garden will lead up to the building's entrance hall, which will be topped by a cafe that overlooks the Southern coastline. Three pairs of parallel vertical walls shape the major space...

Alejandro Arevena's alluring concrete vacation home

2018-10-12T20:28:00-04:00

The radical, four-bedroom vacation house is part of the Ochoalcubo project – a pioneering ‘architectural laboratory’ led by the entrepreneur and architecture lover Eduardo Godoy. Leading Chilean and Japanese practices including Aravena, Smiljan Radic, Toyo Ito and Sou Fujimoto were asked to design a series of ground-breaking homes on the coast of Ochoquebradas.

Pritzker Prize-winner Alejandro Aravena uses the Chilean landscape of Coquimbo to create a weekend home oozing with dramatic appeal and a moody ancient beauty. The vacation home is comprised of three large concrete volumes specifically stacked one against the other. Sitting on a hilltop overlooking the Chilean coast, the home, at first glance exudes an "ancient" looking quality.

Image via Chile Sotheby’s International Realty

The massively rugged, boulder like structure was heavily influenced by primitivistic values. Its simplistic exterior is carried through out the entire house. The interiority of the space reflects modernist principles that focus on a flow of indoor/outdoor space and a loyalty to basic materials.

Image via Chile Sotheby’s International Realty

At the center of the home is a large fire pit that accents the room without frills. The exposed concrete surfaces found through out the structure complement the floor-to-ceiling glass walls that can be found in each of the fo...

Mountaineer's Refuge provides a home base for trekking in Chile

2018-01-04T16:04:00-05:00

Located in San Esteban, Chile, the Mountaineer's Refuge was designed by Gonzalo Iturriaga Arquitectos as a small cabin to be a point of arrival and departure for mountaineer treks. The space functions as a shelter and lookout for contemplation and relaxation and requires only the bare necessities for a mountain expedition rest stop: a roof, kitchen, bedroom, mountaineering equipment storage, and stunning panoramic views.

With a pine finished exterior, cuts and folds define the structure's access points. Mountaineer's Refuge rests on piles, making it a self-contained object suspended above the ground. The building is ventilated on all sides provided from the mountain's updraft into a series of dedicated openings.

Halfway there? The limits to Aravena's social housing

2016-06-14T12:52:00-04:00

"In most cities in Latin America, most of the building over last 50 years—depending on the city—40, 50, 60, 70 percent has been through incremental construction.” [...] The majority of Aravena’s social housing work has also rested on the unique conditions and high level of investment from Chile’s social housing program. [...] Isn’t asking the poor to shoulder more of the housing burden an inherently unfair proposition?

More discussion of Aravena's practice and impact can be found here:

Dispatch from the Venice Biennale: rewarding obscurity

2016-05-31T17:22:00-04:00

Much will be published over the coming days about the Biennale's national pavilion winners—Spain’s “Unfinished” (with the Golden Lion) and Japan’s “en: Art of Nexus” and Peru’s “Our Amazon Frontline” (with special mentions). It is a phenomenon that conceals the terrain, limiting the perspective of the majority, and inaccurately reduces the dynamism of the lived experience. At the same time, after the fascination with the nominations wears off, it garners those passed over with a certain mystique. In the interest of representation and curiosity, then, it seems fitting to acknowledge a (very) small sampling of the more and wider.

Oh, Canada. This year, per curator Pierre Bélanger, the Canadians overcame “a list of every possible bureaucratic, logistical, and material blockade imaginable multiplied times three” in order to participate in the Biennale. With their permanent pavilion closed for construction and an agitator’s stance, the “Extraction” team’s contribution is all fight. They t...

Chile's local hero: Michael Kimmelman profiles Alejandro Aravena

2016-05-23T12:59:00-04:00

Aravena polished off his beer when a stranger sidled up to the table. It happens all the time now. Drivers in passing cars stop him in the street. Shop clerks, politicians, long-lost acquaintances and schoolteachers ask for selfies with him. They all say the same thing. “Thank you,” the stranger said to Aravena, who smiled and posed arm in arm with the man for a picture. Thank you — as if the Pritzker prize...had been awarded on behalf of everybody in Chile.

Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for the New York Times, profiles Alejandro Aravena's projects in his native Chile, on the cusp of this year's Venice Biennale opening (which Aravena is also directing). The profile largely focuses on Aravena's social practice, and its attempts at coordinating efforts among the Chilean government, construction companies and actual citizens – most prominently, after the 2010 earthquake in Constitución.

For a comparative take on Aravena, from before he won the Pritzker or was named director of the 2016 Venice Biennale, check out Carolina A. Miranda's (art critic for the Los Angeles Times) piece profiling Chile's emerging group of promising and talented architects.

For more on Aravena and the Chilean architecture scene:

Inside Aravena's open source plans for low-cost yet upgradable housing

2016-04-06T14:35:00-04:00

After Alejandro Aravena accepted the Pritzker Prize yesterday, his firm Elemental released four open source plans for low income housing that, according to the firm's website, balance the constraints of "low-rise high density, without overcrowding, with possibility of expansion (from social housing to middle-class dwelling)." The plans were released partly as a response to the looming housing crisis of 2030, in which it is estimated that two billion people will be living under the poverty line.

Aravena's self-described "incremental housing" is partly a governmental effort, and partly an individual one. By providing plans for proven models of sustainable housing, people can have greater agency in housing themselves. "Given the magnitude of the housing shortage, we won't solve this problem unless we add people's own resources and building capacity to that of governments and the market," reads Elemental's statement.

The four projects Elemental has released plans for are Quinta Monroy, V...

How Chile’s strict building codes help reduce the country's earthquake casualties

2015-09-18T13:39:00-04:00

Wednesday night’s 8.3-magnitude earthquake had left 11 dead and a 175 houses damaged. While the toll wasn’t negligible, the quake — the world’s strongest this year — might have leveled less-prepared countries. “Our structural engineering is world class,” Santos, a 62-year-old engineer at the firm Ingenería Estructuras Consultoría, said by phone. “And it’s made in Chile.”

Related on Archinect:

Chilean architecture is coming out of its shell

2015-05-18T13:41:00-04:00

Chilean architects have begun to exert an influence well beyond the size and scale of their string-bean nation. [...] “There are enough people working here in a way that shifts the art,” explains Aravena, sitting in the middle of his firm’s buzzing Santiago offices. “There is healthy competition and there is critical mass. When you have a critical mass, you are not alone in trying to push boundaries.” The result: remarkable buildings all over Chile.

Snapshots of Cristián Undurraga's Alberto Hurtado memorial museum

2015-03-24T15:18:00-04:00

In 2010, a sanctuary in Santiago was completed in [Hurtado's] honor — at the very site where he founded the Hogar de Cristo back in the 1940s. The building was designed by Chilean architect Cristián Undurraga, of Undurraga Devés Arquitectos, and it is elegant and serene — a true space of contemplation. It also makes the most of simple materials: rough Béton brut concrete, glass blocks and blond wood ceilings that don't overwhelm the artifacts on display...

Calming photos of the Santiago-based memorial museum, which Chilean architect Cristián Undurraga designed in honor of Jesuit priest Father Alberto Hurtado and his humanitarian work.

Smiljan Radic: A Rock Star Among Architects

2014-07-10T13:13:00-04:00

Two weeks ago, a translucent pod of glass-reinforced plastic, poised atop enormous sandstone boulders, appeared on a curve of lawn in Kensington Gardens in London. The folly [...] is by the Chilean architect Smiljan Radic, whom the nearby Serpentine Galleries chose to create a temporary structure in its front yard. It is the 14th year that the museum has commissioned a Serpentine Pavilion, always turning to an architect who has not previously built in Britain [...].

Chilean artist steals and destroys $500 million worth of student debt papers

2014-05-20T17:29:00-04:00

Late last week, Chilean police arrived at Santiago’s Centro Cultural Gabriela Mistral and removed a white bin of gray ash — allegedly all that remained of $500 million worth of student debt notes. In the video, which went viral last week in Chile, Papas Fritas confessed he had recently stolen the documents from the for-profit Universidad del Mar. Then he set them ablaze in a defiant, brazen act of art.

Mathias Klotz: "The Poetics of Boxes" exhibit opens next month

2013-08-13T16:25:00-04:00

"The Poetics of Boxes" is the first monographic exhibit in Europe of the work of Mathias Klotz, currently one of Chile's most acclaimed international architects. The exhibit opens on Sept. 13 at Aedes Berlin.

The upcoming exhibit will reveal the design approaches and methods of Klotz's characteristic works, as described in the press release below.

"The Poetics of Boxes
Mathias Klotz, Chile

Location: Aedes am Pfefferberg, Studio, Christinenstr. 18-19, 10119 Berlin
Exhibition dates: September 13 – October 17, 2013
Opening: Friday, September 13, 2013, 6:30 PM
Opening hours: Tue-Fri 11 AM – 6:30 PM, Sat/Sun, 1 – 5 PM

Klotz’s works are characterised by their structural clarity. The distinct volumes and lines of his buildings correspond with perfect conceptual rigour to the landscape. In the exhibition this cosmopolitan from the Pacific presents his approaches and working methods..."

"Alongside his work as an architect for over thirty years, Mathias Klotz is also active as a ...

Chilean Skyscraper Overshadows The City

2013-01-07T00:30:00-05:00

The skyline of Chile’s capital city, Santiago, has a new addition with the Gran Torre skyscraper casting a two-kilometre shadow across the historic city. The 70-storey residential building stands more than 300 metres tall, making it the tallest building in South America. The five-ton steel structure cost an estimated one billion dollars to build and tenants are expected to move into the building next March.

Residencia - architecture by Auer + Weber;video by Tramnesia

2012-07-11T16:48:00-04:00

The Residencia is a hotel for staff and guests at the European Southern Observatory's Paranal Observatory in northern Chile. Located in an extremely remote and desolate section of the Atacama desert, the Residencia was designed by the German architecture firm Auer + Weber as a sanctuary in an environment that has never supported life. The L-shaped building was dug into the ground as if to conceal its presence, presenting profoundly different faces depending on the approach.

Kouvo & Partanen to Design Hotel Residence in Atacama, Chile

2012-01-17T13:58:00-05:00

Finnish architects Kouvo & Partanen have just recently been chosen to design a hotel residence for the astronomers, engineers, and other observatory staff working at ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. At 2,900 meters above sea level, the hotel residence will be built at the ALMA Operations Support Facility in the Atacama Desert, in the foothills of the Chilean Andes.