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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. — The New York Times
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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. — The Spaces
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
"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?
— newrepublic.com
More discussion of Aravena's practice and impact can be found here:News coverage of Aravena's 2016 Venice Biennale"Making A Pritzker Laureate" – Martha Thorne, executive director of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, gives us an inside look at the prestigious award, on Archinect Sessions #48Watch... View full entry
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... View full entry
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. — nytimes.com
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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.”
— miamiherald.com
Related on Archinect:Deadly 7.9-magnitude earthquake in Nepal destroys architectural landmarksAre India's cities prepared to withstand an earthquake like in Nepal?First Japanese skyscraper gets retrofitted with rooftop vibration control system View full entry
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.
— latimes.com
