Docomomo Chile

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Type of event: Online

Speakers

Arch. Flavia Rinaldi -Infrastructure and Architecture ex Manager in Urban Regeneration Direction, Environment and Public Space Ministry, Buenos Aires City Government. 

Juan Vaca

Claudio Vasquez – PUC

Date: 31/10/2023 11:00 am

Date details: Santiago Chile 11:00 hrs (UTC – 3)

House studio for Artists. Bonet, Vera Barros, and López Chas.

Description

Artists’ ateliers in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Abstract:

In 1938 Antonio Bonet, Horacio Vera Barros and Abel López Chas designed “Casa de Estudio para Artistas” in Buenos Aires, Argentina. They were members of Grupo Austral -local avant-garde group- concerned with Rio de la Plata modern architecture, landscape and urbanism. They proposed an unusual program for a 1930´s building seven ateliers combined with independent stores.

Since 2012, the building has been the object of interventions whose goal was to consolidate the city center’s urban landscape by revaluing existing historic buildings while incorporating modern concepts of urban sustainability, walkability, environmental protection and enjoyment of public space. 

The intervention of this exceptional building is one of the first conservative actions addressed by a public office on the modern heritage assets in Buenos Aires City. This project motivated a series of historical investigations that supported the restoration process and allowed us to read the work from different analysis levels. The presentation addresses the facade’s restoration process and the building’s revalorization. 

Image created by the author

Le Corbusier’s design for Maison Errázuriz in Zapallar, Chile

Abstract:

Le Corbusier visited South America for the first time between September and December 1929, when he visited Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Asunción, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. In Buenos Aires, the Chilean diplomat Matías Errázuriz Ortúzar (1866-1953), formalized the second commission that the Le Corbusier-Jeanneret office received from South America. It involved the construction of a summer house in Zapallar, an exclusive seaside resort located on the central coast of Chile. This commission had, from every point of view, a complicated configuration; architects in Paris, France; client in Buenos Aires, Argentina; and work in Zapallar, Chile. Finally, the Project was not built, however, it reached a relevance that the architects themselves attributed to it in publications, exhibitions and events.

This presentation will show the circumstances of the commission, the characteristics of the project and will interpret its relevance as a piece within the work of the Le Corbusier-Jeanneret office.

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Type of event: Online

Speakers

Dra. Arq. Sonia Mercedes Fuentes Padilla. Professor Faculty of Architecture, University of San Carlos, Guatemala. Docomomo Guatemala.

Carlos Eduardo Comas. Universidade Federal do Río Grande do Sul – Docomomo Brasil.

Date: 24/10/2023 11:00 am

Date details: Santiago Chile 11:00 hrs (UTC -3)

Guatemala Civic Center (2019), Sonia Fuentes

The consolidation of Modernity in Guatemala: the Civic Center

Abstract : 

Throughout the years, architecture in Guatemala City was predominately colonial until a series of earthquakes in the early 1910s destroyed most of the city. Between 1920 and 1940, there was this transition in the city’s morphology, and new materials were used to rebuild, so modernity and industrialization began to emerge in Guatemala. Colonial center needed to be renewed and decentralized, so the Civic Center was designed and constructed in the new areas in the south of the city.
The City Centre is known as the consolidation of modern architecture in Guatemala. The four buildings of the first phase -Municipality of Guatemala, Guatemalan Social Security Institute IGSS, Bank of Guatemala, and National Mortgage Bank CHN- are already cataloged as national heritage since they were designed by Guatemalans and integrated art and architecture.
Considering all the architectonic and cultural values and as an initiative of Docomomo Guatemala, the Ministry of Culture created the Technical Committee for the preservation, and because of their work, the Civic Center was declared a National Cultural Heritage of the Nation. The declaration is the first step before it can be considered for the indicative list and then to be eligible to become a World Heritage Site.

Image Credits: Marcel Gautherot/IMS. Aerial View Three Powers square, Brasilia, Brazil 1960.

Beijing – Brasilia: a match of two squares

Abstract:

The contemporariness as well as the programmatic and formal similarities of the Plaza of the Three Powers in Brasilia (by Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeryer) and Tiananmen Square in Beijing (by  Liang Sicheng, Lin Huiyin, Yang Tingbao, XU Yinpei, and others) have escaped notice so far. Yet, they demonstrate in a very vivid way the complicated relationships between architecture and politics as well as between progressive and conservative values regarding the nature of modernity and its architectural expression.

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Type of event: Online

Speakers

Andrés Téllez  – Docomomo Chile

Hannia Gómez – Docomomo Venezuela

Date: 10/10/2023 11:00 am

Date details

Santiago Chile 11:00 hrs (UTC -3)

Empart Nº 4 “Serrano-Eyzaguirre” Housing Estate, Valdés Castillo Huidobro, 1955-1958. Photo: Archive Eliash-Moreno of Modern Architecture

Description

Housing complexes in Santiago, 3 cases of urban transformation

Abstract:

During the period 1935-1955, different administrative, economic and technical mechanisms were put into practice to offer both public and private sector employees the possibility of living in the center of Santiago and its nearby area. In the 3 cases presented here, the architectural response to different modes of management to boost the economy and improve living conditions in the city, had the horizon of collective housing raised from its ability to transform the spatial relationships between private apartments, places for community use, and the resulting urban space. The Huemul II complex managed by the Caja de la Habitación Popular, dependent on the State, the Santa María building formulated under the concept of Horizontal Property, and the Serrano-Eyzaguirre complex, promoted by a private employees savings found under a mixed public-private management model.

Caraballeda Residence. View from the east. Benacerraf & Gomez, (d.1974, Ana Luisa Figueredo – Anala and Armando Planchart Foundation)

Caraballeda Residence, Venezuelan modern heritage

Abstract:

They were also designing the Hotel Melia Caribe (1975) in the surroundings, and has just finished Torre Europa (1971), for whose design they received the National Award of Architecture 1976. 

The building stands on a 10,000 square meters lot. A long and curved slab that runs parallel to the sea line departs from Calle El Indio, where the entrance is placed. The wave-building unfolds its long shape from this corner site, where the cylindrical volume of the chapel works as an anchor, detached from the complex to guarantee its operational autonomy. Inside, a major stained-glass (“Cenital Color”), by Venezuelan artist Alejandro Otero, spectacularly covers the circular space. 

Consisting of five stories plus a service basement (with a children’s medical dispensary), the building was designed to accommodate 75 guests. It has 66 rooms, 9 suites, many collective spaces and terraces overlooking the sea and a landscaped garden that extends to the north. The elevators shaft, covered in bright yellow glass mosaics, rises higher to act as a street sign, but also indicating the scission between of the two very distinct façades of the building; one more brutalist, facing the mountain, covered with big industrial aluminum louvers which create a climate-controlled tall space for the corridors, and the other, lighter, lineal, sinuous and evocative of Aalto’s architecture, made with the lines of the ramps and the railings of the balconies.

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Speakers

Logan Leyton / UC / DOCOMOMO CHILE

Claudio Galeno-Ibaceta / MAZA UCN / DOCOMOMO CHILE

Marco Moro / Università degli Studi di Cagliari / Harvard University

Pier Francesco Cherchi / Università degli Studi di Cagliari

Ana Amora / PROARQ UFRJ / DOCOMOMO BRASIL

Date: 03/10/2023 11:00 am

Date details: Santiago Chile 11:00 hrs (UTC -3)

Ospedale Marino, Colonia Dux Cagliari. Image credits: Claudio Galeno, 2022.

Description

Abstract:

Health occupied a privileged place when the principles of modern architecture were established. Health architectures challenged the paradigms of their time and were key to defining the history of the Modern Movement. However, currently there is a physical high degree over these buildings, lack of knowledge and insufficient appreciation, so that it becomes essential to make a diagnosis to know what the real health of these pieces of architecture are now, since their daily nature and pragmatism leaves them unnoticed. We must ask ourselves: Are these works still capable of provide health to their users? Are they really obsolete and hopeless? How did these buildings become invisible, inert, deformed and obstructed bodies? What strategies could lead to dreaming better futures for these architectures?

Visit the website: https://docomomoconference2024.com/

Call for sessions instructions, template and submit access: https://docomomoconference2024.com/calls-sessions/

Registration link

Speakers

Horacio Torrent. President Docomomo Chile, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

Maximiano Atria, Docomomo Chile,

Date: 05/09/2023 11:00 am

Date details: Santiago Chile 11:00 hrs (3:00 pm UTC)

United Nations Building, Emilio Duhart, 1960-1966. Photo: René Combeau / Archivo de Originales CID SLGM, FADEU-PUC.

Reuse and transformation of a Modern Movement Masterpiece: UN-CEPAL-ECLAC Building, Santiago Chile.

Abstract:

Recent interventions in modern oeuvres of high cultural significance have set new challenges, opening discussion on the various positions associated with their preservation and sustainability. In particular, the relationship between newly conceived architecture and modern heritage, for which the analysis of the design in the original building, the ideas promoted in terms of its significance, and the results obtained in material terms, become the key features in each case. The experience of the United Nations ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean) building in Santiago, Chile, may, in this sense, be of special interest in order to verify possibilities of sustainability that assume both the contingencies among which the rehabilitation process takes place and the values recognized in the building as a monument.

Marine Biology Institute Research Station. Enrique Gebhard 1941-1960. Photo Andres Tellez .  

The Montemar Station as a Case Study

Abstract :   

The building, designed by Enrique Gebhard (1909-1978) for the technical facilities of the University of Chile’s newly consolidated Marine Biology Institute, was built in two stages: the first one between 1941 and 1945 and the second between 1955 and 1959.

As one of the most representative buildings of Chilean modern architecture, the historical vicissitudes of its design and building process make it a perfect case-study through which to look at the development of twentieth century’s architecture.

As a case-study, Montemar has been a test-ground for the efforts made by Docomomo Chile to protect and remediate the present situation. Its relevancy as a key example of the best that modern architecture produced in Chile and Latin America makes it an iconic case in conservation issues regarding buildings that suffer decay by obsolescence, lack of maintenance, and the pressure for new uses.

Visit the site: https://docomomoconference2024.com/

Registration link.

Type of event: Online (Zoom)

Speakers

Umberto Bonomo, Associate professor PUC and Cultural Heritage Center Director.

Rodrigo Gertosio Swanston, PHD (c) Architecture and Urban Studies Universidad Católica de Chile.

Date: 29/08/2023 3:00 pm (UTC) / Date details: Santiago Chile 11:00 hrs

Portales Neighborhood Unit. Bresciani, Valdés, Castillo, Huidobro. 1953-1967. Photo: René Combeau / Archivo de Originales CID SLGM, FADEU-PUC.

Description

Modern Neighborhood Units in Santiago. Exploring common space.

Abstract 

The modern neighborhood units built in Chile between 1940 and 1970 reflect the political-institutional transformation of those years. This transformation was promoted and affected the disciplinary development of architecture and urbanism in a symbiotic process that formed a dynamic, where political-institutional changes and theoretical gear (urban and architectural) were translated into increasingly ambitious public policies. The strong criticism of modern architecture during the seventies and eighties led to a condition of oblivion and stigmatization of such works. However, in recent years this condition seems to have changed, the growing sensitivity on the part of citizens towards modern Neighborhood units is an important precedent and demonstrates the validity and importance of cataloging, studying and preserving them both in their physical and spatial dimension as well as in their social dimension.

Image of Villa Los Presidentes (Ñuñoa, Santiago) . Photograph by Felipe Hevia 

Green Heritage: Modern housing complexes and their Ecosystem Services.

Abstract 

During the 1960s, Santiago de Chile expanded towards the east through numerous housing complexes of modern architecture. Between 2009 and 2017, 3 of these complexes underwent heritage processes driven by their communities, who, coincidentally, elevated the same attribute to the heritage category: their green areas. These extend from the parks and squares to the front gardens and patios and along the avenues that link them. However, this sequence is not exclusive to the patrimonialized cases. Still, instead, it is possible to see in many others, which shows that beyond the action of the neighbours themselves to plant and maintain specific vegetation, the continuity of green areas comes from a more extensive scale planning that provides sequences of available spaces for this to occur. 

Today, thanks to satellite images, vegetation indexes (NDVI), temperature (LST) and spectral classification models, it is possible to observe extensive fragments of continuous vegetation and permeable soil between different housing complexes, thus revealing the presence of valuable ecosystem services inside the city, especially relevant to mitigate some of the effects of climate change. Demonstrating the above allows for revealing new values for the same attribute and incorporating these environmental benefits within heritage protection frameworks to ensure their conservation.

Vía Docomomo Conference 2024

Image credits: Peter Schier. Photographic rights Bardi Institute.

Registration for this event

Description

The challenge of researching and reusing interiors, often detached from their architectural exteriors, introduces a methodological complexity encompassing a range of questions that extend beyond the immediate subject.  

Questions about the dissociation between use (actual or past), the artistic meaning of the designer, and the design process are variables that need to be considered as part of the research itself. These variables impact directly the process of reuse, and conservation and must include intangible aspects such as the emotional attachment. The presence of intangible aspects further underscores the necessity to contemplate the information sources feeding the study and the pivotal role archives play in safeguarding interior spaces. In its essence, the study and repurposing of interiors encompass a harmonious fusion of objective investigation and subjective interpretation, where historical, cultural, and emotional dimensions coalesce.

Type of event: Online

Speakers

Zsuzsanna Böröcz (Domomomo International Specialist Committee on Interior Design Co-Chair, Docomomo Belgium).

Marta Peixoto (Domomomo International Specialist Committee on Interior Design Secretary. Docomomo Brazil, PROPAR UFRGS).

Anita Puig (Docomomo Chile)

Date: August 22nd. (3:00 PM UTC)

Date details: Santiago Chile 11:00 hrs

Visit the website: https://docomomoconference2024.com/

The 18th Docomomo International Conference in Chile 2024 will have a call for sessions first, then a call for papers.

The submission of session proposals in a comparative and interdisciplinary way will be greatly encouraged. In order to open up opportunities of discussion of Modern Movement architecture, its conservation in relation to sustainable design, from comprehensive and extended fields of knowledge and points of view, proposal submissions dealing with the following sub-themes are encouraged:

1.

Landscapes and territories of the modern movement

New purposes for obsolete infrastructure, relationship with nature, mining, geographies

2.

Better Cities

Modern towns, intermediate cities, urban design

3.

Public spaces and urban complexes

Housing, urban nature culture, ecological approaches, community recreation and leisure

4.

Education and design

Modern values and adaptive reuse, didactics, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches

5.

Buildings

Ordinary heritage, masterpieces reconsidered

6.

Modern Interiors conservation and everyday life

Adaptivity, furniture, crafts and industrial design

7.

Earthquakes and Sustainable technologies

Material and modern architecture, concrete, glass, wood

8.

Modernity and Diversity

Activism, community participation, gender, cultural legitimacy, geographical approaches, other modernisms

9.

Theories and Histories for conservation and sustainability

Narratives, archives, curatorial practices, exhibitions

10.

New generations for modern futures

Generational studies, social entrepreneurship, innovation, changemakers, critical thinkers, new media, social networks, commons

• 2 June – 1 September 2023 – Call for sessions.
• 1 September – Deadline.

The session must have a title and will be related to the thematic areas of the Conference, have one or two organisers/chairs, preferably from different affiliations. The type of session would be a regular paper session (1h40, max. 4/5 papers); or a roundtable. Innovative session formats are welcome.

The session abstract would have a maximum of 600 words, and the description must point to a coherent and focused topic related to the thematic areas of the Conference, clarify the goals and the relevance of the Session, define a leading question, key issues, the scientific relevance of the session in the context of recent state of the art and a list of potential themes that will particularly fit in with the goals of the session.

The sessions may also have sponsors related to research projects, research groups, public institutions, universities, or other organizations.

Each session chair is expected to fund their own travel and expenses to Santiago de Chile. Session chairs must register and establish membership in Docomomo for the 2024 conference by January 5, 2024, and are required to pay the non-refundable conference registration fee as a show of their commitment.

Download session template

Submit your session

20 September 2023 – Sessions Selection Announcement.

Session proposals will be selected by the Scientific Committee based on merit and the need to have a well-balanced program according to the following criteria: relevance, novelty/innovation, scientific quality, structure, and organization of the session.