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?
About Women Architects in Latin American Modernity
Abstract:
From a contemporary point of view, it is essential to consider the contribution of women architects in constructing Latin American modernity. From the city’s scale to the object’s scale, women architects produced reflections, projects, and things that marked the paths of Latin American countries and shaped their legacy in common with their male colleagues. On the other hand, it is possible to verify that, having to overcome obstacles imposed solely by their gender, these women built some common paths through which it was possible to develop their professional careers. Therefore, it is fascinating to recognize and discuss what these women architects produced and how these productions became possible.
Image Credits: Delfina Gálvez Bunge over the concrete structure during the House on the River construction (Grete Stern Archives)
The Legacy of Women in Modern Argentinean Architecture
Abstract:
Women, such as Itala Fulvia Villa, Delfina Gálvez or Carmen Cordova, were fundamental in the definition and expansion of modern ideas in Argentina. However, this heritage has often been suppressed or hidden by hegemonic discourses that narrate a version of the past based on the great male architectural masters. Repairing these oversights of the past by illuminating the trajectories of women is one of the important challenges in thinking about a sustainable, diverse and inclusive modern future.
Image Credits: Valdivia City Hall by Angela Schweitzer. In: “Teatro Municipal De Valdivia”. AUCA n.º 32 (Nov,1977): 50.
Women architects in Chile
Abstract:
Women played a significant role in the history of architecture in Chile between the 1920s and 1970s. As patrons, some of them were involved in the early development of avant-garde works of architecture. As painters and sculptors, they participated in the design of innovative buildings and the configuration of public spaces. But women also contributed to the development of modern architecture as professional designers. From the 1930s onwards, pioneer women architects became part of collective studios in Chile, and some of them also tried their luck as independent practitioners. In the following decades, a significant number of women architects also developed their careers in other fields: they became academics, landscape designers, planners, activists, public servants, and politicians. Documenting these diverse forms of female agency in the built environment suggests new ways of understanding the history of architecture and the city.
Bárbara Rozas, Manola Ogalde. “Through the Cracks. Tensions between Historiography of Modern Architecture in Chile and Stories of Women Architects”
Javiera Rodríguez, Valentina Rojas. “Being a Woman among Men. Hilda Carmona: Professor and Designer”
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.
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.
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).
Follow
