Recent Chilean architecture as a national brand: state action, its interests and cuts

• Grant number: 21/06495-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: March 01, 2023
• End date: April 30, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Architecture and Town Planning - Fundamentals of Architecture and Urbanism
• Principal Investigator: Nilce Cristina Aravecchia Botas
• Grantee: Stela Mori Neri Silva
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo (FAU). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 23/14372-9 - Chilean architecture as a national brand: state involvement, its interests, and perspectives, BE.EP.MS

Abstract

Through appearances in international publications and awards, contemporary Chilean architecture has gained greater visibility and international prestige from the 1990s onwards. The bibliography dedicated to this phenomenon mainly exposes the formal propositions of this production, and less the agents and logics of promoting this process. In order to complement such historiography; this research seeks to highlight other important logics for the promotion of this architecture that are articulated within the national sphere and, in particular, through a State that appears to have interests in the architectural field not only for the export of services, but also for the construction a national brand. The research starts from the analysis of a paradigmatic publication of the government's interests in architecture, which presents itself as a catalog of Chilean architects, landscapes and projects. Entitled "Blanca Montaña: Arquitectura en Chile" (2011), the book was supported by the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the conception, feasibility and dissemination of this publication. The historic moment of the book's launch takes place right after the construction of a series of projects from state funds. Because of this, possible approximations between the publication and marketing, branding and cultural animation strategies arise for these projects and for the places where they are implemented. Based on the analysis of the State's contribution in the process of the emergence of contemporary Chilean architecture, this research also proposes to collaborate and dialogue with other academic productions on the role of the State in the neoliberal model within the field of Latin-American architecture and urbanism. Tensing the conception of architecture as symbolic capital or the idea of "Minimum State" in the neoliberal model, it is intended to insert the present research in the set of studies that tension the relationship between architecture and capital today.