Daniel Libeskind will visit Chile this coming December, following an invitation extended by Mauricio Soria, the mayor of Iquique, and approved by the Chilean city's municipal council. However, the decision has drawn coverage from local media due to opposition from council members who voted against the initiative, primarily over the budget: 75 million Chilean pesos (around $110,000), which includes a "city visit, site visit, public lecture, and a preliminary draft or conceptual proposal," as highlighted on Twitter by council member Felipe Arenas, one of the dissenting voices in the municipal vote.
Although the announcement was shared by the mayor's office on Twitter on November 8, efforts to bring Libeskind to the country began exactly a year ago when the architect visited Chile to give a lecture at ENMATERIA's International Architecture and Materials Encounter. During that visit, the American architect met for the first time with Soria and his technical team in Santiago.
Diego Rebolledo, an architect, head of the municipality's Architecture and Engineering Workshop, and one of the organizers behind the invitation, explained in an email exchange with ArchDaily that the project Libeskind would work on is the Regional Anthropological Museum (MAR) of Iquique. It is slated to be located on Huayquique Beach, "which is currently inaccessible to pedestrians," he noted.
According to Rebolledo, the MAR will house "archaeological exhibits and will showcase, from an anthropological perspective, human settlements in Tarapacá from 12,000 years ago to the present day. Architecturally, the museum will feature interactive exhibition halls, research areas for experts, and a collection storage facility, among other spaces."
The future of the MAR depends on the development of public-private partnerships to secure the budget needed for the museum's final design, Rebolledo explained, while the construction phase "will most likely be funded through state resources, such as the National Fund for Regional Development (FNDR)."
This article was written by Nicolás Valencia. The translation is powered by AI.
_Georges_de_Kinder_(1).jpg?1542033564 "Daniel Libeskind to Visit Chile to Define the Conceptual Design of the Regional Anthropological Museum of Iquique")
