Arica, a laboratory of modern architecture in northern Chile

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For more than three decades, Chile's Norte Grande region positioned itself as an important modern laboratory and a hub of development on both a national and international scale. It embodied the potential to decentralize access to services and infrastructure, as well as territorial management itself. Driven by an economic boom, a project of modernity was promoted, spanning comprehensive investment plans to the management and construction of modern architecture projects. However, following the coup d'état and the subsequent militarization of the border, resources were once again concentrated in Santiago, bringing this regionalist momentum to an end. Below are details of some of these hybrid works which, shaped by both the desert climate and European influence, responded to a local context defined by an incomplete project of modernity.

During its economic and cultural boom, the city of Arica established itself as a laboratory for local modern architecture. From the 1950s to the 1970s, the border city was the stage for a series of initiatives that resulted in various cultural projects, made possible by its free-port status. Within this framework, the three projects described below were developed.

Estadio Housing Complex