Chilean architecture, having long stood in the shadow of more established design traditions in Europe and North America, has been catapulted to the forefront of global attention with the news that architect Alejandro Aravena has been named the 41st Pritzker Prize Laureate – the first Chilean to receive the award. He is also the director of this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale, which focuses on the role of architects in improving the living conditions of people across the globe, especially in cases where scarce resources and the “inertia of reality” stand in the way of progress.
Of course, Aravena isn’t the only architect from his country to receive international acclaim in recent years. In 2013, the famed Aedes Gallery in Berlin curated an exhibition of selected works by Mathias Klotz, one of Chile’s most renowned international architects. The Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize for Emerging Architecture was awarded to Pezo von Ellrichshausen in 2014, the same year in which Smiljan Radic was chosen to design the latest iteration of the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London. As with Aravena, both were the first Chilean architects to achieve those respective honors. 2014 also saw the Chilean Pavilion win a Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale with its 'Monolith Controversies'.
It is somewhat surprising to see so much notable architecture arise from a nation struggling with the rapid growth and urbanization that has prevailed in Latin America for the past several years. Historically, most notable buildings in the region have been Modernist transplants with little relation to local cultures or climates; however, since the fall of Pinochet’s dictatorship at the end of the 1980’s, a new wave of Chilean designers has chosen to use the particular conditions and shortages of their homeland to create a new architectural identity.
