Revista Historia y Patrimonio

Heritage Day: an approach to heritage participation in Chile

Bárbara Ossa González, Daniela Serra Anguita — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Heritage Day is an annual event established in 1999 for heritage dissemination in Chile. Based on its study, this article analyzes how the understanding and participation in heritage have changed in recent years, within the framework of this event, as well as the challenges and opportunities this entails for heritage policies. This is framed within a broader reflection on the paradigms of democratization and cultural democracy, and the explicit or implicit influence of the latter in Chilean heritage policies, using case study. To this end, the article explores participation by analyzing the organizations and individuals who attend the activities held during this event from 2019 to 2023, highlighting the transition toward a hybrid model of both in-person and virtual activities. All of this takes place in the context of the growing importance of digital environments in connecting with heritage—a phenomenon accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. This case reveals transformations in the methodological and theoretical approaches to the study of heritage and the ways people engage with heritage in recent years, impacting the design and implementation of public policies which adapt to and incorporate the current and ever- changing ways of understanding heritage.

Contributions to a Biography of the Chilean Monument to the Writers of Independence

Jaime Andrés Loyola Haussmann — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This work intends to be a contribution to the biography of the Monument to the Writers of Independence through a cartography of its appearances in ‘intentional’ and ‘unintentional’ registers. Our objective is not to propose a definitive biography of the monument, but to make relevant the political assemblages in which it was present and which haven’t been compiled in a same story.
We begin by challenging the literature that situates the beginning of heritage conservation in Chile by focusing on legal measures, beginning in the year 1925, while ignoring earlier conservation practices. The monument’s trajectory previous to 1925 accounts for practices that complicate said legal-centered periodization. We present the trajectory of the monument through two approaches: as chroniclers, narrating its life in timeline terms, and as historians, analyzing key milestones of its development by questioning their causes. Finally, we examine constitutive elements of our narrative to speculate on the reasons for its decade in ruins.
This approach reveals how the monument operates across different registers of reality and demonstrates that conservation history contains layers of projects, efforts, and abandonments that contextualize the formal beginning of its legal protection.

The Aesthetic Journey of Neo-Mudejar Bullring Architecture: From Madrid to Uruguay, Venezuela, and Colombia

Luis del Campanar Santos Muñoz — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Thirty-five years passed between the inauguration of Madrid’s former bullring (1874) and the project for the Real de San Carlos bullring in Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay (1909). This temporal distance reflects a process of aesthetic transmission that was originated in the Madrid bullring: it was the first building to establish, through its façade, Neo-Mudejar as a representative style of Spanish nationalism, due to the patriotic connotations attributed to bullfighting and the rediscovery of medieval Mudejar architecture. Later applied to South American bullrings, this article explores the transfer of the Neo-Mudejar aesthetic bullring model in Uruguay, Venezuela, and Colombia. The architectural analysis of the selected examples will allow us to find a dependence on the Madrid prototype, marked by formal and visual referentiality.

“They worked remarkable things without iron, using only stones”: A Study of Construction Tools in the Matrícula de Huexotzinco

Pedro A. Muñoz Sánchez — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article gives insight into the construction tools in Mesoamerica following the arrival of Europeans in the sixteenth century. The introduction of European tools transformed the way workers carried out their tasks and spurred the development of new architectural production techniques. However, this process was not immediate: the new tools coexisted with their Mesoamerican counterparts in a gradual process of adaptation.
This phenomenon might be better understood through an analysis of the Matrícula de Huexotzinco. This sixteenth-century pictographic census records people’s occupations through glyphs, many of which represent the tools used in their trades. Thus, this document provides evidence of the variety of instruments used for construction in Huejotzingo.
To achieve the expected results, the study first seeks to demonstrate the usefulness of this source in understanding technological evolution in construction. This is followed by an analysis of the types of tools represented, identifying the continuity of certain instruments from the Mesoamerican world and the introduction of others of European origin. Finally, the study considers the possibility that the persistence of certain tools influenced the architectural production techniques of the era.

Teatro Real, Santiago: Movie Palace, Patents and Air Conditioning, 1929-1931

Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The use of air conditioning in buildings in Chile has become a prevailing standard and is found in many buildings, especially office buildings. However, the transition from conventional buildings to the current air-conditioned standard is mostly unknown. In this paper, we explore the implementation of the first air conditioning system in Chile in the Teatro Real, in Santiago, and the innovation it entailed for the building. Based on building surveys of the still standing building, on the availability of archive material, patents and other documents in Chile and abroad, the present work seeks to understand this case as a scenario for a process technical and organizational innovation in the field of construction. Teatro Real was Santiago’s first ‘Movie Palace’ conceived and built to be the flagship theatre of Paramount Studios in Chile, in line with the most current technical standards at the time, particularly the projection of sound films. This meant the import of a technical expertise to a local context with specific building practices and, on the other hand, the necessary implementation of this innovation in the building processes used at that time setting the standard for this new architectural and construction typology in the making.

Labor Processes and Costs in the Construction of the Mexico City Cathedral (16th Century)

José Rodolfo Pacheco Thiesen — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Based on accounting data from the construction of Mexico City's Cathedral in the late 16th century, this article examines the excessive costs and large volume of labor compared to similar projects in Spain. The central hypothesis is that the high wages paid to the Spanish elite overseeing the project, rather than the sheer number of Indigenous workers, were the main factors driving up costs. The methodology involves analyzing accounting records from the cathedral between 1584 and 1586. Comparisons are made with the costs and workforce composition of contemporary Spanish cathedral projects, such as those in Segovia and Salamanca. The results highlight a significant wage disparity, with the Spanish elite receiving much higher pay than the Indigenous workers, despite the latter comprising the majority of the workforce. The study concludes that the differences between colonial and metropolitan architecture primarily stemmed from the work processes —specifically the use of Indigenous social labor organization— rather than from the final form of the buildings.

Regulatory Measures Concerning the Use of Adobe in Santiago de Chile During the Early Colonial Period

Natalia Jorquera Silva, Andrea Osorio Rodríguez — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Santiago de Chile, like many other cities and capitals in Latin America, was built almost exclusively using adobe construction techniques during its first two hundred years. Today relegated to rural contexts and artisanal practices, this technique held a markedly different status in the 16th and 17th centuries, when its production was subject to regulation: official licenses were required for adobe manufacture, taxes were imposed, and other administrative controls were in place. Despite the importance of these aspects—constituting some of the earliest building regulations and specifically relating to the construction sector—Chilean historiography has largely overlooked them. Colonial studies tend to focus on the final century of the colonial period, from the mid-18th century to the country’s independence, and emphasize broader urban issues. Therefore, through a comprehensive review of the Actas del Cabildo de Santiago published between 1541 (the year Santiago was founded) and 1680, significant data was gathered concerning these early building regulations. Undoubtedly, this represents a valuable contribution to the history of construction in the capital during an under-researched period.

Between the Hill and the Sky: The Caralps Tower and the Failed Attempt to Build Valparaíso’s First ‘Skyscraper’

Sandro Maino Ansaldo, Matías Correa Díaz — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The story of the first attempt to construct a tall building in Valparaíso after the 1906 earthquake allows us to understand the technical and construction possibilities and limitations of the time, as well as the actions taken in response to a series of conflicts between the architect, the client, the municipality, and the media. Valparaíso was one of the main ports of the American Pacific between the middle of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th century, concentrating the investment of the profits obtained from mining in the north and south of Chile. The building designed by the engineer and architect Joaquin Barella was commissioned by the mining entrepreneur Francisco Caralps. The nine-storey building was originally designed as a metal structure embedded in concrete. The project went through a series of stages with transformations in its relationship to the ground and the hill, as well as its interior layout. The comparative description of the buildings designed by Barella in the period, the reconstruction of each of the stages of the project, the analysis of the discussion in the media related to the incidents during the construction of the building and the understanding of the life of Francisco Caralps allow us to build a finished panorama of the failed attempt to build a skyscraper in Valparaíso.

Modern Skeletons. A study of the material expression of modernity from structure and concrete

Cristian Muñoz-Díaz, Gabriel Cañete-Guevara — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This text addresses the research project “Modern Skeletons” with special attention to the participation of undergraduate architecture students. The research arose in the context of a study on the implementation of the modern movement in Chilean mid-rise residential architecture from a seismic-constructive perspective. For the project, 24 cases of buildings constructed between 1940 and 1970 were collected and studied, and three of them —the most representative according to criteria provided by the research team— were selected for structural modeling in 1:25 scale models. These representations, made using handcrafted molds and materially expressive techniques, allowed for the study and dissemination of how concrete reveals both structural constraints and plastic qualities. The models, as an exercise in representation, allow the materialization of design issues of interest, while integrating undergraduate university students into the process of studying and researching material variables in architecture and enabling them to acquire tools for asking questions and searching for diverse techniques to answer them. The results reflect a local reinterpretation of modern ideas, where design intentions are subordinated to seismic, material, and social requirements. This research thus proposes that modern Chilean architecture not only translates international models but also transforms them in response to a unique geological reality and the consequent regulations, in a complex and decisive negotiation.

The Historical Planimetry Archive of the Architecture Department of the Ministry of Public Works of Chile

Rodrigo Chauriye — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

History of Construction: Transfers, Regulations and Innovations

Claudia Torres Gilles — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000