Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

We introduce this issue with a descriptive record of four ramadas. Ramada is the name given to the structures put up throughout the country each year during the week of the 18th September as an essential part of the celebrations to commemorate Chilean Independence. The name, which literally translates as ‘something made of branches’, arose from the nature of the structures- lightweight timber covered in leafy branches. The ramadas are elementary and ephemeral but nonetheless charged with meaning, harking back to celebrations and traditions at the birth of the republic, recalling links between city and countryside. The ramadas analysed in this record are all located along the route between Concepción and Cobquecura, a coastal town 125 km north of Concepción. Ramadas are put up in every Chilean city and town in order to commemorate the constitution of the first governing body (Junta de Gobierno), symbol of the new institutional character of governance following independence from Spain. Furthermore, every year (coinciding more or less with the start of spring), the ramadas also provide a space in which to revive traditional music and dances, particularly the cueca – the national dance of colonial origin representing the love conquest – whose festive rhythm mixes with the tropical cadences of the cumbia. In the ramadas people celebrate dancing and eating empanadas (a traditional meat pastry), anticuchos (kebabs), wine and chicha (a traditional alcoholic drink made from fermented grapes).

The 25-year experience of intervention in the town of Contulmo, with three Fondart projects and one Bicentenary project, has achieved recognition of the town’s heritage and an increase in the community’s self-esteem. Throughout this period, the strategy used is based on the basic principles of action research, understood as the study of a specific social situation in order to attempt to improve the quality of practical actions applied (Elliott, 1993). Action research is built up from and for practical actions, in an attempt to transform and thus improve these, by shaping a cycle of planning, action, observation and critical reflection. The working hypothesis is based on the idea that appreciation of local identity and heritage helps communities to recognise, celebrate and enjoy themselves, and as such, all actions seeking the protection and preservation of this heritage are meaningful in the degree that the community is organised and transformed to become authors of their own development. The intervention explores methodological tools of both action research and heritage education –as a cultural learning tool- allowing the inhabitants of Contulmo to become more aware of the world around them and to increase their understanding of the sociocultural environment and historical path of which they are part.

El presente trabajo busca revalorizar la memoria histórica de nuestras ciudades, por medio de las huellas de la arquitectura local. El proyecto plantea la construcción de modelos de representación tridimensional de los casos estudiados, escogiendo el retablo y la fotografía como vehículos de documentación y análisis. El retablo, dispositivo que "evoca" tradicionalmente una alegoría idealizada de lo típicamente chileno, es aquí desplazado desde el souvenir, al Arte Contemporáneo como campo expandido. La investigación se inicia con el proyecto FONDART VIEXPO que propone desde una perspectiva personal, una narración simbólica de la historia de la vivienda social de nuestro país a partir de un recorrido por La Serena, Valparaíso, Talca y Concepción. Posteriormente el trabajo se centra íntegramente en Concepción donde se realiza un registro de las fachadas de los edificios que conforman el extenso legado modernista de la ciudad. Estas fotografías generan fragmentos de los edificios que son traspasados a retablos, invitando al público a revisitar su ciudad, aprovechándose de la intimidad empática de este formato, como una suerte de deja-vú.

Architecture has predominantly been taught, theorised, practised and critiqued as an art form of the eye. The hegemony of the vision has been strengthened by countless technical inventions that enable us to see inside matter as well as into deep space. However, in creative work, a powerful identification and projection takes place; the entire bodily and mental constitution becomes the site of the work. Touch is the sensory mode that integrates our experiences of the world and of ourselves. An architect or artist works in an embodied manner, a sense of success or failure are sensations of the body rather than products of cognitive knowledge. “Life-enhancing” art and architecture addresses all the senses simultaneously, and fuses our sense of self with the experience of the world. The tendentiously visual culture of our times, and its subsequent optical architecture, has led to a search for a haptical and multisensual architecture, an architecture of invitation.

Frente al riesgo de desaparición del notable rasgo cultural, del patrimonio de edificios y de conjuntos que reflejan la Arquitectura Moderna Regional de Juiz de Fora, ciudad del interior de Brasil, se señalan los posibles motivos de la contradicción que da lugar a avances en la discusión y en la creación de leyes, y a deficiencias en la construcción de un pacto social con base artística, que se señala como medida fundamental para una actuación eficaz en la conservación y recuperación de bienes culturales.

Heritage preservation is currently undergoing a process of transformation and redefinition. Concepts and approaches were spread across the globe, redefining their object and hampering traditional intervention. In Brazil, heritage preservation laws have been modified inadequately due to lack of knowledge of the complexity of a culture so diverse, pluralistic and controversial.Hence, two basic principles of heritage preservation are being reviewed: identity and authenticity. Although these are both relevant aspects of the issue, they bring about cultural contradictions that cannot be resolved by the conventional, inflexible and universally accepted European notions currently under question. Such concepts presumably cannot be used to determine the “absolute immunity” of the protected heritage object, since the justification of the act of preservation itself has been broadened. It is important to identify changes that provide the conditions for historical events and the cultural interpretation of our world and times, providing memory and identity through the reincorporation of the past with the present.

This article reflects on the aims which social housing should now have reaching beyond the current hygiene, functional and planning offer. Quality standards in architecture form part of the dignity required of social design; the continued presence of low-income sectors of society in historic town-centres and their heritage architectures should also be an acquired right. A brief introduction is given to the extinction of the suburban dream and the return to town- centres as a residential option and includes an account of the property speculation which has surrounded these historic architectures in Spain since the nineteen-eighties converting such habitations for social housing into an issue that public agencies must address. Andalusia has pioneered a specific line of social housing in historic town-centres that is exposed through a number of projects carried out by the author herself. Such initiatives have the potential to integrate heritage protection, prevent the gentrification of town-centres by ensuring social diversity and avoid the depopulation of smaller towns and their limitation as tourist centres.

Frutillar was founded in 1856 as part of the German colonisation of Lago Llanquihue in the south of Chile. Today, inhabitants enjoy a high standard of living due to the town’s comfortable scale and close, harmonious relationship with nature. The town also has considerable cultural activity and a significant number of timber heritage houses built by German colonists.The Casa Richter is the oldest in the town, built of native timber in 1895 following an austere, neoclassical design using the “tablazón labrada” construction technique. In 2005 an institution connected with the Teatro del Lago decided to purchase and renovate this building in order to house a School of Arts for younger generations.This project was carried out through a “critical intervention” which sought not only a technical reparation of the old timber building, but also to restore it to its former glory, while recycling some spaces according to the requirements of its new role.

Many Brazilian traditional industrial buildings are, at present, abandoned, because of the industrial crises and the generalized procedures of sub hiring new smaller companies, with the aim to transfer the work responsibilities. In the sense of trying not to lose this heritage, the revitalization of the industrial complex of the Hering Company (Brazilian company textile that exports towards many countries) is considered. Since the reform of buildings of different periods and great architectonic value for the promotion of visitation of industrials sectors that remains in activity, the Complex of the Textile Memory of Blumenau works the urban set, reaffirming its insertion in the natural atmosphere that means the traditional way of space appropriation so characteristic of Germanics immigrants.

Lota is one of the most emblematic cities in Chile due to its cultural significance and its history, directly connected with the social and territorial changes brought about by coal mining. The city was built in the bay of Lota as a base settlement from which to exploit undersea coal deposits. Its urban image is defined by the social housing blocks (‘pabellones’), the community ovens, the industrial area with its high chimneys and lift shafts leading down into the mines, the wharf and the park.