Silver Lion. Pavilion of Chile

 Yesterday we announced here in METALOCUS the prizes awarded by the Venice Biennale of Architecture. Now, we present the Silver Lion to Chile Pavilion, which won the Silver Lion.

Silver Lion for a National Participation to Chile

Monolith Controversies

Commissioner.- Cristóbal Molina (National Council of Culture and the Arts of Chile). Curators.- Pedro Alonso, Hugo Palmarola.

Pavilion at Arsenale.

The motivations of the International Jury.

The jury recognizes Chile with the Silver Lion for revealing a critical chapter of the history of global circulation of modernity. Focusing on one essential element of modern architecture - a prefabricated concrete wall - it critically highlights the role of elements of architecture in different ideological and political contexts.

Monolith Controversies.

Isolated in upright position, a large-concrete panel stands on the center of the Chilean Pavilion at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia. This was one of the first ever produced by the Chilean KPD plant—an industry to produce prefabricated housing donated in 1972 by the Soviet Union to the Chilean road to socialism led by president Salvador Allende. This panel has since been the agent of several political and ideological controversies, especially after Allende himself signed it up in the wet concrete, if only for his gesture to be later covered up by Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, adding the panel the representations of the Virgin and Child between two colonial style lamp fixtures. This piece of concrete represents a relatively marginal tradition in the historiographies of modern architecture despite the fact that more than 170 million large-concrete panel apartments were built worldwide during the second half of the twentieth century. Thus the panel becomes fundamental symbol to the absorption of modernity proposed as the concept for the 14th International Architecture Exhibition.

Monolith Controversies is a work by Pedro Alonso and Hugo Palmarola based in a research project documenting the 153 housing blocks built in Chile by the KPD plant, as well as the technical, typological and conceptual reconstruction of twenty-eight large-concrete panel systems developed and disseminated worldwide between 1931 and 1981.

The Chilean Pavilion at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition is commissioned by the National Council of Culture and the Arts of Chile and is the result of collaboration between the curators and a team composed by Gonzalo Puga, José Hernández, Felipe Aravena, Micol Riva and Martín Bravo, with the participation of Gianfranco Foschino as invited artist.

CREDITS.

Curators.- Pedro Alonso and Hugo Palmarola
Commissioner.- Cristóbal Molina (National Council of Culture and the Arts of Chile)
Pavilion design.- Gonzalo Puga
Visual identity.- Martín Bravo
Production team.- Felipe Aravena, José Hernández
Multimedia.- Francisco Hernández, Micol Riva
Pavilion production and setup.- Luigi D'Oro & Arguzia s.r.l.
Organizer.- National Council of Culture and the Arts of Chile
Supporters.-

Fundación Imagen de Chile
DIRAC
CSAV
SAAM

Dates.- 07 June 2014 - 23 November 2014.
Venue.- Pavilion at Arsenale. Venice, Italy.