This is the invitation that the Chilean pavilion at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale offers: an invitation to test out the relationship between architecture and territory. And it does so starting from a broad set of rules that provide the visitor and the participating architects enough leverage space to absorb — rather than repress — and communicate the contradictions inherent in the productive relationship between architecture and territory in Chile. By establishing this set of rules and spaces, it not only questions the international reading of Chilean architecture, but also of how it takes over its territory.
In the words of the curators: "Chilean architecture has been noticed for being an architecture of five facades, with good angles for camera shots and framed by a landscape that — referencing the antipoem of Nicanor Parra — dilutes Chile as a country and makes it only a landscape. But in actuality, there is an internal need for architecture to address that landscape. It has to think it through and design an artificial landscape. [In that sense], rather than a call to view Chilean architecture through a new light, Cancha is a call for Chilean architecture to think globally, ecologically and politically."
"The pavilion is a symbolic atmosphere that delivers an interpretative frame for its content," the curators explain. They continue by saying that, "from an atmospheric perspective and the visitors performance in the space, the pavilion is a light-controlled space: from the exterior you enter a foreroom where a neon light sculpture shaped as a salt crystal receives you, then you access a space in which the protagonist is the floor — a floor made out of salt from the Salar de Tarapacá and five rocks weighing half a ton each, and all of this lit through seven lamps, each of which presents the participating architect's essay.
The design decisions that define the experience of the pavilion establish a dialogue with previous uses given to architecture in the international representation of Chile. According to the curatorial statement, the shipment of desert salt to the pavilion references the Chilean pavilion in the Seville 1992 World Expo, which "marked the first aspiration of a democratic Chile — without Pinochet — and that wanted to show a cold and efficient Chile through the shipment of chunks of icebergs from the Antarctic Ocean. In that showing, next to the ice was a series of supermarket-style shelves with carton boxes with printed images of Chile, which one could purchase and take. In front of this reference — and as discussed with Pedro Livni and Gonzalo Carrasco, members of the Vostokproject and curators of the Uruguayan pavilion — Cancha's salt suggest the melting of such ice."
Rather than a call to view Chilean architecture through a new light, Cancha is a call for Chilean architecture to think globally, ecologically and politically
Finally, the pavilion also marks the entry of new players, a result of changes in cultural public politics in Chile. For the first time, the proposal of the pavilion was chosen through a open call, which gathered in its handling a series of public institutions that work towards promoting and disseminating Chilean architecture. It is hoped that the experience and discussion put forward by Cancha ignites and confirms the pertinence of new cultural institutions, and of their role in the construction of public debates. Fernando Portal (@FPORTAL)
Elemental, Germán del Sol, Pedro Alonso, Juan Pablo Corvalán (Susuka), Iván Ivelic, Genaro Cuadros, Rodrigo Tisi
Commissioner: Cristóbal Molina Baeza.
Curators: María Pilar Pinchart Saavedra, Bernardo Valdés Echenique.
Sculpture: Iván Navarro y Pedro Pulido.
Documentaries: Cristóbal Palma.