The 1960 Earthquakes. Transformation of developmentalist Architecture in La Araucanía and Southern Chile

Abstract

During the 1950s, an architectural style emerged in Chile featuring works –particularly State-built– that stood out for representing an ideology of modernity and progress fuelled by economic and industrial development tenants, in line with developmentalist policies promoted by ECLAC. During the Jorge Alessandri administration, however, two factors converged that explain new directions for this architecture. The first factor was the 1960 earthquake, with the corresponding deployment of reconstruction policies. The second was the financial policy to restraint the use of public funds. These factors, apparent in La Araucanía and the south-central region, led to a transformation of this architecture to a more discreet version of its architectural image, but laid the foundations for an interpretation of developmentalism based on housing improvements, the use of typological standardization, and unique examples of public State-built works in the 1960s.