Advisor: Fernando Espósito
Dissertation: Rugosidades mapuches en la construcción de lugares contemporáneos
Defense date: 28/02/2019
Abstract
The Mapuches, a indigenous civilization of the south of Chile, have
historically had a strong relationship with the territory, hence its name (mapu =
earth, che = man): the man of the land. That meaning is directly related to the
sacred bond their culture has with nature. There is a strong and sensitive
relationship with the environment, which emerges from the Mapuche cosmology.
To understand this problem in the Mapuche context from an architectural
perspective, the research analyzes space as the result of processes of accumulation
of histories and pre-existences. In the words of Milton Santos, these processes are
made up of elements that model space and landscape, acting as suppression,
accumulation and superposition, something that the author synthesizes under the
concept of “rugosity”. The importance of exploring these rugosities, categorizing
the spatial components, is related to the construction of spaces as a material
revelation and as an appreciation of the local culture. In the analysis, the research
also operates from the idea of framptonian critical regionalism, where we can find
a conceptual basis that strengthens the valorization of the local space. In this
discussion, some projects are observed, recognizing elements that were read,
interpreted and transferred from original references and the different strategies
with which they deal with the contemporary.
The main case study was the Meli Foye Community, a housing complex
located in the municipality of Huechuraba, Santiago, Chile. Finally, the
investigation allows us to observe, in the light of the concept of roughness, a
redefinition of the limits of space according to the signs present in the inhabited
space, reconfiguring the notion of place.