Table-City:
Redefining the Cultural Institution of the 21st Century
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“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, the second as farce.” - Karl Marx
With a haunting history of political reappropriation, UNCTAD in Santiago, Chile, exemplifies how futile good intentions in architecture can be. Originally built in 1972 as a socialist symbol under Salvador Allende for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the building was co-opted into the military headquarters of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. With minimal architectural intervention, the building's socialist ambitions were completely erased, entering into the Chilean imagination as a symbol of the dictatorship. In 2006, a fire partially destroyed the building. Our project extends beyond the site and reuses what is left to create a new cultural institution in conversation with UNCTAD's history.
Given this political history, we question how we can design for a democratic future without being naïve and acknowledge the imprecision of architecture as a political tool. Monumentalizing architecture is no longer enough since that definition can be easily changed by those in power.
We utilize four tools.
1) Ground that extends into the city through different patches.
2) Roofs that reorganize the block through covering.
3) A datum of roof that transforms the tower into a progremeless totem of the city.
4) A liminal space between roof and ground that is activated by the use of props.
The project builds ten structurally independent tables. Due to the consistent effort to maintain the datum above and below the roof, the lifted archipelago becomes a unity of parts. The specificity of the tables cancels out individual authorship for the collective whole integrating in the cityscape.
Our goal is to redefine the current cultural institution. By freeing the ground and allowing for criss-crossing to occur, the site becomes a public square for cultural exchanges that accentuates the frictions of the city. We introduce props that utilize the logic of the theater to provide a framework without creating enclosures between the ground and roof. This allows for cultural engagement to happen through events instead of fixed programs. These events occur under or above different roofs depending on their structural capacity and seasonality.
The new cultural institution becomes an open framework and cultural condenser. Simultaneously, the project produces a moment of pause and self consciousness of preconceived ideas of space. Our architecture is an actor that instigates political friction, and therefore societal change. Is this a roof, a block, a building, or the city?
Our project is the product of collective work.
Redefining the Cultural Institution of the 21st Century
Santiago, Chile
Advanced V Studio- GSAPP Fall 2020
Critic: Enrique Walker, Open-Work Studio
Collaboration with: Alice Fang, Joel McCullough, Chengliang Li, Oliver Bradley
“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, the second as farce.” - Karl Marx
With a haunting history of political reappropriation, UNCTAD in Santiago, Chile, exemplifies how futile good intentions in architecture can be. Originally built in 1972 as a socialist symbol under Salvador Allende for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the building was co-opted into the military headquarters of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. With minimal architectural intervention, the building's socialist ambitions were completely erased, entering into the Chilean imagination as a symbol of the dictatorship. In 2006, a fire partially destroyed the building. Our project extends beyond the site and reuses what is left to create a new cultural institution in conversation with UNCTAD's history.
Given this political history, we question how we can design for a democratic future without being naïve and acknowledge the imprecision of architecture as a political tool. Monumentalizing architecture is no longer enough since that definition can be easily changed by those in power.
We utilize four tools.
1) Ground that extends into the city through different patches.
2) Roofs that reorganize the block through covering.
3) A datum of roof that transforms the tower into a progremeless totem of the city.
4) A liminal space between roof and ground that is activated by the use of props.
The project builds ten structurally independent tables. Due to the consistent effort to maintain the datum above and below the roof, the lifted archipelago becomes a unity of parts. The specificity of the tables cancels out individual authorship for the collective whole integrating in the cityscape.
Our goal is to redefine the current cultural institution. By freeing the ground and allowing for criss-crossing to occur, the site becomes a public square for cultural exchanges that accentuates the frictions of the city. We introduce props that utilize the logic of the theater to provide a framework without creating enclosures between the ground and roof. This allows for cultural engagement to happen through events instead of fixed programs. These events occur under or above different roofs depending on their structural capacity and seasonality.
The new cultural institution becomes an open framework and cultural condenser. Simultaneously, the project produces a moment of pause and self consciousness of preconceived ideas of space. Our architecture is an actor that instigates political friction, and therefore societal change. Is this a roof, a block, a building, or the city?
Our project is the product of collective work.
Map of Santiago with layers of infrastructural, ecological and geographical information.
Site axonometric of the original building of UNCTAD III.
2006 ruin after the fire.
Section exposing the superstructure and interior volumes of the original building.
Each
system of the tables prefigures a structural and programmatic capacity. There are four types of tables that are mobilized on the site:
occupiable, hanging, vapor, and frame
.
