Chile - Biennale Architettura 2016

Against the Tide presents the efforts of a generation of young architects who have conceived, designed, and constructed works of architecture, while also handling financing and contracting for them, in order to earn their professional certification. All they have in common is that they belong to the Central Valley of Chile, where they have returned following their academic training to contribute to their communities, creating architectures which trace a filigree of places where the region’s campesinos and their families can live and work.
These architectures have been erected with minimal resources, with the residues of agricultural processes and with readily available local materials, contributing value and inserting the territory into a global context through a regional—but not a costumbrista—approach. Out of this rural landscape and environment, in constant transformation due to agricultural activity and urban development, there emerges a series of pavilions, rest stops, miradors, lunch shelters, and plazas, or simply places for shade and social encounter, ephemeral or permanent, explicit of abstract.
Against the Tide speaks of a contrary direction that things can take. This exhibition moves against the tide of those urban battles—perhaps more global in scope—waged to improve the quality of our built environment. It puts the accent rather on the customs and landscapes of the rural world, a world of fields and forests, helping through architecture to improve the everyday quality of life of its people.