Exhibition: Discovery, Recovery & Community:
Santiago, Chile Travelling Studio
Exhibition Launch
Wednesday 18th November 2009
6.30pm
Wunderlich Gallery
Ground Floor
Architecture building
The exhibition can be viewed
18 November - 26 November
Gallery opening hours:
9:00pm - 5:00pm
Monday to Friday
View Architecture Exhibited video.
In May 2008, the coastal town of Chaitén in the Patagonian region of Chile had to be evacuated when a nearby volcano erupted. Ash and debris blanketed the town clogging the nearby river (Río Blanco), diverting its course and flooding the once thriving settlement. While the town suffered extensive damage no lives were lost. However, many houses and much of the public infrastructure were destroyed. The Chilean government has determined that the risk of further eruptions is high and the ash that now covers the town is unhealthy to breathe. They are proposing to construct a new town to re-settle the displaced residents at a place known as Santa Barbara, eight kilometers north of Chaiten. This site is located within a spectacular coastal landscape surrounded by the Andes Mountains and in close proximity to Chile’s remote Palena Province and Pumalín National Park with its rugged mountains, lakes and rainforests. The focus of this studio was on designing this new settlement at Santa Barbara.
Twelve landscape architecture and architecture students from the Melbourne School of Design worked together with students from Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile (PUC) in Santiago. A highlight of the studio was when the entire group, both students and staff from both universities, flew to northern Patagonia and then traveled by boat to experience the destruction of Chaiten and investigate the new site. The students lived and worked on this ‘floating studio’ while developing design concepts for the new settlement, ideas that were further developed back in the university’s studios in Santiago.
This is a very real project in that there is an urgent need to build a new town to provide homes to residents of Chaiten that had been displaced. The very nature of this project required that it be approached from a multi-disciplinary perspective with input from a range of disciplines, including architecture, landscape architecture and urban design, engineering, ecology and the social sciences. As a consequence of the eruption, established place attachments that people of Chaiten had formed over many years with features of the town’s landscape were suddenly disrupted. One of the aims of the design for the new town was, therefore, to try to ease the residents’ readjustment to their new home by providing a framework of familiar place features reflective of old Chaiten. Designing an entirely new town in this way also provided opportunities for incorporating innovative new features into its design. For example, it is proposed that the new town’s future energy needs will be met through alternative energy sources, principally from geothermal. Conserving the distinctive place features of the proposed site and its surrounds, for example by emphasizing the biodiversity and ecosystems of the area, and incorporating them into green corridors within the new town’s layout, is another proposed element of the design for the new town.
Studio coordinator Associate Professor Ray Green