Encargos comunes (inglés)

By Fabiola González and Yair Estay

"Encargos Comunes" se presenta como un proyecto editorial que resume, a partir de tres obras de arquitectura, la práctica e investigación desarrollada por la oficina de arquitectura Taller25 en torno a esta profesión y su vínculo con la clase media contemporánea chilena. Estas obras identifican y visibilizan tres demandas sobre la vivienda: una Construcción nueva, una Reforma y una Ampliación, realizadas en comunas que normalmente se conocen como "Pericentrales" y "Periféricas" de la región Metropolitana (Lo Prado, San Bernardo y Maipú), cuyos mandantes o dueñas/os se inscriben en lo que estadísticamente se define como la clase media, transformándose así en un compendio atípico dentro de la disciplina de la arquitectura. De esta manera, la publicación propone una discusión crítica sobre la producción de la vivienda, y no de cualquier vivienda, sino de las más comunes de todas y, paradójicamente, menos abordadas desde el campo editorial y de divulgación en el área, como pueden ser las operaciones sobre la vivienda de y para los sectores medios.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dostercios editorial
• Release date: Dec 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9789566142126

Book preview

© Fabiola González

© Yair Estay

© Text: the authors

© Dostercios

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, whether it’s electronic, chemical, mechanical or optical –including recording or photocopying- without prior authorization of the authors.

I.S.B.N: 978-956-6142-02-7

I.S.B.N digital: 978-956-6142-12-6

Editors: Ignacio A. Sáez Araneda and Patricio I. Zeiss Pérez

Management and production: Dostercios and Taller25

Graphic direction: Taller25

Graphic production: Emilio Cid and Catalina Lavanderos

Editorial design: Ignacio A. Sáez Araneda

Transcriptions: Benjamín Laura and Bárbara Gaete

Proofreading: David Romero

Photographs: Marcelo Plaza, Carlo Hevia Riera and Taller25 archive

Translation: Diego Campos

Digital layout: ebooks Patagonia

www.ebookspatagonia.com

[e-mail]

INDEX

TALLER25: THE CRAFT AND THE OFFICE

Gabriela García de Cortázar

ENCARGOS COMUNES

Problems among architecture, housing and contemporary Chilean middle class.

NEW HOME

Labarra House

REFORMATION

Lucía House

ENLARGEMENT

Corner House

NOTHING COMMON EVERYTHING PARTICULAR

Expressions of instability and change

HOLDING AND EXPANDING THE DISCUSSION:

An open talk on architecture, housing and contemporary Chilean middle class.

Gonzalo Carrasco, Taller25

Taller25: THE CRAFT AND THE OFFICE

Gabriela García de Cortázar¹

Taller25, conformed by Fabiola González and Yair Estay, is an architecture office. They design buildings, take part in the architectural debate, teach in different universities and now, they have published a book about their work. Each of these activities, that may well belong to a traditional practice, are formulated to be carried out from a periphery. For instance, with this book they have taken on the challenge that the publication of part of their work implies a responsibility of reflecting on Chilean architecture, defining their position in relation to what they call hegemonic discourse. Equally, they take for granted that distance in relation to the other aspects that define their practice. In other words (paraphrasing Juan Herreros), they have appropriated –although maybe not necessarily in a consciously manner²- the idea that the construction of their own practice is a project in itself: each of the activities they cultivate in Taller25 demonstrates that they stand, as Herreros says, in a useful way, and necessarily in accordance with the time in which they have to operate.

Fabiola González and Yair Estay are architects graduated from the now extinct Universidad de Arte y Ciencias Sociales ARCIS. After briefly working for other people, in 2014 they received their first commission, C House, in Villarrica, whose exceptional conditions (comfortable budget, creative freedom and extended deadlines) allowed them to imagine themselves practising their profession in an independent way. When they were working in that project, they received the commission of the house in the borough of Lo Prado, which inaugurated what would later become the Encargos Comunes Series and Research. At that time they decided to open an architecture office in Barrio Yungay. After the house in Lo Prado they got the commission of the house in San Bernardo, and after that, the one of the house in Maipú, which hurried the need for formulating the project that was being opened ahead of them. As their commissions were being carried out as designs, Taller25 was also naming and defining the scope of the project niche: small commissions, in peri-central or peripheral boroughs, whose architectural answer fits generally in the category of minor work. This would allow them to enter an area where traditionally architecture offices did not reach.

At the same time they dedicate themselves to developing these projects, they were establishing collaborative and contact networks with colleagues and contemporaries, in Chile and the rest of Latin America. Taller25 is an office that defines itself in conversation with others, since their work is not just the building, but the formulation, reflection and systematization of what has been carried out, through words and public doings. These conversations began to take place first at the Latin American level (for instance, with their participation in the 10th version of the Festival Internacional de Arquitectura de Venezuela, or the Bienal de Buenos Aires, both in 2017) and then, at their request, at the local level. Along with Nicolás Valencia, Taller25 has developed the series #XFORMAS, creating a platform of conversations that explores the tension between a dispassionate view of the architects’ work (in opposition to vocation, or genius) with the expansion of the possibilities of contemporary practice. In this series, Taller25 has made public their interest in exchanges, creating the scene at the same time they participate in it, and turning conversations towards academy, practice and the market.

Teaching is also key to Taller25 since, in their way of seeing things, it’s a space that allows for experimentation and research, as well as for new approaches to the questions they deal with in the professional sphere. In the workshop des_VINCULADOS (FAU, Universidad de Chile, 2018), they asked: Does architecture exists in middle class?, exploring the possibilities of designing houses with limited budgets, while in their current participation in UDLA they utilize alterations in order to question the definition of the ways of living in of contemporary middle class. What they work in the classroom is directly related to their questions as designers, outlining teaching as a way of looking at the old with new eyes; teaching allows them to present a question, opening it up to others’ speculation and receiving new points of view.

Taller 25 has done this in no more than ten years, more or less: they have found a project niche interesting to the discipline and sustainable in economic terms; they have formulated and made public their intellectual project; they have built bridges with teaching and the discipline’s reflection process; they have participated in –an even created- a certain local and Latin American scene; they have established a self-conscious practice, and they have taken a position. What are they doing now? Taller25 is working in the production of another