From the 1960s to the Present Day, Throughout Chile: Hotels and Government Policies By: Yves Besançon P.
Hotel Pucón in 1935, the Puerto Varas Hotel in 1936, and the Tejas Verdes Inn in 1937, designed by the company's Architecture Department and under the auspices of the Bonfanti National Hotel Organization. These were the first hotels to be widely publicized and were located outside the capital city of Santiago. In 1945, this organization was renamed Or- ganización Nacional Hotelera S.A. and continued to promote hotels in new destinations, such as the now-defunct Hotel Pacífico in Arica and Hotel Pedro de Valdivia in Valdivia (Cortes: 2014, 29). Since 1944, Ferrocarriles also participated in Consorcio Hotelero de Chile S.A., which was involved in the creation of hotels in the north of the country, creating a network that included, from 1947, the Turismo de Ovalle hotel, the Turismo Prat hotel in Iquique, the Turismo Francisco de Aguirre hotel in La Serena, and the Gran Hotel Turismo de Antofagasta in 1953, developed by architect Martín Lira (Galeno: 2008, 17). During this first phase, other municipal hotels were also built, such as the O'Higgins Hotel, by Collovich, Silva, and Barrisco in 1935, and the Miramar Hotel, by Landoff and Valenzuela in 1946, both located in Viña del Mar, which were part of the initiatives to give the resort an international standard. In Santiago, a key landmark was the Hotel Crillón, which, al- though built in 1919 by Alberto Siegel and Augusto Geiger, was converted into a hotel in the 1930s under private ownership. Finally, the Gran Hotel Carrera, built in 1937 by J. Smith Solar and J. Smith Miller, is located in the center of the capital opposite the Plaza de la Constitución, as part of the Barrio Cívico plan in Santiago. The latter was part of the Chilean Tourism and Hotel Society, which also managed the Hotel Ritz and Hotel Termas de Puyehue, the latter designed by the Freitag brothers in 1944. All these hotels were geared towards luxury stays, high occupancy rates, and bar, restaurant, and other associated services. They used rather eclectic architecture, which approached modernity with austerity, regularity, and abstract volumes. The typological change from these large-scale hotels to smaller hotels and inns took place in 1953, when the Production Development Corporation began to centrally operate the state-owned hotels of the aforementioned companies through Hotelera Nacional S.A., better known as HONSA (CORFO: 1962, 37). This put an end to the partic- ipation of Ferrocarriles, monopolizing the state hotel industry and modifying its scale through the creation of smaller hotels and other programs throughout Chile, this time located near highways. Notable among these are the Antumalal hotel by Jorge Elton from 1947-1950, the Chañaral inn and San Felipe inn by Bresciani Valdés, Castillo, and Huidobro from 1960, the Ancud and Castro inns by Emilio Duhart from 1962, and the Cavancha inn by Martín Lira from 1967. These establish- ments expanded the national network with smaller investments (Cortés, Saric, Puig: 1999, 145). 04. The Concerns about Social Tourism: Since the first quarter of the 20th century, vacations have been declared a social right through labor legislation in many European countries and also in Chile. From an architectural perspective, they had also been addressed in projects for the working class, such as the emblematic “Ciudad del Reposo y la Vacanza” (City of Rest and Vacation) of 1937, built by GATCPAC on the coast of Barcelona, or by the summer camps in fascist Italy. Furthermore, since the mid-20th century, they had been implemented through social tourism, territorial planning, and temporary housing policies in socialist Yugoslavia. Following this line of thinking, a concern for decent vacations for all social classes, and not just for the elite, also arose in the national context. For this reason, workers' vacation camps were organized from the late 1930s onwards by the various Popular Front governments. For example, during 1939 and 1940, collective holiday camps were opened in Quebrada Verde in Valparaíso and Lipingue in Los Lagos. However, these actions did not have any recognizable architectural consequences or projects. State-owned and private companies, such as mining compa-
nies, electric companies, laboratories, etc., also had support programs for their workers' vacations, who received medical care, nutritious food, and cultural activities at the camps (Yáñez: 2022, 8). The first known collective project was the Punta de Tralca resort designed by the Central Bank of Aguirre, Mönckeberg, Echavarría, and Briones in 1969. It consisted of a series of cabins for families, surround- ing public spaces such as dining rooms and lounges. In this sense, the center of the operation was to welcome the entire family into a space similar to that of a house, within a resort complex. This was also the case with the Popular Resort project created during the short period of the Popular Unity government, which was a result of social tourism development in our country, but on that occasion had a specific architectural design by Renato Enríquez. The Popular Tourism program was intended to meet the leisure needs of the lowest income sectors (Aguilar: 2003, 9). The project consisted of a camp of A-shaped buildings containing cabins for ten families. The buildings were arranged in different configurations and were accompanied by common dining rooms and bathrooms. At least 17 beach resorts were built near beaches between Arica and Lota. After the coup d'état, these were dismantled or confiscated, contradicting their original use and spirit (Cortés, Gam- barra, Evans: 2024). Years later, this approach was replicated in the Guallarauco Retire- ment Home and Holiday Camp project designed by Labarca and Rees for the Vicaría de la Solidaridad in 1978, where the idea of community life centered around public space was once again used. Conclusions: Current Tourism Projections: The spread of tourism as a social practice had at least three objectives in our country. On the one hand, to colonize and recognize the vast territory; on the other, to reinforce the patriotic spirit by promoting its landscapes; and finally, to provide time and space for decent vacations, responding to the need for rest and contact with nature. Currently, concerns about the relationship between tourism and architecture have deepened the focus on the natural landscape, rather than on the typological definition that characterized the 20th century. Chile's current tourism development is characterized by high-qual- ity architectural facilities that enrich the exclusive offering. These are works where the project themes are based on the remote, extreme, and uninhabited landscapes where they are located, which underpins both the strategy of their location and the formal and programmatic development of their solutions. One of the most representative examples of these new concerns is undoubtedly the Las Termas Geométricas project, where red walk- ways arranged in a random pattern ascend through the center of the ravine, overcoming the gentle slope and forming pools from which steam emanates. Four hotels share the same commitment to creating an atmosphere in the natural landscape: the TierraAtacama hotel by Matías González and Rodrigo Searle in San Pedro de Atacama, the Sirena hotel by WMR in Curanipe, and the Remota hotel by Germán del Sol in Torres del Paine. In all of them, the landscape and location are essential elements, with the structures spread across the territory using strategies that combine complex geometries and references to local conditions. In terms of heritage, Pedro Kovacic's Singular Patagonia hotel involves a National Monument: the cold storage facility of Sociedad Explotadora de Tierra del Fuego. The austerity of the intervention, as well as the structure´s heritage rescue and industrial pieces, gives the location a historical significance that completes the experience, evoking the glorious past of Puerto Bories (Cortés: 2015, 59). In these works, as in many others today, architecture takes on an un- usual prominence, deploying architectural strategies that enhance the surrounding landscape and are themselves understood as fundamental elements of the tourist experience. !
then the community of Las Condes, now the community of Providencia. With its 22,000 m², the property offered a great opportunity for an in- ternational-level hotel. It had 383 rooms, 43 suites, restaurants, a bar, and a convention center, as well as an extensive garden and swimming pool. During those years, the Sheraton was the main hub of activity for politicians and executives, as well as for social events and conventions. Its architecture, designed as a six-story horizontal building, took the form of two wings connected by a central section that housed the lobby and vertical circulation to access the upper floors. Its facade was designed with a sustainable orientation concept to make better use of sunlight and views by faceting the windows of each room, creating a repetitive and harmonious rhythm. At the end of the 1970s, a new and risky venture by the Villanueva family purchased 11,000 m² of land on Alameda Bernardo O'Higgins, where the demolished San Borja Hospital had once stood. The project was commissioned to ABWB Arquitectos in 1978. It was conceived as a two-story commercial building with 20 floors of hotel rooms (16 per floor) and eight suites on the top floor. Featuring a large entrance courtyard to allow drop-off and access for vehicles and tour buses. The second level contained the main areas, such as restaurants, a bar, a nightclub, and convention rooms, above which were tennis courts, a gym, and a spa. This initiative was an effort to revitalize a central area that was already showing signs of deterioration and neglect, which remains valid to this day. In addition to the above, it is important to note that the building is set above Metro Line 1, as the tunnel crosses the land diagonally from west to east with a structural solution that straddles the tunnel without touching it. Once opened in 1981 for the Crowne Plaza chain, the hotel survived the crisis and recession of 1981-1982 until 2023, the year in which it became the first Le Méridien brand hotel by Marriott in South America. A decade later, thanks to the foreign debt restructuring process devised by the government, Arab businessman Gaith Pharaon became interested in building a high-end five-star hotel in Santiago. Real estate manager Juan Carlos Bengolea put together a team to carry out the project and found a 27,000 m² plot of land at the former Pérez Zujovic roundabout at the intersection of Presidente Kennedy, Américo Vespucio, and Alonso de Córdova avenues in the Las Condes community. The hotel would become a Grand Hyatt, part of the chain with the same name, whose owners award the Pritzker Prize, known as the Nobel Prize of Architecture. ABWB Arquitectos was hired for this project, with interior design entrusted to the office of architect Mario Paredes and architect Paula Gutiérrez. The Hyatt concept imposed two aspects that had to be considered in the project: an equivalent panoramic view for all rooms and a lobby void the entire height of the building. The central body is designed as a cylindrical volume with a 100-meter-high atrium in the center topped by a large glass dome. The corridors leading to the 17 rooms on each floor are located around this 18-meter-diameter space. This large atrium opens to the west with a large curtain wall win- dow anchored to a stereometric steel structure with a panoramic view of the Los Leones Golf Club. With a total of 51,000 m² of floor space, it has 310 rooms, 12 suites, a bar, restaurants, a two-level convention center, a large swimming pool, and an outdoor restaurant, as well as a gym and spa. The project helped to bring scale to the area and led to the arrival of other hotels such as the Kennedy Hotel and the Double Tree Hilton Hotel. It also brought office buildings such as the CV, facing the old towers of the San Luis redevelopment from the 1970s. The hotel would be operated by the Mandarin Oriental chain in 2018. The Hyatt chain would later operate two other hotels, the Hyatt Centric on Enrique Foster Street—by Vicuña+Kutzner Architects—and the Hyatt Place by Turner Architects on Américo Vespucio Avenue in Vitacura. In the early 2000s, the Intercontinental and Ritz Carlton hotel chains opened hotels in the Las Condes community. The first was an extension of the old Sonesta Hotel on Luz Street towards Vitacura Avenue, with
It was in the 1960s when President Eduardo Frei Montalva, in an act of statesmanship, contacted businessman Carlos Vial Espantoso, who had extensive experience in real estate, to ask him to oversee the con- struction of a five-star, international-class hotel for the city of Santiago. The hotels of similar standing at that time were no longer able to meet the demand of a country that was opening up to the world. Isolated by the Andes mountain range, Chile needed to overcome its isolation and geographical remoteness by offering better hotel services. The Crillón Hotel, opened in 1931—a jewel of neoclassical architecture designed by architects Alberto Siegel and Augusto Geiger and located in the heart of the city—was a hotel that brought together Santiago's society and intellectual bohemia with unique luxury. Together with the Carrera Hotel, designed by architects Josué Smith Solar and José Smith Miller, located in the Plaza de la Constitución next to the Ministry of Fi- nance, also designed by the same architects, and opened in 1940, these were the capital's international-style hotels. However, neither offered the services and facilities that demanding foreign visitors required, such as gardens and outdoor swimming pools, spacious convention halls, and views of the Andes mountains and the landscapes of the central valley. This is how the Sheraton San Cristóbal Hotel came to be, commis- sioned to architects Ernesto Barreda and Sergio Alemparte, founders of the ABWB Arquitectos firm in 1953. In 1965, the supply of hotel beds in Santiago was very scarce, numbering only 2,250 units. This hotel was originally intended to be a Hilton Hotel, but soon after, International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT), owner of the Sheraton chain, became interested in establishing a presence in Santiago. It opened in 1970. The following year, the newly elected socialist government of the Popular Unity party attempted to convert the luxury hotel into a hospital, which was not possible given the original structure that did not allow free access to beds through the corridors and room doors. As a result, given the expropriation policy that was implemented as public policy during the government of Salvador Allende, in which the payment for expropriation could not be taken out of the country but had to be reinvested in Chile, ITT, which was expropriated that year, decided to acquire the building in which its hotel chain operated. With financing from the Production Development Corporation (CORFO), a plot of land was chosen on the southern slope of the Metropolitan Park hills, which had originally been a quarry in the western sector of Pedro de Valdivia Norte in what was
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