Built convictions While some canonical writings have already established his legendary status 21 , there is several ways in which the work of Kulczewski has not been valued: the city as a scene, the productive relationship between art and architecture, and the value of labor as a social act of architecture. Tafuri said that an “analysis able to reconstruct the event in its most acute and unique character, to restore to the emergence of the event its disruptive condition” 22 is always necessary. As it has been presented, the way he conceived the city is clearly distinctive since its architecture was a form of symbolic production of the new era of the big city. In some sense his stylistic adventures - so often highlighted - were anything but part of the search for a new language to represent the metropolitan dimension of the city and its time. Beyond the legend, his final contribution was in the formal and material constitution of a transcending artistic sense, which is rooted in the future not by anticipatory ability, but by the belief in the transformative power of architecture.
And it was this relationship between craft and the construction industry that explains the use of the decorative arsenal of Kulczewski. This constitutes a clear promotion of the decorative arts, part of the ideological construction regarding design and architecture in the pioneering currents of socialism of the nineteenth century. The intensive use of ornamental systems and their claim to a language at an urban scale is a clear ideological definition, which would correspond with the almost contemporary approaches the expressionist groups carriers of a socialist vision of the design of cities. Many of his stylistic approaches could have been dominated by an ideological interest in the relationship between craft and architectural production, closer to the ideas of an integrated vision than to the Decorative Arts of the French tradition. It is known that Kulczewski was one of the founders of the Socialist Party with Arturo Bianchi 16 , a fellow student of Architecture 17 , and co participant in the Student Center, the Federation of the Universidad de Chile, and with whom he had shared activism in the Socialist Order organization, a recognized Marxist collective close to the Social Democrats, probably under the influence of the international revolutionary trend of the late 1918. Although he never made his views explicit in programmatic or liminal texts, his ideas were reflected in his works. His ideological orientation, during his formative as well as his more productive years, is associated to the vision of individual creativity, especially artistic and strongly characterized, as an embodiment of the collective ideal. Moreover, the dimension of professional service and the value of architecture as a social act were reinforced with his work in public service, as administrator of the Mandatory Labor Insurance Fund between 1939 and 1940. From this position he promoted the construction of large groups of collective buildings, both in northern and central cities. His vision of the urban phenomenon was implemented in the selection of land for collective buildings in Arica, Iquique, Tocopilla and Antofagasta 18 . The developments in the North were designed by Aquiles Zentilli and his team at the Department of Architecture of the Fund. They transformed the already defined unit for the San Eugenio project and developed a form of urban clustering exceptionally attentive to the layout and landscape of the northern cities. The north was certainly a socialist electoral stronghold, where it was possible to implement an institutional action to put together the work of architecture and the conviction of a new form of labor, as evidenced by the relationship between unions and management during the construction of the buildings, at least in the case of Tocopilla. Also in his work as administrator he established a way to build the city, which assumed both the organization of labor in the building industry as well as the urban dimension of transformation through housing, which resulted in collective developments for northern workers. Another way to “help bring happiness and good life”. 20
(*) Maximiano Atria arquitecto y magíster en Arquitectura (PUC), secretario general de Docomomo Chile desde 2004. Autor y colaborador en diversas publicaciones especializadas. Profesor asistente de FAU y arquitecto
(*) Horacio Torrent es arquitecto, magíster y doctor en Arquitectura. Actualmente es profesor titular de la Escuela de Arquitectura de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile y presidente de Docomomo Chile.
director de La Oficina, agencia de arquitectura y gestión cultural.
Horacio Torrent is architect, MSc and PhD in
Maximiano Atria, architect and Master of Architecture (PUC), secretary general of Docomomo Chile since 2004. Author and contributor in various publications. Assistant teacher at FAU and director architect of La Oficina, architecture and cultural management agency.
Architecture. He currently teaches at the School of Architecture at the Catholic University of Chile and is President of Docomomo Chile.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
1 Torrent, Horacio. “Un parque para la gran ciudad del pacífico sur: Carlos Thays y el cerro San Cristóbal”. Villes en Parallèle; Université de Paris X – UNAM Mexico, 2015. 2 Aguirre, Max: “Imaginación Instintiva: la arquitectura de Luciano Kulczewski en el cerro San Cristóbal”, ARQ 34 Magazine, 1996, p. 13-18. 3 H.S.A.: “Construir”, Arquitectura y Arte Decorativo 11, July 1930, p. 467. 4 Guido Angel: Catedrales y rascacielos , Colegio Libre de Estudios Superiores de Buenos Aires, 1936. 5 “Problemas Urbanos: la altura de los edificios” Urban problems: the height of buildings (from El diario ilustrado ), Arquitectura y Arte Decorativo Vol. 1 – 11, July 1930. 6 Brünner, Karl: Santiago, la ciudad moderna , (Santiago, the Modern City) Imprenta La Tracción, Santiago, 1932. 7 Ferriss, Hugh: The Metropolis of Tomorrow, Ives Washburn Publisher, New York, 1929. 8 See Hidalgo, Rodrigo: "Vivienda social y espacio urbano en Santiago de Chile. Una mirada retrospectiva a la acción del Estado en las primeras décadas del Siglo XX”. EURE v.28 n.83, May 2002. 9 See: Harris, Ronald: “Luciano Kulczewski, arquitecto. Eclecticismo y procesos modernizadores en el Chile de la primera mitad del siglo XX”, (Luciano Kulczewski, architect. Eclecticism and modernizing processes in Chile in the first half of the twentieth century), doctoral thesis ETSAM Polytechnic University of Madrid, 2014 (Harris has established a systematic record of his work). 10 Unwin, Raymond: Town Planning in Practice (1909). 11 See Sitte Camilo: City Planning According to Artistic Principles (1889. 12 Burmeister, Enrique, interview. In: Riquelme, F. p.27. 13 Pampinella, Silvia (Comp.). Hilarión Hernández Larguía 1892/1978 . Ed. FAP and D-UNR, Rosario, 1993. 14 Swing: “La arquitectura moderna en Chile”, (Modern architecture in Chile), Arquitectura y Arte Decorativo , Vol. 1 – 6-7, October 1929.. 15 You can associate here some concerns such as Berlage’s own, or those in Wendingen magazine in the Netherlands, or Bruno Taut in the Germany during the years of the First World War I. 16 Dinamarca, Manuel: La república socialista chilena: orígenes legítimos del Partido Socialista (The Chilean socialist republic: the legitimate origins of the Socialist Party). Ediciones Documentas, Santiago, 1987. 17 AAVV: Ciento cincuenta años de enseñanza de la arquitectura en la Universidad de Chile, 1849 – 1999 (One hundred and fifty years of teaching architecture at the University of Chile), 1849 - 1999, University of Chile, Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, Santiago, 1999. 18 Galeno, Claudio : “Edificios colectivos de la Caja del Seguro Obrero Obligatorio, 1939-42”, (Collective buildings by the Workers Mandatory Insurance Fund, 1939-1942), Cuadernos de Arquitectura 10, Architecture Department of the North Catholic University, Antofagasta, 2009. 19 Galaz, Damir: Edificios colectivos de la Caja del Seguro Obrero Obligatorio de Tocopilla, 1939-41. Movimiento Moderno, solución social, (Collective buildings of the Workers Mandatory Insurance Fund of Tocopilla, 1939-1941. Modern Movement, social solution), Ediciones Retruecanosinversos, Tocopilla / Arica, 2011. 20 Burmeister, Enrique, interview. In: Riquelme, Fernando p.27. 21 Riquelme, Fernando: (The architecture of Luciano Kulczewski: an essay between eclecticism and modernism in Chile), Ediciones ARQ, School of Architecture Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Santiago, 1996. 22 Tafuri, Manfredo: The Sphere and the Labyrinth, Gili, Barcelona, 1984, p.8.
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