Reflection and exploration from the visual features of the project A walk through the projects and works of Mauricio Despouy reveals certain recurrent operations. The architect reiterates formulas and methods in a continuous coming and going that express a permanent search for the premises and certainties that will carry him throughout his professional life, and that somehow will endow a common feature to his entire architectural production. Despouy stated that as part of its working method, intuition is a valid component in addressing the different issues raised by each commission. In this sense, it is only perhaps the perception of form and the management of its proportions one of the constant features accompanying his work and giving his buildings a specific architectural quality. In 1935, in the first issue of Arquitectura magazine, the discourse of modernity changed the tone of local architectural discussion. This was the first Chilean publication to adopt the more aggressive and radical militant modern discourse. It coincided with the first of Despouy’s work, then 27. The Oliveras building on Huelén Street is part of a series of buildings in which Despouy adopts a modern language, although more a reproduction of an upcoming fashion or style. In this regard, Andrés Téllez says the modern style was considered just another option, and used superficially to achieve a certain effect without involving a profound transformation of the architectural language (17). Despouy reiterated this attitude in projects like the Cervantes Cinema lobby and the residential building on 26 Lastarria Street, which is most evident in the design of doors, lamps and interiors. For example, the interiors of the apartment for Don Hipólito Oliveras in the Huelén building were covered with moldings, cornices and wooden ornaments, still considered necessary to provide “distinction” to the apartments. The same occurs in the Lastarria Street building façade, whose stonework grid fills the plane of the façade and recalls the finishing details of the façade for the Swiss Pavilion by Le Corbusier at the University of Paris or the façade on the preliminary drawings for the Otto Wagner Villa. The influence of architectural magazines in these early generations of “modern architects” was undoubtedly essential for the development of modernity in Chile. They were the accessible way to learn about the work of the pioneer architects and the typological, technical and also morphological innovations of their works. As a catalog for formal and constructive resources, these publications and their images provided the architects with concrete material for their own interpretation of modernity. The first projects have an experimental character in the way they result from these interpretations. In this regard, the constant reference to other architectures through the permanent adaptation of the models stands out in the work of Despouy, sometimes, as we have seen, with quite obvious connections. Through trial and testing of archetypes, materials and shapes, Despouy is able to move freely throughout the wide range of means and ways of understanding modernity. The large number of projects, the diversity of scale and variety of functional programs gave his work a very personal character, as he himself declared, close to experimentation (8). Although there is no chronological progression of the operations and resources he used, we find a first variation in the Cifuentes House. And more radically still, in the building on 649 Agustinas Street, where he is able to completely remove all trace of ornament, solving the façade with a series of regularly arranged windows, as Adolf Loos did in the Goldman & Salatsch building at the Michaelerplatz in Vienna (1911). This same language is repeated in buildings such as the commercial galleries on Providencia Avenue corner of Pedro de Valdivia Street (note the remarkable canopy set outside of the line of façade, allowing the shopping arcade entrance
Edificio Agustinas, Santiago,1943 y Sastrería Goldman & Salatsch, Adolf Loos, Michaelerplatz, Viena 1910-11. / Agustinas Building, 1943 and Goldman & Salatsch Tailors by Adolf Loos, Vienna.
Edificio de viviendas Galerías de Providencia, Santiago, 1946. / Residential Building, Arcade in Providencia, Santiago, 1946.
Edificio de viviendas, calle Namur, Santiago. / Namur Residential Building , Santiago.
to integrate the street and the sidewalk into the inner commercial circulation); and the Namur Street building, a discreet and appropriate companion to the outstanding building by León Prieto Casanova. He would soon explore mechanisms to promote more complex visual features in the resolution of the façades, and after mastering the constructive aspects, start creating situations with a thickness capable of providing shade. The visual feature in the work of Despouy appears as a constant element over the void, recognized in the attention to proportion and in the subtle efforts made to provide shading.
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