Chilean architectural field in analysis: the policies of promotion to the Consejo nacional de la cultura y las Artés and the generation of the 90

Abstract

The present research studies the recent process of the Chilean architectural field, titled by critics like "generation of the 90"; and which refers to the great and positive visibility that contemporary Chilean architecture receives both by the criticism of the country and internationally. Seeking to understand this process as well as to complement the discourse disseminated by the critics, the research tries to point out a set of structural logics of the Chilean architectural field that strengthen it contemporaneously both internally and in other social spheres - with emphasis on the political scenario. In this course of strengthening the field, the architecture passes through valuing instances whose criteria are of a projective, economic and imaginary order, contributing to the increase of the representativeness of the architecture on a national scale.In order to contemplate spaces of legitimation of this architecture both for the political field and for the architectural field, this research intends to look at the contests managed within the Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y las Artes (CNCA) of Chile since the foundation of a specific department for the promotion of architecture in 2011 within this ministry. We will analyze the criteria that legitimize and qualify this production as well as the discourses about architecture perceived both through the management decisions within the ministry and through the historiography about the "generation of the 90s."