Words by Herbert Wright

Chile

Architecture Cristián Undurraga, Underraga Deves Arquitectos
Area 1,910 sq m

Chile's pavilion takes a striking form: a four-storey, 78m-long box defined by open diagrids of thick structural pine beams, floating one storey above ground. Below it is Chile's reception, food retail and restaurant. The exhibition area is a three-storey opaque box within the outer box. It is accessed by a travelator that tunnels through the structure, evoking a mine shaft (Chile has many), but filled with a sad song.

Inside the inner box, Chile has taken the cinematic approach to showing off its countryside, and a little of its digital wizardry too. Big deal, you may say, but with scenery as spectacular as Chile's, projected on an epic-sized screen, it's hard not to be impressed. A ramp between the inner and outer boxes takes you down to the ground floor food area.

The portfolio of Santiago-based Underraga contains a similar-looking building, but tall not long: the 15-storey Torre Consistorial Las Condes (2003), in his home town. In Milan, he has brilliantly bridged the modernist box form with contemporary parametric design in that diagrid, and made it a carbon-neutral structure. The box makes a powerful statement, and with the cooking below, it smells good too.