Chilean Pavilion

Monolith Controversies

A reinforced concrete panel is the star of the show

The anterior room of the Chilean Pavilion is dressed as a domestic hallway, with the typical personal trappings of many a South American home. There's the shrine-like arrangement of family portraits against florid wallpaper, with the youngest members sharing pride of place with the deceased; then, the sober furniture protected by gaily coloured fabric runners; the proudly gleaming cabinet full of kitsch and Catholic knick-knacks. It's a piece of stage-set; the accumulated material and emotional ties of a particular life; in this case, the life of one Mrs Silvia Gutierrez, in the KPD Housing Project at Viña del Mar.

The real story of the Chilean Pavilion revolves around a reinforced concrete panel that stands alone in the second room. This panel is one of several types manufactured by the KPD concrete panel factory in Quilpué -- that factory was a gift from the Soviet Union. The Chilean KPD (a corruption of the Russian term for large concrete panel) factory produced the prefabricated components for no less than 153 buildings, most of which were four-storey apartment blocks for social housing. The factory was shut down shortly after the US-backed coup yoked the country to a military dictatorship for 27 years.

A typical Chillean home is recreated in the pavillions anterior room.

On the walls are dozens of diagrams, stoically demonstrating the deployment of KPD-style concrete panels used in 28 housing projects across the world; the curators Pedro Alonso and Hugo Palmarola estimate that after the end of Second World War, no fewer than 170 million apartments were built using similar concrete panel systems.