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possible roles of women
architects in the materialization
of architecture in chile
Keywords
Woman
Profession
Visibility
Feminism
#MeToo
Despite having re-emerged strongly in
2018, the debate on the role of women
in society is not new. Neither is in
architecture. Based on a research work
conducted 18 years ago, the following
text reflects on the invisibility of women
in arq’s history and, from there, on the
way we understand the discipline and
the profession.
I n the year 2000, before the #MeToo era and the so-called fourth-wave feminism, one of my jobs
was to work in a rq’s editorial production. Although a
woman directed the journal – Montserrat Palmer – it
had scarcely published buildings by Chilean women
architects.1 In parallel, after five years of being an
assistant and three more years collaborating in various
classes, I had finally achieved my first independent
course at the School of Architecture of the Pontificia
Universidad Católica de Chile, the third year Research
Studio, an optional studio. Its main goal was (and still is)
to develop a controlled disciplinary research exercise,
where the work is intended to acquire a collective
dimension (usually by addressing a common topic
Jaime Besa, Hilda Carmona Low. Facultad de
Ciencias Físicas y Matemáticas, Campus San
Joaquín u c , Santiago, 1961. Fuente / Source:
Revista Auca 6–7 (ago.1966). En la leyenda sólo
se menciona a Besa como autor. / Captions only
mention Besa as the author.
Abraham Schapira, Raquel Eskenazi, León Messina.
Edificio Ultramar, Viña del Mar, 1965. Fotografía /
Photo Eduardo Waissbluth.
Santiago Aguirre, Inés Frey. Edificio Pecchi,
Concepción, 1944. Fotografía / Photo Patricia Silva.
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r o M y he c h t Ma r c h a n t
Profesora Titular, Escuela de Arquitectura
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile,
Santiago, Chile
developed from exemplary cases) while taking part
in a collaborative research effort focused on Chilean
architecture, urban planning, and landscape.
At that time I already had an incipient – and
precarious – interest in landscape studies, but I resisted
delving into them because of the prejudice concerning its
supposed connotation as an area of knowledge of plants
and flowers and, therefore, belonging to the female
field. In the same terms, I was disturbed by the fact that,
when going through publications aimed at reviewing
the causes – i.e. characters and buildings – behind the
materialization of architecture in Chile, the presence of
women architects appeared as diminished, even when
at first glance the access to professional studies already
approached a ratio of 1:1 between men and women.
Without going any further, in what constitutes in
my opinion the most comprehensive review on national
architectural production written so far, at least between
1925 and 1965, Humberto Eliash and Manuel Moreno
only name seven practicing women professionals: Inés
Frey Bruggemann, Montserrat Palmer Trias, Yolanda
Schwartz Apfel, Angela Schweitzer Lopetegui, Margarita
Pisano Fisher, Iris Valenzuela Alarcón and Ana María
Barrenechea.2 Against this background, I suggested
a studio that systematically studied and unveiled the
work of a group of women during the above-indicated
period of time. This, from the belief – or stubbornness
Gabriela González, Edmundo Buddemberg.
Escuela de Medicina de la Universidad de
Concepción, Concepción, 1946. Fotografía /
Photo Arturo Lyon.
Luz Sobrino. Edificio San Martín 728,
Concepción, 1966. Fotografía / Photo
Camila Martin.
Hugo Gaggero, Margarita Pisano.
Casa Gaggero Pisano, Santiago, 1962.
Fotografía / Photo Ronald Ruiz.
Yolanda Schwartz. Anteproyecto
Concurso. Remodelación Bellavista
(mención honrosa), Valparaíso, 1969.
Reconstrucción / model by Ariel Chiang.
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T – that such production had somewhat contributed to
the development of modern architecture in Chile, thus
responding to the demands of urban transformation
based on new architectural-institutional / housing /
recreational parameters and experiments.
With the purpose of ordering and limiting the work,
I established three constraints as a starting point for
background search: first, to use the book Arquitectura y
modernidad en Chile 1925/1965: una realidad múltiple (1989)
as a source on the different moments that characterized
the implementation of modern architecture in our
country; second, to reduce the selection of possible case
studies to the same period of time proposed by Eliash
and Moreno; and, third, to limit the field of study to those
women graduated from the Universidad de Chile and the
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, considering that
they already provided 89 and 18 names respectively.
Although gender issues were not part of my repertoire
back then, I must admit that it was not easy to approach
the studio, as there was a certain initial reluctance
from the students to develop the exercise, given the
difficulty of acknowledging any female leader among
Chilean architects. And, objectively speaking, it was a
valid concern facing the inability to establish whether
women were capable of producing a work that allows any
of them to become a sort of ‘master’ for its peers, who,
undoubtedly, need certain accessible and measurable
parameters to develop a profession based on the intuition
of design, and that is taught by attributing to that act
the same degree of relevance – even when whoever has
e d i f i c i o m a n a n t i a l e s
Luis Izquierdo, Antonia Lehmann,
José Domingo Peñafiel, Raimundo Lira
1999
Publicado en / Published in
a r q 45 (julio, 2000): 17-20
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established a professional practice knows how many
other tools are needed in order to survive in the field. To
vindicate the female genre within a ‘Star System’ based
on what was defined by consensus as good architecture
could not be further from my initial statement – to
identify, objectively, possible roles of women architects
by recognizing a work that had persisted in time. In
other words, my question was, simply and paraphrasing
Eliash and Moreno, whether Chilean architecture between
1925 and 1965 had actually constituted a ‘multiple reality’
in terms of those who built that modernity.
Methodologically, 27 architects were first identified
from the original list of 107 women, considering whether
their biographical or documentary background was
accessible.3 Then, the students Fabiola Carreño, Ariel
Chiang, Gonzalo Claro Riesco, Carolina Contreras,
Arturo Lyon Gottlieb, Camila Martin, Ismael Rengifo
Streeter, Pablo Ropert, Daniel Rosenberg, Ronald
Ruiz, Patricia Silva, Macarena Vergara, Eduardo
Waissbluth and Angélica Zabala Núñez selected from
that initial group those professionals with more than
two built works and devoted themselves to establish a
professional-biographical account of them – including
education, influences, travels, publications, works, and
projects; placing them within the historical context of
Chilean modern architecture development and thus, in
turn, in a larger context.4
As a result of a task that ultimately became
extremely enthusiastic, it was possible to identify
Raquel Eskenazi Rodrich, working within the Schapira-
g a l e r í a pat r i c i a r e a dy
Luis Izquierdo, Antonia Lehmann,
Mirene Elton, Mauricio Léniz
2008
Publicado en / Published in
a r q 70 (diciembre, 2008): 50-55
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T Eskenazi-Messina office, as a key agent in the
definition of a modern coastline in Viña del Mar and in
incorporating the balcony as an intermediate space in
the district of Providencia. Margarita Pisano Fisher, who
together with Hugo Gaggero built a local version of the
‘Wrightian’ proposal in the house in Pedro de Valdivia
Norte. Inés Frey Bruggemann (acting independently or
with her husband, Santiago Aguirre) and her modern
interior designs in two houses in Santiago, or the new
structural architectures in Concepción after the 1939
earthquake. Luz Sobrino Sánz, operating in that same
city, with an operation of infilling the urban grid through
over 80 buildings. The scope of formalization of modern
social postulates in the design of Inés de Suárez Park,
by Ana María Barrenechea and team; the technological
innovation of the School of Medicine at the Universidad
de Concepción by Gabriela González de Groote and
Edmundo Buddemberg; and the experimentation with
the language of metabolism in the competitions of
the late 60s developed by Yolanda Schwartz Apfel.
Or the role of the latter in the furniture-structure
symbiosis at her home in the district of La Reina.
Victoria Maier Mayer’s late transfer of modern ideas
to the local scene, two decades after her trip to
Vienna in 1930. Or the possibilities of understanding
the landscape project as a synthesis of urbanization
processes and natural systems in the proposals of
Hilda Carmona Low and Jaime Besa for the Faculty
of Engineering in San Joaquín and two developments
in the district of Vitacura, both in Santiago.
e d i f i c i o p l a z a
p e d ro m o n t t
Cecilia Puga
2005
Publicado en / Published in
a r q 61 (diciembre, 2005): 68-73
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EIt seems to me that this brief description is an actual
evidence of the roles played by Barrenechea, Carmona,
Frey, González, Maier, Pisano, Schapira, Schwartz
and Sobrino in building modern architecture in Chile,
characterizing areas of professional expertise that until
now are characteristic of the discipline: teaching or
research activities and public positions – although scarcely
within the head ones – together with a practice in the
private sphere, most of the time within a non-autonomous
system, that is, associated to a relative or as part of a
larger team.
Eighteen years after the completion of the research
studio, and faced with the self-imposed exercise of
reviewing the first 99 issues of a rq with the same
criteria used in 2000, I believe that you – male or
female reader – would be surprised. While it seems
that the new century has brought with it new
possibilities regarding the necessary recognition of
female participation in the professional sphere, my
review shows quite the opposite. If we exclude the
publication of final degree projects and/or studio
results, works outside Chile, participation in montages
and/or ephemeral exhibitions, essays, interviews and/or
critical analyzes (and works by the former editor of the
magazine until 2010), it is only possible to identify seven
names with more than two different works built locally.5
The first reference under these parameters appears
in 1994 with Paulina Courard, who through the proposal
of parks and urban walks developed within the office
Teodoro Fernández Arquitectos, has become a silent
g i m n a s i o m u n i c i pa l
d e s a l a m a n c a
Mario Carreño, Piera Sartori
2016
Publicado en / Published in
a r q 95 (abril, 2017): 118-125
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c a s a s m u s e o d e l o m at ta
(co n c u r s o, p r i m e r p r e m i o)
Luis Izquierdo, Antonia Lehmann
1994
Publicado en / Published in
a r q 28 (diciembre, 1994): 32-33
s a l a d e d e g u s tac i ó n
Paulina Courard
2002
Publicado en / Published in
a r q 54 (julio, 2003): 34-35
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pa rq u e i n é s d e s uá r e z
Teodoro Fernández,
Paulina Courard
1993
Publicado en / Published in
a r q 26 (mayo, 1994): 11-15
a r q 34 (diciembre, 1996): 44-45
t r e s pa rq u e s
Alberto Montealegre,
Myriam Beach
1995
Publicado en / Published in
a r q 34 (diciembre, 1996): 36-38
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in Chile6. Something similar happens with Myriam
Beach in the work developed with her husband Alberto
Montealegre; however, their contributions to the debate
on the role of landscape projects are synthetically
captured in a single 1996 issue7, analogous to that of
Margarita Murtinho and María José Castillo in the
experiments on housing developed at the beginning of
the 1990s with Francisco Vergara8. These are followed
by Antonia Lehmann Scasi-Buffa, the only one to receive
along with her husband, Luis Izquierdo Wachholtz,
the National Architecture Award and who has been
exceptionally recognized as an operative individual
within an over 30-years joint practice thanks to the
construction of multiple institutional and housing
buildings, in addition to a hundred single-family houses9.
Cecilia Puga Larrain, on the other hand, is reflected in
her persistent ability to reveal the solidness of structures
and materials in buildings as part of an unusual practice,
at least according to a rq standards: mostly working
independently or, sometimes, leading teams.10 Finally
emerges Piera Sartori del Campo, who along with her
husband Mario Carreño Zunino has developed over
the last decade a consistent practice, linking location,
budget, and construction of a continuous relationship
between interior and exterior space.11 Interestingly
enough, Sartori has not needed an action re-affirmative
of her role, undoubtedly due to the renowned
performance in the field of design that both had during
their time in Lo Contador.
e d i f i c i o l o f t p l a z a b r a s i l
Francisco Vergara, María José Castillo,
Margarita Murtinho
1997
e d i f i c i o p l a z a y u n g ay
Francisco Vergara, María José Castillo,
Margarita Murtinho
1999
Publicado en / Published in
a r q 42 (julio, 1999): 39-40
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EIt is true that every publication has an editorial bias,
specifically in the case of a journal that has sought to
position itself as ‘the’ organism of dissemination of
Chilean architecture.Through the publishing of a certain
range of ideological debates associated, for example,
with class inequality in urban distribution, gentrification,
and housing policies, over the last years arq has tried
to redefine architectural practice. It has also sought
to influence a redistribution of design’s influence
over education by discussing, for example, the social
responsibilities of Chilean professionals and by proposing
an alignment of practice with new technologies.
Without necessarily falling into the easy way out
(such as an eventual quota of pages according to
gender), I look forward to the possibility of making
an approach to a group scarcely represented in the
hundred published issues. If we go back to my students’
issues in the year 2000, perhaps one could reflect not
so much on the causes behind invisibility, but rather
on the consequences of a silent participation in the
materialization of Chilean architecture.12 Such absence
has triggered, for instance, prejudices within the female
genre itself, convinced at times that leadership can only
be found in the management of professional offices,
in the production of the domestic sphere or in the
so-called landscape work (without going any further,
consider the early opinion of this author). And if we
assess our own evolution and actions within the local
context, we will undoubtedly find painful discriminatory
experiences caused by those who are unable to handle
their hypothetical power or respect those who have
not been praised as gurus by their peers. Perhaps, then,
one of the following hundred issues of the magazine
could risk producing high-level critique on the work of
women architects, regardless of their professional links,
and thus open a discussion on the interest of the work
that’s done and its contribution, modest but real, to the
transformation of Chilean architecture. ARQ
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Notas / Notes
1 Up to issue 43 (Nov. 1999) there are 26 published works by female
authors, either independently or associated. See “arq Magazine
Historical Archive 1980-2000” (2015), Ediciones a r q (Sept. 2018)
2 Mentions can be found in the following chapters: “Los escenarios
del cambio” [Scenarios of Change] (1989:38-40), in which a review
of important buildings in the 1940s, mentions “the houses in
Sánchez Fontecilla by Santiago Aguirre and Frey [Inés]”; “Causas
y efectos” [Causes and Effects] (1989:46), where in relation to the
mechanisms of contact with foreign models, the text indicates the
opportunity that architects had to study or work with international
modern masters, among them, “M[ontserrat]. Palmer with Coderch
y Martorell, Bohigas, Mackay”; and in “Le Corbusier: una influencia
aparentemente dominante” [Le Corbusier: An Apparently Dominant
Influence] (1989:66), where it is indicated that: “[...] subsequent
generations – although they never completely abandoned the purely
iconographic references – eased the contradictions between image
and content, or between form and structure. A second moment of
influence was thus configured, in which the transcription of images
is followed by a reworking of architectural, urban and constructive
types. Exposed concrete appears, together with seismic calculation,
new urban proposals, as new opportunities to deploy the Corbusian
ideas in all of their dimensions and for better understanding the
own problems. It is the moment of singular works by Jorge Aguirre,
Enrique Gerbhard, Waldo Parraguéz, Costabal and Garafulic,
Zacarelli and Gacitúa, S. Aguirre and Inés Frey, etc. [...] At the end
of the 1950s and during the ‘60s, the most significant and mature
works of Corbusian pattern are found [...]. These successful examples
encourage younger generations within architectural circles to
insist on the Corbusian path. This is the case of [...] Yolanda
Schwartz (Schwartz House), Angela Schweitzer (Municipality
of Valdivia) [...]” (1989:67-68). In the chapter “Estados Unidos y
la modernización integral” [The United States and the Integral
Modernization] the influence of Wright is indicated through “Horacio
Borgheresi’s first houses, Hugo Gaggero and Margarita Pisano’s
house [...]” (1989:76). In “Chillán o el racionalismo pragmático”
[Chillán or the Pragmatic Rationalism], two documents appear
(1989:101): one is the press release “Arquitectos chilenos se dirigen
al urbanista señor Le Corbusier,” signed among others by Inés Frey,
supporting his visit for the city’s reconstruction. The other (1989:102)
is the list of professionals prepared in 1939 by the Intendancy of
Santiago to support the same effort. The list includes Frey (No. 2)
and Inés Floto (No. 25). The book also shows two photographs of the
Municipality of Valdivia, by Schweitzer (1989:68,157), another one of
the Cerrillos Airport in Santiago, by Iris Valenzuela (1989: 132), the
plan (1989:143) and a photograph (1989:164) of Merino House, by
Aguirre y Frey, and Universidad de Chile headquarters’ in Temuco by
Ana María Barrenechea, Osvaldo Cáceres, F. Ehijo, A. Rodríguez and
Yolanda Schwartz (1989:183). To the above-mentioned references,
it is interesting to add what’s indicated by Felicitas Klimpel (1962):
“The Architects Association has 99 women enrolled, a large part
of them work as architects in state agencies. This is a career that
attracts women. Many start these studies and even finish them, but
cannot get their diplomas given the elevated cost of the projects
they must submit before obtaining such degree. The following
work as architects at the Works Department in the Municipality of
Santiago: Ester Durán, Violeta del Campo, Mariana Valverde, Aída
Ramírez, Graciela Espinoza, Alicia Henot, and María T. Rojas M. In
the Ministry of Public Works, are: María Luisa Montecinos, Sara
Poldesch, and Iris Valenzuela. At the Housing Corporation work
the architects Elena Macho, Victoria Mayer, and María Schuman.
An architect of the Municipal Works Department in Arica is María
Luisa Barrios. The architects María Silva, Inés Araya, Esmeralda
Rojas, and Antonieta Motta work for the Railway Association. At
the Public Workers Association are: Graciela Marcos, Sofía Peralta
in Ancud; Luz Sobrino in Concepción, Angela Schweitzer in Valdivia.
In Santiago, the names of the architects Inés Frey, Aída Rivera, Inés
Floto, María Vergara, Amanda Godoy, Ana María Barrenechea, Elsa
Fuentes, and Marta Martínez are well known. María Rojas González
has designed and coordinated plenty of works. She is an assistant
in the course Descriptive Geometry at Universidad Católica and
surveyor at the Public Workers Association. Johanna Zeppelin
de Herrera was the head of Individual Construction at the State
Railways Association Fund until 1947” (Klimpel, 1962:173). To this
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Bibliografía / Bibliography
B E r k E L E y, Ellen Perry; m c q u a I D, Matilda (eds.), Architecture: A Place
for Women. Washington, D.c . : Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989.
E L I a S h , Humberto; m O r E n O, Manuel. Arquitectura y Modernidad
en Chile 1925/1965: una Realidad Múltiple. Santiago, Ediciones
Universidad Católica de Chile, 1989.
k L I m P E L , Felicitas. La Mujer Chilena (el Aporte Femenino al Progreso de
Chile) 1910-1960. Santiago, Editorial Andrés Bello, 1962.
reference – where, although no specific production is explicitly
stated, at least a considerable number of architects working in Chile
(36) are enumerated – it should also be added that between 1910 and
1960, 67 architects from the Universidad de Chile and 12 from u c
graduated.
3 See the lists in “Materialización de la Arquitectura Moderna en Chile
(1925-1965): Posibles roles de las arquitectos,” Research Studio School
of Architecture u c , Prof. Romy Hecht, Assitant Pedro Alonso (2nd
Term, 2000): 11-13.
4 The papers are available at General Collection Lo Contador u c
Library, Ref. 720.983 T147 (2º Sem. 2000).
5 I do not intend for the readers to agree with my criteria, but I
remind you that the exercise was to repeat the process of selecting
names according to the parameters deployed in the studio during
the year 2000.
6 See a r q 26 (May 1994):11–15 [reappears en a r q 34 (Dec. 1996):44–
45]; a r q 52 (Dec. 2002):30–33; a r q 54 (Jul. 2003):34–35; and a r q 99
(Aug. 2018):70–82.
7 See a r q 34 (Dec. 1996):36–38.
8 See a r q 42 (Jul. 1999):39–40. It is worth noting that Margarita
appears a third time, in a r q 24 (Sept. 1993):2–5.
9 See a r q 28 (Dec. 1994):32; a r q 31 (Dec. 1995):31–33; a r q 42 (Jul.
1999):41; a r q 45 (Jul. 2000):17–21; a r q 58 (Dec. 2004):31; and a r q 70
(Dec. 2008):50–55.
10 See a r q 51 (Jul. 2002): 47-53, a r q 61 (Dec. 2005): 60-73, a r q 67 (Dec.
2007): 52-59, a r q 84 (Aug. 2013): 28-33.
11 See a r q 50 (Mar. 2002): 64, a r q 60 (Jul. 2005): 24-27, a r q 66 (Aug.
2007): 76-81, a r q 71 (Apr. 2009): 72-75, a r q 93 (Aug. 2016): 62-67,
a r q 95 (Apr. 2017): 118-125.
12 Speaking from her own experience, Denise Scott Brown has already
produced an extensive debate on the possible reasons for female
invisibility in the profession. I suggest her first published piece
on the subject, “Room at the Top? Sexism and the Star System in
Architecture,” (Berkeley and McQuaid, 1989: 237-246). See also the
historiographical reconstruction of Margarita Pisano’s trajectory by
Alejandra Celedón and Gabriela García de Cortázar, a r q 95 (Mar.
2017):126-139.
Romy Hecht Marchant
Architect and Master in Architecture, Pontificia Universidad Católica
de Chile, 1998; PhD in History and Theory of Architecture, Princeton
University, 2009. Has been a researcher at Dumbarton Oaks,
Washington, d.c . (2015, 2017-2018) and visiting professor at Harvard
University (2012), Universidad Nacional de Rosario (2016) and Pontificia
Universidad Católica de Lima (2017). Her essays have been published in
Retorno al Paisaje (Evren, Spain, 2008) and Arquitectura en el Chile del
siglo XX: Iniciando el nuevo siglo 1890-1930 (Ediciones a r q , Chile, 2016)
and in the journals New Architecture (China), Harvard Design Magazine
(u s a ), Studies in the Histories of Gardens and Designed Landscapes (u k )
and a r q , Revista c a , Revista 180 y Trace (Chile). With Danilo Martic,
translated John B. Jackson’s The Necessity for Ruins and other Essays
(Ediciones a r q , 2012). She is co-founder of the website LOFscapes
(www.lofscapes.com) and the n g o Cultura de Paisaje en Chile (www.
culturadepaisaje.com). She is currently a researcher in Fondecyt
Project 1160277 and Tenure Professor at the School of Architecture u c .
http://www.lofscapes.com
http://www.culturadepaisaje.com
http://www.culturadepaisaje.com