English versions of the following articles are available online

Title: The photography of Jack Ceitelis
Author: Carla Franceschini. Bachelor in Fine Arts with mention in photography, Universidad de Chile, 1989. Master in Arts, mention in theory and art history, Universidad de Chile, 2007. As visual artist, has contributed between 1998 and 2015 to exhibitions in different local and international institutions. Together with Ilonka Csillac has authored Chile en 1000 fotografías (Pehuén Editores, 2015). Since 2009 has curated photography exhibitions at the National Library, the Museum of Fine Arts and the National Historical Museum, where she currently works as photography curator.
Abstract: As historical documents, Jack Ceitelis’ photographs allow us to observe the development of Chilean infrastructure throughout the twentieth century. However, his framing – seemingly more artistic than advertising or documentary – go beyond the mere register: they manage to present infrastructure with an epic tint, especially in a context prior to service economy, where these works were key to ensure the productive development of the country.
Keywords: infrastructure; landscape; industry; development; Chile.
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Title: On Infrastructure. Reinhold Martin interviewed by Pedro Correa and José Lemaitre
Author: Reinhold Martin Architect. PhD, Princeton University, USA, 1999. His publications include The Urban Apparatus: Mediapolitics and the City (Minnesota Press, 2016), Utopia’s Ghost: Architecture and Postmodernism, Again (Minnesota Press, 2010), and The Organizational Complex: Architecture, Media, and Corporate Space (MIT Press, 2003). He is Director of the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture (Columbia University, USA) and Professor of Architecture at GSAPP (Columbia University, USA). José Gabriel Lemaître Palma. Architect, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 2012, M.Sc Urban Planning at Columbia University, USA. 2017. He has developed academic research related to issues of urban economics and social integration housing policies for Urban Magazine (USA), UPLand Journal (Italy), and ESE Business School Universidad de Los Andes (Chile). Pedro Correa Fernández. Architect, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 2012, M.Sc Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices at Columbia University, USA, 2016. Assistant professor at the School of Architecture UC, where he teaches courses related to aesthetics and politics.
Abstract: What if we stop talking about infrastructure as a noun? What if we talk about ‘the infrastructural,’ that is, as an adjective that does not refer to things but rather to their qualities? But if we do so, how do we read and evaluate those qualities? For instance, how does the infrastructural of a city differ from the infrastructural of a conversation around a table? This interview deepens these questions until leaving us closer to the infrastructures of meaning.
Keywords: mediapolitics; apparatus; city; politics; architecture of knowledge.
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Title: Biobío Regional Theater
Author: Smiljan Radic. Architect, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile. Eduardo Castillo. Architect, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile. Gabriela Medrano. Professor, Facultad de Arquitectura, Arte y Diseño Universidad San Sebastián, Santiago, Chile.
Abstract: In recent years, it has become common to talk about cultural infrastructure as if physical spaces were only a helpful supplement to the manifestations that take place in them. But, as this project shows, architecture is much more than a framework for culture. It is, rather, a cultural manifestation in itself: an object that not only contributes to material culture, but also structures an idea of urban culture.
Keywords: culture; spectacle; infrastructure; Concepción; wrapping.
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Title: Infrastructures for Selective Porosities. Ceuta’s Limboscape
Author: Maite Borjabad López-Pastor. Architect, ETSAM, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Visiting student at the Illinois Institute of Technology where she was awarded the Dean’s List of Excellence. M.Sc Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices in Architecture, GSAPP, Columbia University, New York. She has worked at The Metropolitan Museum and the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery (NY). As an independent curator she has developed diverse exhibitions, symposia, happenings and events focusing on varied forms of critical spatial practices in collaboration with the Emily Harvey Foundation, New Museum Incubator (NY), Tabakalera (San Sebastian) or La Casa Encendida (Madrid) among others. Her work has been published in diverse media as Pin-Up Magazine, Domus, Dezeen, Metalocus, Yorokobu, e-flux, the Chicago Tribune or El Cultural.
Abstract: In one of the most complex borders of the world, the physical limit is materialized in what seems to be just a simple fence. Yet, that does not mean that the barrier is weak. As this text indicates, the border infrastructure in Ceuta is a complex assembly of physical artifacts, legal constructs and calculated exceptions to these rules that, in the end, generate a border with selective porosity.
Keywords: border; exception; legality; Europe; Africa.
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Title: Threshold Infrastructure
Author: Pelin Tan. Sociologist, Ankara University, Ankara, Turkey (1997). PhD in Art History, Technical University of Istanbul, Turkey (2011). Post-doctoral studies in artistic research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA (2012). Her research is focused on urban conflict and territorial politics, gift economy, and the condition of labor. Her articles have been published in Domus, Bauwelt, e-flux, among others. She has co-curated the exhibition Adhocracy (Istanbul, 2012; New York, 2013; Athens, 2015). She has lectured in different universities across the world, and her texts have been published in Promiscuous Encounters (2014), Adhocracy reader (2015), 2000+: The Urgencies of Architectural Theory (2016), among others. Tan is also author of Arazi / Territory (Sternberg Press, 2015), Unconditional Hospitality and Threshold Architecture (dpr-barcelona, 2015), and Towards Urban Society – International Panel on Social Progress -IPSP- (Saskia Sassen & Edgar Pieterse, 2017). She is currently Visiting Associate Professor of Architecture, University Of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus.
Abstract: The way people adapt to changing conditions generated by the complex and slow process of infrastructure projects is often overlooked. Through the case of the Pearl River Delta in China, this text deepens into how infrastructure processes generate threshold conditions: between river and sea, rural and urban, and even between global development and local culture.
Keywords: fishing; assemblage; diverse economy; Pearl River Delta; China
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Title: Reef Metropolis. Geopolitics of Korean Subaquatic Urbanism
Author: Amaia Sánchez Velasco. Architect and Master in Architecture, Polytechnic University of Madrid, Spain, 2011. Her research focuses on the urbanization of oceanic environments through infrastructures and their ecosystemic and geopolitical impacts. Her work has been exhibited and published in Australia (Wagga Wagga Art Gallery, 2017, Bank Art Museum Moree, 2018), Spain (14th Spanish Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism, Santander, 2018) and Chile (20th Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism, Valparaíso, 2017). She is currently Lecturer of Architecture at the Faculty of Architecture, Design, and Construction, University of Technology Sydney, Australia. Jorge Valiente Oriol. Architect and Master in Architecture, Polytechnic University of Madrid, Spain, 2013. His research focuses on the spatial, political and cultural transformations linked to the implementation of late capitalist models in the production and distribution of food. His work has been exhibited and published in Germany, Australia (Wagga Wagga Art Gallery, 2017, Bank Art Museum Moree, 2018), Spain (14th Spanish Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism, Santander, 2018) and Chile (20th Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism, Valparaíso, 2017). He is Lecturer of Interior Architecture at the Faculty of Architecture, Design, and Construction, University of Technology Sydney, Australia. Gonzalo Valiente
Architect and Master in Architecture, Polytechnic University of Madrid, Spain, 2012. He is currently investigating the historical evolution of mining towns in Chile and the transformations in the political, urban and architectural imaginaries. His work has been exhibited and published in the USA, Australia (Wagga Wagga Art Gallery, 2017, Bank Art Museum Moree, 2018), Spain (14th Spanish Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism, Santander, 2018) and Chile (20th Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism, Valparaíso, 2017). He is Lecturer of Interior Architecture at the Faculty of Architecture, Design, and Construction, University of Technology Sydney, Australia.
Abstract: When it comes to defending national territories, there are operations less obvious than building a wall. For example, South Korea develops artificial reefs to delimit its territory and protect its marine resources. But these underwater infrastructures take the idea of frontier one step further: they end up zoning the seabed and, thus, they reconstruct biodiversity according to the commercial and geopolitical interests.
Keywords: border; defense; infrastructure; sea; fishing.
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Title: Título
Author: Teodoro Fernández Arquitectos. Since 1992, Teodoro Fernández Arquitectos has developed a line of landscape projects for the Chilean central areas from the perspective of water care, soil consolidation and integration of biodynamic criteria. Among his works are Quitralmán farm’s park (Mulchén, 2000), Los Robles vineyard’s ecological corridors (Nancahua, 2003), green areas at the urbanization La Reserva (Santiago, 2003), and landscaping at Chocalán vineyard (Melipilla, 2004). It has also been awarded the first prize in the competitions for the Inés de Suárez Park (Providencia, 1992), Bicentenario Park (Vitacura, 1999-2010) and the remodeling of Quinta Normal Park. He is currently developing Antofagasta’s Coast Park project, first prize awarded in 2017.
Abstract: The opposition between infrastructure and natural landscape is only apparent. At the same time, architecture cannot only ‘temper’ the encounter between both, but also rethink it in radical ways. Here, when commissioned with an hydraulic infrastructure project, architecture operates by ‘rewilding’ the riverbed. Thus, it proves that it is not infrastructure that destroys landscapes, ecosystems and communities, but rather the lack of care in its design.
Keywords: infrastructure; landscape; city; rewilding; riverbed.
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Title: From infrastructure to landscape. The Southern Road as a resignification instrument
Author: Fulvio Rossetti. Architect Rome 3 (r) University of Chile 2001/2006. Postgraduate in Landscape Architecture, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 2004. Doctor in Architecture and Urban Studies, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 2018. He works in architecture, public spaces and landscape projects and is a professor in different Santiago universities. Has published articles in different national and international journals, and in 2009 his first book Arquitectura del Paisaje en Chile.
Abstract: We are used to understanding infrastructures in terms of their functionality, that is, as means at the service of something else or as supports for an activity. However, as this text demonstrates, they are more versatile than what they seem: they can also create new meanings and trigger visions that can even contradict those that originated them.
Keywords: transport; rewilding; Patagonia; Augusto Pinochet; sovereignty.
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Title: The Second Way. The public controversy over the irruption of the School of Architecture, ucv on the project of the 1969 Elevated Highway
Author: Nicolás Verdejo Bravo. Architect, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile, 2013. Master of Architecture, with honors, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 2017, after being awarded of the Conicyt Scholarship for National Master in 2015. Was awarded the Academic Excellence Prize in 2017, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Has co-edited the book Santiago Babylon, by the NGO AriztíaLAB, as part of the homonymous exhibition that was a runner-up for the professional category prize at the XX Bienal de Arquitectura y Urbanismo de Chile. Among his recent publications is his co-authorship in the book Neoliberalism and Urban Development in Latin America (London, 2017). Has also collaborated in the research Fondecyt No. 1150308: “La capital antes de su modernización. La mirada urbana de la expedición naval astronómica de James Melville Gilliss” at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Is currently assistant professor at the School of Architecture, Universidad Finis Terrae.
Abstract: Due to their size and public condition, road infrastructures involve the participation of many actors. Yet not many of them are able to participate in the debate with a counterproposal. That was precisely what the eaucv did in 1969 with its project for the Sea Avenue. However, the regrettable defeat after having taken this debate to the highest levels would have, as this text argues, sealed the fate of this school.
Keywords: Architecture School; Valparaíso; Alberto Cruz; infrastructure; counterproject.
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Title: Two Transmission Centers or the Machine Houses
Author: UMWELT. Office for practice and research in architecture and territorial planning founded by Ignacio García Partarrieu and Arturo Scheidegger, both architects and masters in architecture at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 2012. His works and projects have been exhibited at biennials in Shenzhen and Hong Kong, Venice and Santiago, the Storefront for Art and Architecture Gallery, the MoMA in New York and LIGA in Mexico. They have also lectured at conferences in Santiago, Montreal, Zürich, Weimar, Guadalajara, Mexico City and Lisbon. Have been awarded in different competitions, including the First Place at PP29 Memorial and the YAP CONSTRUCTO 2014. Have been nominated for the 2015 Iakov Chernikhov Award, the MCHAP Emerging 2016 and awarded the Millennium BCP Debut Award at the Fourth Lisbon Triennial in 2016. They are currently professors at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and Universidad San Sebastián.
Abstract: Visible from afar, telecom infrastructures broadcast signals to territories at distances even greater than those at which we can see them. The two projects presented here, however, show us what only appears when the antennae reach the ground in a public park: the architectures that decode the signals emanated by the infrastructure; in other words, the visible face of invisible waves.
Keywords: infrastructure; telecom; antennas; Metropolitan park; cerro San Cristóbal.
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Title: SC&T building
Author: José Rosas. Architect, Master in Regional Urban Planning IEU, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (1976, 1984). Doctor in Architecture, ETSAB, UPC, Spain, 1986. Has published articles in ARQ and Revista 180(Chile), and book chapters in Sudamérica Moderna (Santiago 2015), Concurso Palacio Pereira (Santiago, 2014), Ciudad y Vivienda en América Latina 1930-1960 (with Fernando Pérez, 2012). Along with Josep Parcerisa, has authored the book El canon republicano y la distancia cinco mil (Santiago, 2015) and edited, along with Margarita Greene and Luis Valenzuela, of Santiago proyecto urbano (Santiago, 2011). Researcher at several Fondecyt and Pastoral UC projects, his research has focused on urban design and housing problems, specifically in the city of Santiago. Rosas is Tenured Professor of the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Urban Studies, and Director of the Doctorate in Architecture and Urban Studies of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Philippe Blanc
Architect. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 1999. Doctor in Architecture and Urban Studies, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 2010. Since 2010 he works as an architect and as a photographer. Author of the photographs in the book Patrimonio Arquitectónico uc. Fragmentos de una Obra (Santiago, 2016) and the exhibition of photographs about it. He has exhibited his photographs at the Sala Vitra (2013), Corporación Cultural de Las Condes (2015), Centro de Extensión UC (2016) and the Centro Cultural Gabriela Mistral GAM (2016). Blanc is Associate Professor at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
Abstract: Even before Giedion (1952) highlighted Maillard’s bridges, the raw aesthetics of infrastructure captured the attention of architects. Usually, however, this interest led to ‘overdesign’ structures so that it could also support the symbolic and aesthetic ‘loads’ of the building. Through the simple decision of turning the structural and programmatic requirements into the plastic expression of the building – without overdoing it – this project manages to transform engineering into architecture, akin to the infrastructures of the early twentieth century.
Keywords: infrastructure; engineering; concrete; structure; education.
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Title: Título
Author: Renato D’Alençon Castrillón. Architect, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 1993. Master in Architecture, Cornell University, USA, 2004. Has authored the book Acondicionamientos: Arquitectura y técnica (Santiago, 2008). Researcher at the Center for Sustainable Development, CEDEUS. Assistant Professor at the School of Architecture of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, where he works as a researcher, professor and Head of Magíster en Arquitectura Sustentable y Energía, MASE. Claudio Vásquez Zaldívar. Architect, Master in Architecture, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 1995. Doctor in Architecture, Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña, Spain, 2008. Expert in sustainable architecture and Smart Façades systems, has led several Fondecyt projects on energy performance and office buildings in Santiago. Founder and member of the Study Group on Architecture and Facades UC. He is currently Principal Researcher at the Fondef I+D project “Fachada Variable: Solución de fachada dinámica en base a patrones de movimiento coordinados para el control solar y lumínico aplicable en Santiago de Chile”, as well as being an Associate Professor at the School of Architecture UC. Pedro Pablo de la Barra. Architect, Master in Architecture, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 2016. Specialized in sustainable architecture, focused on thermal and light evaluation of façade systems. Has been TA and professor in several courses on ​​building and technology areas. Currently works as coordinator at Fondef project I+D “Fachada Variable” at UC.
Abstract: Since Kahn proposed the separation between servant and served spaces – transforming the former into the invisible infrastructure that allows the splendor of the latter – the distinction has remained valid as a design tool. But when servant spaces happen to contain the building’s own systems, such segregation becomes problematic: the building no longer relies on its own infrastructures, but these also require excessive energy.
Keywords: Chile; energy consumption; transparency; comfort; thermal transmittance.
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Title: Título
Author: Stantec Architecture + Amunátegui Barreau Arquitectos AIA. Sergio Amunátegui. Architect, Texas A&M University, Texas, USA, 1985. Master of Architecture, University of California Berkeley, USA, 1989. Partner at Amunátegui Barreau Arquitectos AIA. Has been involved in the design, construction, remodeling and expansion of the Santiago airport since 1998. He has also designed and built large-scale complexes in Chile, Argentina, Ecuador and the USA. Has been Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of Universidad de Chile and Vice-dean at the School of Architecture and Art of Universidad del Desarrollo. Is a member of the American Institute of Architecture. Carmen Barreau. Architect, Universidad de Chile, 1989. Partner at of Amunátegui Barreau Arquitectos AIA. Has been involved in the design, construction, remodeling and expansion of the Santiago airport since 1998. She has also designed and built large-scale complexes in Chile, Argentina, Ecuador and the USA. Stanis Smith. Architect, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, 1978. Senior Vice President of Stantec, Vancouver, Canada. Since 1987 developing airport architecture in North and South America. Luis Vidal. Architect, University of Greenwich, UK, 1994. Luis Vidal Arquitectos develops architecture globally, and has authored Terminal 2 at Heathrow, UK and Zaragoza Airport, among others. Member of The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), the American Institute of Architecture, he is part of the Industry Advisory Council at Cranfield University UK and for five years held the position of Associate Professor at ETSAM.
Abstract: Despite the failure of discourses such as ‘urban branding’ or ‘spectacle architecture,’ huge transport infrastructures are still a necessity for cities eager to participate in the global economy. Thus, it is no coincidence that the new Santiago airport is the largest building under construction in Chile. But its size not only has to do with the number of passengers it will receive but also with the scale of its main users: the aircraft.
Keywords: infrastructure; Santiago; masterplan; transport; terminal
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Title: Título
Author: Pablo Allard. Decano, Facultad de Arquitectura y Arte, Universidad del Desarrollo, Santiago, Chile. Camila Cociña. Investigadora postdoctoral, University College London.
Abstract: In his 2018 Public Account, Chilean President Sebastián Piñera announced the expansion of Santiago’s Metro system towards Bajos de Mena, one of the most isolated – and stigmatized – neighborhoods of the city. After the initial thrill of connecting the area to the metropolitan transport system, critical voices addressed a key issue: such a considerable investment has an impact on the value of land. Two potentially dramatic scenarios thus unfold: on the one hand, the State investment generates surplus value to private entities; on the other, the escalation of land value ends up displacing those citizens whom this infrastructure sought to favor. What should be done at this crossroads? Are these inevitable consequences or can something actually be done? For this issue on infrastructure, we are interested in knowing whether the effect that State-built infrastructure has on land value is important, or if it’s an irrelevant externality when it comes to evaluating these projects.
Keywords: Metro; surplus; segregation; Bajos de Mena; Santiago.
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Editorial. Fashionably late

It’s not easy to start a global debate from Chile. However, the advantage is that we can join the conversation once its relevance is already proved. Today, when magazines are too slow to be considered novelty, our function is to separate the chaff from the wheat: not only to differentiate topics with historical scope from those that are merely news, but also to discern what is valuable enough to be printed. Thus, this issue of ARQ arrives ‘fashionably late’ to a conversation already underway in magazines¹ and seminars.² The question is, what can our contribution be to the conversation about infrastructure?

Let’s start with an image: a couple of tourists who, after having ceviche for lunch in the Central Market of Santiago, pay the check at their table using a credit card. They landed at the airport, went through customs – security and sanitary controls – and then drived to Santiago by a private urban highway. The fish for the ceviche reached a city without coast in a refrigerated truck which kept it fresh in its transit from the port to the Fishing Terminal and then to the kitchen of the restaurant; the vegetables on the plate also grew kilometers away thanks to rural irrigation infrastructures, later stored and distributed throughout the country by interurban roads until arriving at the Distribution Center and from there to the restaurant – where they were cleaned using water and sewage infrastructures. When paying, the couple took advantage of the global interconnection of banking infrastructures, in addition to using the country’s electricity infrastructure, the communication networks that allow wireless payment and the tax collection apparatus. That is, more than 15 different infrastructures working together to allow tourists to have a ceviche. Had we noticed this?

Although infrastructures “are a prerequisite for any modern notion of ‘civilization’” ^{(Graham, 2010:4)}, we rarely notice how much we depend on them. Maybe the fact that we only interact with their interfaces makes them go unnoticed, to the point that we only remember their existence when they fail or at the end of the month when we have to pay the bill.

Such invisibility makes it difficult to approach them from architecture. Perhaps as a way to ‘architecturize’ them is that Keller Easterling ^(2016:24) calls them “matrix-space”; showing that, even if they are intangible, infrastructures are located in space and, as a matrix, they always operate in interconnection with others.

But Easterling also defines the contemporary infrastructural space as “the secret weapon of the most powerful people on Earth” (2014:15), because it allows activities that may go unnoticed but are consequential. That is, infrastructures may be of public usefulness, but they do not necessarily arise as a way to increase the common wealth.

As a neoliberal response to the problem of the large scale, infrastructures threaten to replace planning, allowing authorities to give up their duty to think in the long-term and simply conform with announcing, approving or rejecting infrastructure projects.

Infrastructures also show that utopias still exist. But it is no longer the modern utopia (the idea that development would enable a better society), but rather the utopia of management (the argument that an invisible, abstract system would optimize the outcome of contradictory demands). Since the complexity of infrastructure projects makes them impossible to be controlled by a single person, the ability of the system to manage variables – such as resources, actors, knowledge or others – is highlighted by infrastructures. In the realm of infrastructure, the best outcome is replaced by the optimal, just as the management office replaces the architectural.

And here is where the problem appears. Many decades of historical research were needed for the discipline to recognize its political condition and for the profession to assume its dependence on power. However, it only took a couple of decades of neoliberal space for architecture to go back several slots, barely achieving a position in the makeup room of abstraction: it became, at its best, a mitigation measure to soften the impact of infrastructure. Thus, while a significant part of the discipline barricades itself behind the argument of the thinking hand, the invisible hand of management occupies the role architecture claimed as its own a century ago. Had we noticed this?

Between the tourists who carelessly use infrastructures and the management offices that carry them out without questioning them, there is a critical space which can be occupied by architecture. It is there that the projects, essays, and research in this issue of ARQ are located and, from that position, their contribution consists of expanding such a space. The advantage of arriving late to the conversation is that we can evaluate what has already been said; the advantage of our delay being fashionable is that our contribution can still be useful.
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References
¹See the issue 21 of The Avery Review after Trump’s inauguration (January 2017) and the issue 17 of The Funambulist magazine entitled “Weaponized Infrastructure” (May 2018).

²For example, the research “Power: Infrastructure in America” by the Columbia University Buell Center (ongoing since 2017) or the conference “Infrastructure: the Architecture Lobby National Think-in” organized by the Architecture Lobby in New York on June 22, 2018.

* GRAHAM, Stephen. Disrupted Cities: When Infrastructure Fails. New York: Routledge, 2010.
* EASTERLING, Keller. Extrastatecraft: the power of infrastructure space. London; Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2014.
* EASTERLING, Keller. “Zonas de excepción económica”. ARQ 92 (abril, 2016):16-25.