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CLARIN

In Chile, Modern Housing Fit For Ancient Customs

Architects near Santiago are building a new kind of housing in Chile, both modern and adapted to the ancient culture of the Mapuche community.

A Mapuche woman near the housing units built by architects from Undurraga Devés in Huechuruba, near Santiago.
A Mapuche woman near the housing units built by architects from Undurraga Devés in Huechuruba, near Santiago.

SANTIAGO — This new kind of home combines practicality with cultural understanding. Chilean architects from Undurraga Devés have recently worked with members of the indigenous Mapuche community in Huechuruba, near Santiago, to help build a very specific type of housing: a place that would not only meet their basic needs, but also respect their traditions and ideas.

The goal is to help the housing units' residents "participate in modern society without discarding their identity," as the architects from Undurraga Devés put it. This has become a major focus of the studio, founded in 1978 — launching "low-tech" and culturally sensitive housing projects in Chile.

Architects have built a total of 25 housing units, within a larger complex comprising 415 "standard" council houses. Together, they attempt to reconcile two styles, and two ways of life — global and aboriginal. The idea came directly from the Mapuche community, whose members wanted to be a part of modern society without losing their identity.

The housing units built by architects from Undurraga Devés in Huechuruba, near Santiago in Chile. Courtesy of the Undurraga Devés studio.

The way these housing units are conceived embodies this quest for a cultural — and stylistic — compromise. They are aligned and their facades face east, which respects the Mapuche tradition of "opening the main door to the rising sun." That aspect was one of the community's main requests. A large corridor then separates the houses from the cliffs besides them, constituting a shared, public space.

Each unit has an area of 61 square meters, spread on two floors. Cooking is done on the ground floor — where the Mapuche have always kept the stove — and bathrooms and beds are upstairs.

The community has very specific notions of privacy. Architects observed while building the units that the Mapuche reject any form of continuity, or transparency, between the inside and the outside. The interior must remain in the shadow, to "create a perception of its own time, different from the time that passes outside, in the city."

Building techniques have combined the traditional use of bricks with reinforced concrete for the main frames. In this seismic zone, the front and back sides of every unit are fortified with a diagonal wooden beam, designed to hold the side walls in case of earthquakes — a daily possibility no Chilean could ever forget.

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Society

What's Spoiling The Kids: The Big Tech v. Bad Parenting Debate

Without an extended family network, modern parents have sought to raise happy kids in a "hostile" world. It's a tall order, when youngsters absorb the fears (and devices) around them like a sponge.

Image of a kid wearing a blue striped sweater, using an ipad.

Children exposed to technology at a very young age are prominent today.

Julián de Zubiría Samper

-Analysis-

BOGOTÁ — A 2021 report from the United States (the Youth Risk Behavior Survey) found that 42% of the country's high-school students persistently felt sad and 22% had thought about suicide. In other words, almost half of the country's young people are living in despair and a fifth of them have thought about killing themselves.

Such chilling figures are unprecedented in history. Many have suggested that this might be the result of the COVID-19 pandemic, but sadly, we can see depression has deeper causes, and the pandemic merely illustrated its complexity.

I have written before on possible links between severe depression and the time young people spend on social media. But this is just one aspect of the problem. Today, young people suffer frequent and intense emotional crises, and not just for all the hours spent staring at a screen. Another, possibly more important cause may lie in changes to the family composition and authority patterns at home.

Firstly: Families today have fewer members, who communicate less among themselves.

Young people marry at a later age, have fewer children and many opt for personal projects and pets instead of having children. Families are more diverse and flexible. In many countries, the number of children per woman is close to or less than one (Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong among others).

In Colombia, women have on average 1.9 children, compared to 7.6 in 1970. Worldwide, women aged 15 to 49 years have on average 2.4 children, or half the average figure for 1970. The changes are much more pronounced in cities and among middle and upper-income groups.

Of further concern today is the decline in communication time at home, notably between parents and children. This is difficult to quantify, but reasons may include fewer household members, pervasive use of screens, mothers going to work, microwave ovens that have eliminated family cooking and meals and, thanks to new technologies, an increase in time spent on work, even at home. Our society is addicted to work and devotes little time to minors.

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