Cultural heritage and development in Chile

The project has allowed the creation of a working group and permanent cooperation between the UPM and several institutions in Chile, with the School of Architecture of the University of Valparaíso as local coordinator. As a general goal, the team works on actions of knowledge, evaluation and intervention of urban heritage and cultural landscape from a contemporary perspective. As a specific objective, it is concerned with exploring project alternatives and intervention criteria to address the urban transformations of the city of Valparaíso in terms of its heritage dimension.

The Historic Area of the Port City of Valparaíso, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site on July 2, 2003, built its particularities between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Today it is configured as a historic urban landscape linked to the natural characteristics of the enclave and characterized by great dynamism and complexity, as a result of successive transformations in the port culture.

The coastal urban edge of this city represents one of the most valuable cultural inventions, with a marked development potential for the 21st century. Between November 2 and 6, 2015, fifty students worked in the WAVE workshop (Workshop on Architecture Valparaíso Extremo) exploring strategies to recover the ends of Valparaíso, in the stretches between Las Torpederas and San Mateo beaches, and from the Barón pier to Caleta Portales. The workshop was led by GIPC and Universidad de Valparaíso professors involved in the research.