Heritage and community centre in Matta Sur, Chile

Abstract

[EN] The Matta Sur neighbourhood in Santiago acquired official protection for its heritage value in 2016. It is the largest protected area in the city and one of the few in which vernacular architecture, local lifestyles and community networks withstand the city's rapid urban development. It has a regular urban structure of wide streets framed by continuous facades, which predominantly belong to one-storey homes, organised around a central courtyard. They are built combining burnt or raw masonry and wood and earth traditional building systems, which are now discontinued and often misunderstood, leading to poor interventions which deteriorate the quality of buildings and liveable spaces. The Heritage and Community Centre Project attends the need for comprehensive interventions to approach appropriate conservation of Matta Sur under these circumstances. This project aims, on one hand, to provide a suitable community space within the neighbourhood and, on the other, to set an example for appropriate intervention, management and maintenance of the vernacular constructions in the neighbourhood. All of the process is developed through community-based design and intervention, attending to the role of community organisations in Chile, which have been traditionally responsible for filling the gap between public policies and community wellbeing, particularly in urban contexts, through strong solidarity networks. Through a process of co-design and co-management, the project aims to refurbish a traditional house of the neighbourhood into a community centre in which various community initiatives converge and which allows for these solidarity networks to keep functioning in a contemporary context.