ABSTRACT
The construction in Santiago of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) building, consisting of a low-rise and tower complex, speaks to a short-lived spirit that prevailed in a section of Chilean society during Salvador Allende’s presidency, representing a peak of the period’s idealism. The building did not engage with propagandistic socialist aesthetics, yet the political aims of the period are manifest in the construction process—the empowerment of the workers, and the deployment of technology to meet a tight timeline—and ultimately in the building’s performativity and open relationship to the city. With the coup d’état in September 1973, the Military Junta headed by General Augusto Pinochet took hold of the complex and significantly altered its use, curtailing the civic purposes of the building. What was conceivably the most paradigmatic building of Allende’s presidency instead became emblematic of the military government, in diametrical opposition to its original identity. In this chapter, I examine the political trajectory of the UNCTAD building, particularly the low-rise, through three periods of its existence—the Unidad Popular government (1970–1973), the military dictatorship (1973–1990), and the return to democracy (1990–present)—and analyze the design and construction from material, technological, urban, artistic, and social perspectives. This analysis of the UNCTAD building leads to a questioning of the relationship between architecture and politics, enabling speculations about monumentality and resignification in architecture.
