WINNER OF THE DAM ARCHITECTURAL BOOK AWARD 2014
The centerpiece of the Chilean Pavilionat the 14th International Architecture Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia is formed by large concrete panel. It was one of the first original wall panels produced by the Chilean KPD plant. Donated in 1971 by the Soviet Union to support president Salvador Allende’s Democratic Road to Socialism, the factory complex produced prefabricated housing components.
This panel has since been the subject of several political and ideological controversies. Allende himself signed the wet concrete, only for his gesture to be later covered over by Augusto Pinochet, who hid it beneath a representation of the Virgin and Child framed by two colonial lamp fixtures. By bringing together the voices of former KPD workers, inhabitants of housing built with these elements, and invited authors, the book ‘MONOLITH. CONTROVERSIES’ tells the history of this panel, thus making a fundamental contribution to the exhibition theme Absorbing Modernity 1914-2014.
