Architecture in Santiago

13 August 2012

As the son of an architect currently studying in a school of architecture and planning, it is practically impossible for me to spend time in a city and ignore the design and arrangement of buildings.

My first impression of Santiago's buildings, as I communicated to a friend in an initial email, was something like this: the buildings are fairly blocky and dull, typically gray, and even if there is color it is obscured behind a grime of soot and pollution, not to mention the lack of sunlight penetrating the smog. I had flashes of Eastern Europe, from my semester spent abroad in Prague. In general, buildings near the center of the city tended to be extremely dull concrete apartment towers, slightly less dull modern glass skyscrapers, and considerably less dull structures from about a century ago attempting to mimic the styles of classical Europe.

I was fairly unimpressed, until a unique feature caught my eye: plants on the sides of buildings.

I am a huge fan of this "vertical landscaping" or whatever you want to call it. Any time I saw it in the U.S. I would become giddy. Here in Santiago, it seems to be a trend in design like bay windows or clinker bricks sprinkled throughout the city (well, mostly in moneyed areas).

I first noticed the feature when walking down the main boulevard, and I encountered a university building that had clearly been designed with a trellis for plant life on the exterior (I can only imagine how much more robust it would be after winter ended).

Then upon discovering a bus route that went directly to my home (as opposed to the subway), I began to see more of the city's buildings. And more buildings with plant life deliberately arrayed on the walls. Like restaurants and boutique shops.

The pinnacle of this design, oddly, was an Intercontinental Hotel in the center of the city. It featured plant life crawling up all 20+ stories of the facade on two sides.

I hope the benefits of greenery on exterior walls is self-evident. Besides being quite lovely aesthetically, vegetation can provide insulation for the building (keeping it warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer), act as a sort of air pollution scrubber while adding oxygen into the atmosphere, and can attract beneficial insects, birds, etc. Plus, you can even grow herbs and other useful plants if you want!

 

A critical survey of Santiago's architecture, this is not. I imagine you can find that elsewhere. But I liked the hidden music reference embedded in the title. Plus, what if integrating plants into building design truly is the next defining trend in architecture (check out all the green roofs in Chicago). Then this may be quite prescient!