Earthquakes In Chile Essay

Words: 1252
Pages: 6

Weather and earthquakes have heavily shaped how build in Chile. In fact, Chile is seismically active with massive earthquakes up to 9.5 in Richter magnitude (1960), 8.8 (2010), 8.4 (2015), and so on. Therefore, the construction and architecture should respond to the soil’s conditions and resist major quakes (CSN, 2018; Franklin, 2015).
Then, the variety of climates in Chile has also driven its architecture. In the dry north, materials such as stone, mud, and straw have historically dominated building techniques, while the “adobe” (clay and wheat straw), a traditional craft, and tile have been key in construction in the center of the country since the colonial period. Finally, in southern and rainy zones, wood is at the core of the architecture and construction methods.
The churches of Chiloe, declared a World Heritage site by the Unesco in 2000, are a very good example of the use of wood and the
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The European architects and constructors, specially French’s, built the National Congress, the Municipal Theater, and leaded the foundation of the school of architecture that continued their work. Since the mid-1800s and until the early 20th Century, the economic growth coming from mining contributed to change architecture, imitating European trends and even importing furniture and house decoration, replacing the traditional colonial house made of native wood and rather simple.
The major Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna radically shift the face of Santiago in the 1870s. He led a fundamental urban reorganization of the city, its boundaries, and big public infrastructure. However, the changes also implied a process of segregation between the “civilized” and the “barbarian”