Towards a history of earthen architecture and construction in Chile, a seismic country

Abstract

Chile has a long tradition of building with raw earth, in a big territory of more than 2000 km, which has the
particularity of being highly seismic. In recent years, it has been understood that this tradition is part of the
country’s cultural heritage. However, formal research about earthen heritage is scarce and its history has not yet
been written. With that purpose, the research here presented, brought together various sources of information,
from which it created a timeline of the use of earth as building material in Chile, divided into five periods: preHispanic, Colonial,
Republican,
early 20th
century and
1990
to
nowadays. Each period
includes
a
territory and

specific
building
cultures,
typologies
and
construction
techniques,
whose
linear
reading
allows
us
to
glimpse
the

constant
search of Chilean
builders
to find seismic resistant
solutions.