Production of a Mutant Landscape: On the Chilean Architecture of ‘Parcelaciones’

Abstract

This article examines the role architects play in shaping a new residential landscape of parcelas (plots) in southern Chile. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2021 and 2025 in Puerto Varas, it explores how these professionals—most of them migrants from Santiago—mediate between the geographical fantasies of those who, like themselves, move south, and the material, ecological, and social conditions of the territory. More than mere designers of houses, architects operate as cultural and technical translators who interpret the desires of these urbanoids—residents of rural settings who nonetheless lead predominantly urban lives—managing environmental constraints and coproducing specific ways of inhabiting and transforming space.

We offer a reading of the built landscape through three dimensions: matter, form, and ground. It analyses the use and valuation of materials such as wood, stone, and metal sheeting; the predominant architectural styles; and the various relationships that dwellings establish with their surroundings. In short, we approach this ‘mutant’ landscape as a mesh of practices, memories, knowledge, and imaginaries in which architects inscribe new material and symbolic marks.