INDUSTRIAL MODERNITY AND ITS SPOILS

Abstract

The industrialization process in Chile began with the mining and exploitation of Concerns in general that required me- chanical infrastructure for more efficient use of the resource during the early decades of the Republic.

According to its own laws of development as well as external factors, in a few decades these industries were abandoned, leaving his remains scattered throughout the territory. Given this scenario, the assumption here is twofold: firstly, that the modernity of Chile expressed by its industrialization process was not urban but territorial, and among the possible ruins that were inherited, the result of the accumulation process of capitalism, got historical legitimacy as testimonial value.

Secondly, the modern ruin in general and in particular in Chile, takes on a different meaning from the traditional notion, and this is the central aspect: In the modern aban- donment of a human work, there is no patina, nor victory
of nature over human work, but decay, and set negative landscapes that demand immediate restoration at the risk of their disappearance. The truly ‘new’ in modern architec- ture -and belonging to the historical context of capitalism, is undoubtedly the industrial construction and equipment: this was the really new, modern, who has not settled the issue

of physical obsolescence of materials and it replacement is almost impossible.

Thus, it would be the difference between the notion of ruin and abandonment, since generally ruin is not abandoned, but instead is constitutive of memory and it is preserved; however, the abandonment although produces ruin, lacks transitive: thus the abandonment does not necessarily lead to ruin be- cause overall the memory is absent, the nostalgia, the ubi sunt.