Bricks and Mercury: A Story of Buildings and Ideas

摘要

The last two decades have seen the rise of multifaceted and generally self-managed organisations that are increasingly intervening in the city as active agents of transformation. They link together communities, territories, resources and actors involved in the pursuit of public construction projects that recast the rules. Initiatives that combine art, politics, economy and history through architecture have created tools and contexts based on new urban readings. TOMA is part of this generation.TOMA is a collective of architects formed in Santiago de Chile at the end of 2012. It develops experimental projects of action and investigation in relation to community and territorial disputes.The projects combine design, construction work, territorial narratives and conflict visualisation in order to organise temporary communities that allow the generation of actions, or critical reflections, as alternatives to the dominant discourse.In times of deep crisis in political representation and collective identity, it is essential to debate the form and meaning of one of the most important constructions of human culture: the territories we inhabit. Discussing their stories to imagine possible futures is just the starting point. The case of Santiago de Chile serves as a useful example to help understand what is, today, a globalised process.