Against the Tide, the Pavillon of Chile at the 15 International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, exhibits the work of a generation of young architects who have conceived, financed, designed, and constructed small works of architecture in order to obtain their professional certification. They have built with minimal resources, with the residues of various agricultural processes and with local materials readily available in a rural environment, a landscape undergoing constant change as a result of agricultural activity and urban development. As a complement to the pavillon, this catalogue gathers together the fifteen projects chosen to appear in the exhibition, accompanied by texts by Juan Roman, José Bengoa, Manuel Cuadra, Justo Pastor Mellado, and José Luis Uribe which examine the work of these young architects, their training, and the customs of a territory at once anodyne and extraordinary. Against the Tide speaks of the contrary direction in which some things move, and this exhibition goes against the current of those urban battles, perhaps more global in scope, waged to improce the quality of our built environment. It puts the accent rather on the customs and landscape of a rural world, a world of fields and woodlands, helping through architecture to improve the everyday lives of people.
