Pitrén Complex Site Museum

Archaeological heritage remains among the most unprotected cultural fields in Chile — finds such as Monte Verde prove it. In Labranza, Temuco, the Villa JMC-1 site (2007) — one of the most significant remains of Pitrén pottery culture — remains unknown to the local community and at real risk of being buried under new housing estates.

Reading the site's own lines — the paths drawn by historic transit and the new La Estación avenue proposed by MINVU — the project rationalizes a semi-organic form into a volume of transversal blocks crossed by a continuous longitudinal body. A central void runs through every level, recalling the Andean cross: the axis where the universe connects and balances.

The program is ordered by degrees of knowledge: exhibition halls — Pre-Columbian Chile, Pitrén and Mapuche cultures — and an auditorium, as well as archaeology and conservation laboratories, a library, craft workshops (textiles, goldsmithing, pottery, Mapuche gastronomy), a cafeteria, and a 475 m² habitable roof that works as an overlook, hearth and ceremonial area. Materials and palette draw on earth, timber and the black-on-black of Pitrén vessels.