Revealed the first name of the group of architects that will participate in the cultural programme “Building, Living, Thinking" promoted by Cersaie, scheduled for September 25-29 in Bologna. The Chilean Sebastián Irarrázaval, class 1967, will be the first guest of Cersaie’s thematic talk program dedicated to architecture.
Graduated from the Catholic University of Chile, Sebastián Irarrázaval has been Ordinary Professor at the same Faculty since 1994, following since the beginning the research and teaching activity besides the professional one. He was visiting professor in different universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston (MIT) and the University of Architecture in Venice (IUAV).
Among its projects, which fully reflect the new verve of contemporary Chilean architecture and Latin American in general, there is the original Caterpillar House (or Casa Oruga), built for an art collector outside Santiago: located in the slope of a mountain of the Andes, the house consists of 5 40’ containers, 6 20’ containers and a 40’ open top container where there is a pool.
The won international awards are many: in 1999, he received the AOA (Asociación de Oficinas de Arquitectura de Chile) award as best young architect. He exhibited three times for Chile at the Venice Biennale. In 2012, he won the Bienniale award of Urbanism and Architecture of Shenzhen and Hong Kong. In 2014 and 2015, during the WAVE workshops he received the recognition of the Venice Institute of Architecture.
He has recently received the honorary mention “Wood Design and building Awards” for the project of the Municipal de Constitución Library, built after the destruction of the city caused by a terrible earthquake in 2010, nominated for the Mies Crown Hall Americas Award, along with the project of the Pabellón Valparaíso, built to celebrate the 120 years of the School of Architecture of the Catholic University of Chile.
