Pensar la distancia, pensar a distanciaJuan Borchers, viaje y obra (1947-1950)

Resumen

This thesis presents the effects of the distance of separation from sources of Western Culture --European and Mediterranean -- in the learning process of the modern Chilean architect, and the approach toward them through travel, as treated specifically and in depth in the exceptional case of Juan Borchers (1910-1975), who emerges as a unique theorist in the local architectural environment, adhering to the ideas of modern architecture while developing systematic work that revisits themes of classical architecture. The architectural travels of the modern Chilean architect to Europe are generally for the purpose of becoming familiar with avant-garde trends which are later transferred to Chile to different extents of depth and fertility. The view of modern Chilean architecture as an unsynchronized mirror of the creative centers has limited the possible reading and interpretation of our production of architecture and theory. This research obviates non-critical imported modernism to make way for thorough appropriation of both lines of thought of Borcher's contemporaries and precursors. The three researched topics constitute the backbone of Borchers ideology. The first topic immerses into how Borchers lays out the relationship between the subject and the architectural objet under the prism of representation. The second topic addresses the relationship between Gothic architecture and nature using two variables: Proportions and differentiation between geometric and plastic modulation, and morphologic studies, guided by Borchers' readings og Goethe and Spengler. The third topic explores the origins of the cubic series during the trip to Egypt with regard to its perception, a key viewpoint in Borchers' concept of architecture, where human scale and object scale merge into an intermediate scale. Kew words: