“Chile’s Architecture, Engineering and Infrastructure Week” in China ended successfully

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“Chile’s Architecture Engineering and Infrastructure Week”, which took place between July 5 and 9 in China, was considered an absolute success by ProChile, CORFO’s Committee of Sector Brands, and the Association of Chilean Architect Offices (AOA). The activity, headed by the Minister of Public Works, Hernán de Solminihac, gathered a delegation of prominent Chilean architects who showed their best work in a series of conferences and seminars held in Shanghai and Beijing.

“We are returning home very pleased because we fully complied with the objectives we had set ourselves and we were able to stir up much interest in the subjects dealt with,” said the Minister of Public Works, Hernán de Solminihac, upon concluding their activities. “Architecture services had a spectacular reception in the different forums where we presented them,” he added.

The week was opened with a photography exhibition on “Chilean Architecture” in the Chilean Pavilion at Expo Shanghai, where some of the most outstanding works of contemporary Chilean architecture were shown. At the same time, a series of conferences open to journalists and the general public were held to inform them about the main strengths of Chilean architecture, including its anti-seismic, sustainable and avant-garde design.

Also, a technical seminar was organized at the Longemont Hotel in Shanghai, attended by Chinese authorities, academics, architects and engineers, the purpose of which was to show some projects recently developed in Chile, like the Titanium and Costanera Center towers, and to analyze how they performed during the February 27th earthquake this year.

This point was of particular interest to the local media, who qualified this as “a miracle of anti-seismic architecture.”

“The reception was much better than we expected,” said Fernando Marin, director of AOA and head of “Chile's Architecture” project in China. “We were able to demonstrate that our professionals have carried out serious, world-class work over the past decades, which may lead us to collaborate in the mid-term in projects that may contribute to improve the quality of life in Chinese cities.”

After the activities in Shanghai, the Minister and the delegation of architects moved to Beijing, where they ended the “Week…” with a meeting with journalists in the Embassy of Chile in China.