PhD student to curate Chile Pavilion at architecture Biennale

Primary page content

Linda Schilling Cuellar, PhD candidate in the Centre for Research Architecture, is a curator for the Chile Pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice this year.

A sign on a building which reads La Biennale in white letters — Photo credit: Alexandru Ionescu

Linda Schilling Cuellar is part of the team of three curators who were successful in the open call to represent Chile at the architecture Biennale with their proposal responding to the theme of intelligence.

In recent years, Chile has become a key player in the development of artificial intelligence, in part due to the mineral resources and renewable energy sources available. This has led to the building of data centres in Chile, such as in the Quilicura area. Data centres demand considerable energy and water consumption, sometimes in areas with existing water stress.

The round table, in Spanish the ‘mesa de trabajo’, has become a forum for discussions about AI policies and regulations in Chile, bringing together politicians, business leaders, experts, and other stakeholders. The ‘Reflective Intelligences’ installation in the Chile Pavilion will explore this idea of the round table, but also those who are not invited – the land, water and minerals that are so essential in the development of AI technologies. It will aim to offer a space for reflection and to consider the effect on the communities whose territories are most impacted by the extraction of these resources, while underscoring the role architecture plays in environmental debates.

We thought, let’s play on the idea of the round table, both as an object and a spatial arrangement. Who gets to sit at the table? Who gets heard?

Linda Schilling Cuellar, PhD Candidate and Graduate Teaching Tutor

For her work on the project, Linda draws on her PhD research, which looks at the environmental impact assessment system and public engagement in Chile, particularly with case studies relating to copper mining.

“For me, the spaces for environmental deliberation are key because they can attune the researchers and the policy makers to the demands and needs that they can observe on site. Behind closed doors in Santiago, policymakers cannot attune to the struggles of the communities,” Linda added.

The installation will be exhibited from May – November in the Arsenale in Venice. Then it will return to Chile for public display. Linda is joined by curators Serena Dambrosio, an architect, researcher and lecturer at Universidad Diego Portales, and Nicolás Díaz Bejarano, an architect, lecturer and PhD candidate at UC Chile.

Two green tanks — Water tanks for cooling the Google data centre in Quilicura