Abstract

CAMPOS-GAJARDO, Alicia; HARRIS-DIEZ, Ronald  and  GONZALEZ-ERICES, Daniel. A biopolitical reading of the architecture of the Workers's Insurance Fund. Residential collectives in Arica and Iquique. Rev. Arquit. (Bogotá) [online]. 2022, vol.24, n.1, pp.44-53.  Epub Aug 24, 2022. ISSN 1657-0308.  https://doi.org/10.14718/revarq.2022.2452.

The Compulsory Insurance for Occupational Diseases, Disability and Accidents, through its operational instrument, the Caja del Seguro Obrero [Workers' Insurance Fund], was a Chilean institution designed to protect the interests of workers in the field of social security, which operated between 1924 and 1952. Overtime, the diversification, in the scope of its benefits and the overlapping of the political project of Pedro Aguirre Cerda's government made it possible to link social medicine with workers' housing, to protect workers as the engine of social change. The article proposes a reading of the architecture developed by the referred institution, considering a biopolitical approach, in order to contribute to the diversification of conceptual frameworks of the architecture of the period. The methodology includes the interpretation of the arrangement and program of the complexes, under the ideas of control and assurance of the activities of the workers and their families, applied to the architecture of two case studies: the collective buildings of Arica and Iquique, both built by the Caja del Seguro Obrero in the 1940s.

Keywords : workers' housing; social medicine; habitability; control; insurance.

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