Biobío Regional Theatre, Concepción

Concepción had been trying to build a theatre on the Biobío since 1994, and the earlier Teatro Pencopolitano scheme died for lack of finance. A new competition, run in 2011 by Chile's national arts council and the regional government, drew twenty-eight entries from Chile and abroad and was won on 8 October by Smiljan Radić with Eduardo Castillo and Gabriela Medrano. Financing was approved in 2013, the contractor confirmed in June 2014 and construction started in September 2015; Michelle Bachelet opened the building on 7 March 2018. The idea the architects offered was a "packaged theatre" — a wrapping for fiction. More than eight thousand square metres of PTFE membrane, the largest textile façade in South America, are stretched over the frame and clipped down with aluminium extrusions and stainless bolts, so the building reads as a taut white parcel set on splayed legs above a glazed base. It took the grand prize at the 2022 Pan-American Architecture Biennial in Quito.