Gabriela Mistral Cultural Centre

This guide to the Gabriela Mistral Cultural Centre in Santiago opens in 1971, when the government called for volunteers to raise a headquarters worthy of a United Nations trade conference in under a year. It follows the bricklayers, students and engineers who worked around the clock beside professional crews, and the five architects sketching plans almost as fast as the concrete rose. It also traces the building through the coup that followed, when soldiers seized it the same week they bombed the presidential palace. Listen while standing inside the rebuilt glass and concrete hall.