Victor Lobos Valderrama

A Self Portrait: the Embassy of Chile Project Victor Lobos Valderrama

Washington D. C. is a city of multicultural richness difficult to surpass. The huge diversity of languages, cultures, and people found in the city are the bases of its identity. Countless diplomatic missions, international organizations and agencies are a dramatic proof that Washington D. C. is currently the center of the world, the Rome of modern times. To this extent, each country that holds a diplomatic mission strives to make its representation, its presence to the host country, as good as possible. With this in mind, architecture is provided with a great opportunity to showcase the spirit of each country through the buildings that represent them, their embassies. The desire that sparked the idea of making a project about the Embassy of Chile may be traced to the experience of being a foreigner, a Chilean, living in Washington D. C. In the same manner that a person may represent its country, an embassy building gives the opportunity to express and show a lot of what that country is about; it has the potential of becoming a symbol for it. This book presents the journey taken in search of the Self Portrait.