Academic Cecilia Ramírez is awarded a tender to rebuild JUNJI equipment designed in the Allende government

The award was made in conjunction with Hugo Palmarola from Diseño UC, and includes an exhibition at the La Moneda Cultural Center starting in September.

 

 

Reconstructing part of the equipment, furniture and historical popular toys manufactured for JUNJI in 1971-1972, is one of the objectives of the project awarded by the academic of Education UC Cecilia Ramírez y Hugo Palmarola, UC design, through the Competition of Creation and Artistic Culture 2023Organized by the Department of Arts and Culture for the UC Research Vice Presidency.

The project will rebuild a selection of the elements developed by the Industrial Design Area of ​​the Technological Research Institute (INTEC), dependent on CORFO, for the National Board of Kindergartens (JUNJI), project designed and completed during the government of former President Salvador Allende.

In this way, it will seek to understand the importance of the design of material culture for care, education and social justice in childhood, especially through products intended for everyday, popular and massive use. This reconstruction and reflection on the historical equipment proposes to make visible a significant precedent of how women and men, educators and designers of the past, imagined the relationship between design and social change for the boys and girls of Chile.

Participating in this project, explains academic Cecilia Ramírez, implies a “broad and sensitive tour of a historical moment of change, and that was interrupted with the coup in 1973.

“With the creation of the JUNJI in April 1970, a new level of institutional action of the Chilean State with children was configured. It was a big step in the process in which their participation as citizens began to be considered, from a legal subjects perspective”adds Ramirez.

These designs, made 50 years ago, they contemplated a new material culture for boys and girls from 45 days to six years of age, in addition to furniture for teaching and administrative staff, introducing improvements in construction, standardization and quality of use. The proposals, mainly in wood, materialized from an unprecedented system of cribs, children's tables and chairs, furniture for potty chairs, didactic furniture and toys, among other products.

“It is relevant to work on this project to rebuild the furniture and toys, which were created and implemented by this public institution, which dealt with how to contribute to a new relationship between design, pedagogy and social change for boys and girls, to achieve true social justice in Chile”, complements the academic.

The selection of 20 of these pieces will become a chapter within the exhibition “How to Design a Revolution: The Chilean Road to Design / How to Design a Revolution: The Chilean Road to Design” which will be exhibited at the La Moneda Cultural Center, from September 7, 2023 to January 28, 2024.