Built in Chile between 1974 and 1983, the caracoles comerciales —named after their helicoidal plan, which extended the street inward through a continuous circulation— constitute one of the most intriguing yet largely overlooked architectural and cultural phenomena. Their persistence turns them into uncomfortable testimonies of a dramatic period in the country’s recent history that the city has not fully known how to confront.

Espacio continuo proposes their cataloguing and systematic documentation as a way to interrogate these urban traces and to raise questions about their place in collective memory and in the still unresolved tensions of the contemporary city.