Spatial Solidarities traces the spatial practices enacted by architects, artists, activists, and other political agents in resistance to the violence of the Chilean military and civil dictatorship (1973–90). This regime operated through a network of detention and torture centers with different degrees of concealment, strategically designed to produce an environment of surveillance and control. Operating within these spaces, imprisoned individuals rearranged their bodies in space, designed their living spaces, and connected across isolation through songs and shadows on a wall. They collectivized their resources and cared for each other through different forms of mutual aid and radical care. They memorized site plans and lists of names and locations to denounce the crimes of the regime. And, in a striking demonstration of the power of spatial imagination, they produced ongoing theatrical performances in which they imagined themselves free. The author reads their actions as forms of spatial solidarity.

Ana María León’s work traces spatial practices and transnational networks of power, resistance, and solidarity in the Americas. She is cofounder of several collaborations laboring to broaden the reach of architectural history, her work has been published widely, and she has edited journal issues on the topics of revolution, commodity cultures, and settler colonialism. Her books are Modernity for the Masses: Antonio Bonet’s Dreams for Buenos Aires (University of Texas Press, 2021) and A Ruin in Reverse / Bones of the Nation (Editiones ARQ, 2021). Her next book is Spatial Solidarities: Architecture and Resistance in 1970s Chile (forthcoming University of Pittsburgh Press, 2026). León holds an architecture diploma from Universidad Católica de Santiago de Guayaquil, master’s degrees from Georgia Tech and Harvard University, and a PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is associate professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.