In Chile, Many aedicule called Animitas, often small but sometimes monumental, stand out in towns and along roads, often incongruous position with regard of the Rationalist logic that now prevail in the management of the territories. They commemorate tragic, natural or violent deaths occurred in public spaces. Built without permission, without secular or religious status, they did hold no less a major role in perception and popular practices of space, that they come to sanctify in various forms, without antagonizing the daily life. The few attempts to destroy them or move them have failed or proved authentic trauma, because the Animitas contribute to the ownership of the premises and the establishment of a relationship with the invisible sought by a large part of the population. Therefore, it is entitled to wonder about how town planning can treat such a phenomenon. Can integrate these unforeseen aedicule and related practices, to obtain easements or guidelines? Can, in a secular State and a right based on reason, contravening the functionality to create a socio-spiritually approach? Research has consisted firstly to be widely sampled the Animitas of Chile, then to focus specifically on those of Valparaiso, which were the subject of a comprehensive census. This material has allowed to build typologies that were confronted with the contents of interviews from manufacturers of Animitas and practitioners. What led to the conditions of their building, their elevation in some articles and their evolution. This part of the work highlighted the recycling of certain beliefs and pre-Hispanic practices; It also helped to outline categories were fired a few assumptions about the stability of the phenomenon and the need to take into account in the management of contemporary cities and the Chilean territory.
The Animitas of the Chile or the public space of the contemporary city confronted to ancestral beliefs leading to the spontaneous construction of sustainable buildings