Architecture Education Under the Iron Fist. The Pinochet Dictatorship and the Depoliticization of Chile's Architecture Schools, 1973 - 1990
Research Poster Arts & Humanities 2025 Graduate ExhibitionPresentation by Nicolas Verdejo
Exhibition Number 54
Abstract
In 1973, Chile underwent a major crisis and democratic upheaval due to a violent coup d'état led by General Augusto Pinochet. After ousting President Allende's government, Pinochet and the military held power for seventeen years. The regime is famous for massive human rights violations committed by the military against opponents and striking workers. It also aggressively promoted private development and a neoliberal economic model, significantly impacting urban planning. One critical area of intervention during this time was education: the military took control of all Chilean universities following the coup. This study aims to assess the primary effects of the Pinochet dictatorship on the country’s five existing architecture schools at that time. It addresses the lack of archival resources by examining previously unseen administrative documents and interviewing former students and faculty. It identifies three main forms of depoliticization in architecture education. The first is through direct military action, including the dismissal, detention, or disappearance of students and faculty who were allegedly opposed to the regime. The second involves suppressing any political engagement within schools in a social context characterized by mutual mistrust and paranoia among faculty and students. The third form consisted of designing curricula that abandoned the social objectives of the 1960s and focused instead on methodological approaches rooted in phenomenology, the development of private projects, and debates centered around aesthetics. This authoritarian framework not only affected the schools themselves but also influenced how new graduates thought and transformed the city from the professional realm.
Importance
The Pinochet dictatorship’s legacy in Chile’s architectural culture has never been clarified. This regime remains a subject of global scholarly interest, not only because of the massive human rights violations but also as the world’s first neoliberal experiment on a national scale. It reshaped every aspect of Chilean life, including architecture, urban planning, and education. In architecture schools, such an ideological framework not only impacted educational policies or pedagogies but also who could teach, learn, and work in these institutions. Most existing studies on architecture under authoritarian regimes worldwide have focused on their architectural styles and urban developments. Few have emphasized the political role of architecture as an institution—through academic programs or professional associations—during significant political shifts.
DEI Statement
Most histories of Chilean architecture give celebratory accounts of its design achievements and prominent protagonists. My research contributes to a more comprehensive framework of the nation’s architectural production and culture. The subject remains a sensitive and complex issue for Chile’s architects. At least eight faculty, students, and graduates from Chilean architecture schools were made disappear or murdered by the military. Those victims of the Pinochet regime’s human rights violations matter, and this project is meant to honor their memory by exposing the long shadow of violence and unjust power.