Architectural Education Under the Iron Fist. The Pinochet Dictatorship and the Repoliticization of Chile's Architecture Schools, 1973-1990

open_access
Open Access
Author:
Verdejo, Nicolas
Graduate Program:
Architecture
Degree:
Doctor of Philosophy
Document Type:
Dissertation
Date of Defense:
June 11, 2026
Committee Members:
Jose M Pinto Duarte, Program Head/Chair
Denise Costanzo, Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Pep Aviles, Major Field Member
Ana Maria Leon, Special Member
Joseph Wright, Outside Unit Member
Amanda Scott, Outside Field Member
Keywords:
Architectural History
Architecture and politics
Dictatorship
Authoritarianism
Pinochet
Chilean Architecture
Politics
Architecture Education
Architectural Pedagogies
Abstract:
This doctoral dissertation examines how the Augusto Pinochet regime (1973-1990) reshaped architectural education in Chile. Drawing on the five architecture schools in 1973 (at the Universidad de Chile, Universidad de Chile in Valparaíso, Universidad Técnica del Estado, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and Universidad Católica de Valparaíso), this study refutes the regime’s discourse and aim for depoliticization at universities, demonstrating that the regime imposed a structured repoliticization through violence, institutional intervention, surveillance, and the assimilation of the neoliberal model. Methodologically, this research integrates an exhaustive review of administrative archives with oral history and microhistory to fill gaps in official narratives and document the experiences of academic communities. Findings reveal three dimensions of the military intervention in the nation’s architecture schools: an asymmetrical application of state force, suppression of dissent through bureaucratic and civil surveillance, and a profound transformation of pedagogical discourse. Architectural education marginalized its former social welfare orientation, prioritizing instead three main disciplinary and instructional discourses that were permissible under the regime: market-oriented professionalization, phenomenology and a new sensibility toward built heritage, and formalist postmodernism.