Three silences within the School of Architecture and Urban Planning of the Universidad de Chile under the Pinochet dictatorship

Abstract

The impact of the Pinochet dictatorship on Chilean higher education was extensive, resulting in radical changes in all universities and their administrations. The Universidad de Chile, a public and state-owned institution, was one of the most affected. Its School of Architecture and Urban Planning (FAU) was a particular object of an aggressive intervention, which meant the disappearance of faculty and students and the complete relocation of its campus. Although the school's institutional, academic, and curricular development under the regime has been generously described in canonical accounts, the impact this context had on pedagogical spaces and its communities has remained silent. After analyzing administrative documents and archives, this text reveals three stories in which various expressions of authoritarian power were exercised over workers, students, and faculty at the FAU. These cases demonstrate the points of friction between the school's reality and everything that occurred outside its walls during one of the most complex periods in Chilean history.