Standard Schools in La Araucania. Modernity as Political Eestheticization during Carlos Ibáñez del Campo’s first Administration (1927-1931)

Abstract

This paper examines the importance of the social processes –inherent to the drive to modernise the state undertaken under the first government of Carlos Ibáñez del Campo– that surrounded the gestation of works of institutional architecture as an expression of political aestheticisation. Primary and secondary sources were used to uncover a series
of works of institutional architecture that laid the foundations for the modernisation and standardisation of school buildings in Chile at the beginning of the twentieth century.
The results revealed the significant role played by The Foundation Company, the American company responsible for the Standard Schools, which were expressions of political aestheticisation that set the guidelines for educational architecture in Chile for the following five decades.