Abstract

This research identifies architectural innovations from a selection of experimental educational establishments in Chile, with school buildings designed between 1950 and 1962. The article analyses the architectural value of these works in relation to the challenges faced by school architecture in the 20th century. Experimental high schools have been vastly documented as valuable examples of educational experimentation that followed reforms from the 1920s and 1930s in Chile. Nevertheless, the relationship between pedagogical aspects and architectural space has received little attention. This paper analyses the experimental educational programme through its architectural projects: Manuel de Salas High School (1950), Darío Salas High School (1950), and Gabriela Mistral High School (1946). It utilises analytical drawings and dense descriptions of unpublished archival sources (architectural plans, photographs), as well as direct observation in situ of school facilities at the present time. The results demonstrate that the architecture of Chilean experimental high schools gradually progressed towards a formal differentiation of their buildings in response to the increasing complexity of the school programme, which sought to be expressed in a visibly modern architectural form, and move beyond strictly functional requirements.