As part of a plan to improve the quality of school education in the rural areas of La Araucanía, the Ministry of Education launched a public competition to design a series of primary and secondary schools in the region, home to the country’s highest illiteracy rates and predominantly inhabited by the Mapuche people. The selected locations were the communities of Lifko and Carén.
The proposal for the Lifko school seeks to foster a strong sense of place through the integration of various elements of Mapuche worldview, avoiding forced formal typologies or superficial architectural allegories. It assimilates the richness of indigenous culture with contemporary architecture, adapting both to the specific context and function. Accordingly, the project is conceived as an elongated bar that separates two zones via an access courtyard, always oriented to the east (puel mapu) as prescribed by ancestral culture. The southern side (willi mapu) houses the educational program, while the northern side (pukin mapu) contains service areas. The compact, serrated volume features a succession of modular skylights that open southward, the direction from which wind (kúrüf) and favorable weather (küme wenu) originate.
Given the region’s timber industry, the construction system employs exclusively wood both for the structural framing of lightweight partition walls and their enclosures. The exterior cladding consists of a ventilated façade made of burnt wood, a technique used to enhance durability against harsh climatic conditions. Meanwhile, the interior surfaces are finished with natural wood whitened by a 20% paint wash to reflect natural light.
For the Carén school, a different design strategy was adopted. This project reinterprets local architectural patterns and traditional ways of life, characterized by clusters of isolated, compact volumes that constitute functional and territorial appropriation systems. These formal characteristics respond to the area’s climatic challenges, including heavy rainfall and abundant snowfall. The school is organized into three programmatic zones: the director’s residence, the educational area, and the service area. The resulting volumes are interconnected by exterior circulation corridors, arranged in parallel formations in one case and perpendicular in another.
The construction system defines a single-section module that addresses diverse functional requirements, resulting in volumetric extrusions of varying lengths that can be ordered, repeated, and configured in multiple ways according to programmatic needs and site context. The symmetrical section, based on two inclined planes, incorporates a continuous skylight at its ridge to ensure solar heat gain during winter and maximize natural lighting. This skylight design also facilitates adequate ventilation during summer months. A self-sustaining tower serves as the project’s sustainable core, harvesting rainwater for sanitary use and harnessing solar radiation to heat water and generate energy.
Project: Rural Schools for La Araucanía: Lifko and Carén
Client: Ministry of Education
Architect: Albert Tidy
Collaborators: Cristóbal Riffo, Ken Qui Sun, Camilo Villagrán
Location: Lifko and Carén, La Araucanía Region, Chile
Area: Lifko 482 m² / Carén 329 m²
Materiality: Wood and glass
Project Year: 2016