A new space for a new science: the transformation of the JAE Campus after the Spanish Civil War

This article explores the way in which different concepts of education are expressed through architecture. It analyses the case of the transformation of the campus of the Colina de los Chopos in Madrid after the Spanish Civil War. The victor’s vision for education was captured physically in a new space that expressed the opposite values to those of the precedent democratic period. Francoism aspired to erase every physical trace of the Spanish liberal and democratic culture. Thus, a new campus was designed to stress physically new scientific, cultural and educational values. Aesthetically the former austerity and rationalism were substituted by monumentality and historicism; symbolically, the submission of any kind of knowledge to religion was highlighted through the transformation of the former Auditorium into a church and the erection of several religious monuments.