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Martínez Gutierrez, Juan
(b Bilbao, 1901; d Chile, 1976). Chilean architect and teacher of Spanish birth. He moved to Chile as a child and studied architecture at the Universidad de Chile in Santiago from 1917 to 1922. In 1927 he won the first architectural competition to be organized in Chile, for the Chilean Pavilion at the Exposición Ibero-Americana 1929. He visited Europe in 1928–31 and absorbed the influence of Rationalism, the Bauhaus and other modern developments. In 1931 he became Profesor de Taller (workshop teacher) at the Escuela de Arquitectura of the Universidad de Chile. He became its director in 1932 and reformed the teaching programme. In 1936 he won a competition for the Escuela de Derecho building (completed 1938) in the Universidad de Chile. Equal to the best architecture of its time worldwide, the building is Rationalist with expressionistic elements in the main curved façade and well-articulated south elevation. After such projects as the Escuela Militar in Santiago (1943), which is an early example of exposed concrete on exterior and interior walls, he designed the Unión Española de Seguros building (1948), which anticipated some of the Gropius/TAC schemes in Boston and also incorporates local material, such as copper, in the façades. Martínez—who was an excellent watercolourist—paved the way for the transformation of architectural teaching in Chile. In 1969 he was awarded the Premio Nacional de Arquitectura and in 1975 became Emeritus Professor of the Universidad de Chile. He stressed the principal that good architecture is the result of conscientious study of its ‘function’, although his best works in fact transcend this view.
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