Table of Contents
- Foreword by Jorge Francisco Liernur
- Acknowledgments
- (Notes toward an) Introduction
- 1903. Francisco Pereira Passos begins a project to “civilize”
Rio de Janeiro by applying Baron Haussmann’s ideas as an answer to
the tropical (lack of) urbanism.
- 1904. Víctor Meano, Francisco de Oliveira Passos, and Emile
Jéquier build a Latin American character with a classical
vocabulary.
- 1906. Julián García Núñez’s Hospital Español defines a
characteristic search for a new language: Secession/Art
Nouveau.
- 1914. Jesús T. Acevedo and Federico Mariscal lecture in Mexico
on the character, importance, and role of the Spanish colonial
legacy.
- 1915. Antonin Nechodoma introduces the Prairie style to Puerto
Rico.
- 1922. In an attempt to create a building expressive of the
“cosmic race,” José Vasconcelos inaugurates in Mexico City the
headquarters of the Secretaría de Educación Pública and formalizes
the muralist project.
- 1923. Mario Palanti: Palacio Barolo and Palacio Salvo
- 1924. Martín Fierro presents Alberto Prebisch and Ernesto
Vautier’s Ciudad Azucarera en Tucumán and formalizes the
connections and interests in architecture among the literary and
artistic avant-gardes.
- 1925. Modern architecture begins with Gregori Warchavchik and
Rino Levi publishing manifestos on the new architecture; catching
up to the 1922 Semana de Arte Moderna.
- 1925-A. Estridentópolis en 1975: Literary Architecture and the
Avant-Garde
- 1925-B. José Villagrán García, Instituto de Higiene y Granja
Sanitaria
- 1928. The Columbus Memorial Lighthouse Competition sparks an
investigation into what architecture for Latin America should be
like.
- 1929-A. The Ibero-American Exhibition opens in Seville,
revealing the complex and contradictory relations between Spain and
its former American colonies.
- 1929-B. Le Corbusier’s first encounters with South America:
lectures and early projects for Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay
- 1929-C. With the History of the Skyscraper, Francisco Mujica
articulates the skyscraper’s Latin American dimension.
- 1929. Sergio Larraín and Jorge Arteaga’s Oberpauer Building
initiates a new direction in Chilean architecture.
- 1930-A. Getúlio Vargas takes power in Brazil and appoints
twenty-eight-year-old Lúcio Costa as director of the Escola
Nacional de Belas Artes (ENBA).
- 1930-B. Commemorating the centenary of its independence,
Uruguay takes the first Soccer World Cup at home, and Montevideo is
at the center of its modern ambitions.
- 1930. Flávio de Carvalho, “City of the Naked Man”
- 1931. Juan O’Gorman, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Houses and
Studios
- 1933. In his Pláticas sobre arquitectura lecture, Juan O’Gorman
highlights the existing polemics between functionalism and academic
architecture.
- 1936. Le Corbusier is back in Rio de Janeiro.
- 1936-A. The Kavanagh Building is finished, becoming the tallest
skyscraper in Latin America.
- 1936-B. Francisco Salamone: Fascism and Monumental Architecture
in the Pampa
- 1936-C. Julio Vilamajó, School of Engineering
- 1937. Wladimiro Acosta’s Vivienda y ciudad highlights the
relationship between ecology, new forms of leisure, the house, and
the city.
- 1937. Cine Gran Rex and Argentine Classicist Modernism
- 1938. Characteristic of the growing reach of surrealism into
architecture and Latin America, the Chilean architect-trained
artist Matta publishes “Sensitive Mathematics—Architecture of Time”
in Minotaure.
- 1938. Joaquín Torres-García, Monumento cósmico, Montevideo,
Uruguay
- 1939. The European diaspora brings architectural talents to
Latin America on an unprecedented scale.
- 1939. The Brazilian pavilion at New York World’s Fair
- 1941. Pampulha represents an encounter that would change the
future of Brazil.
- 1942. Amancio Williams, Casa sobre el Arroyo
- 1943-A. The Brazil Builds exhibition at the Museum of Modern
Art in New York highlights the architectural and political
interests of U.S. relations with Brazil.
- 1943-B. Town Planning Associates (TPA) is commissioned to
design a new Brazilian town around an airplane factory, Cidade dos
Motores. This will be the beginning of TPA’s involvement with Latin
America that will include not only plans for Chimbote, Peru, but
also master plans for Medellín and Bogotá, Colombia, and Havana,
Cuba.
- 1944. Henry Klumb moves to Puerto Rico and formalizes
investigations of modern architecture in the tropics.
- 1945. Antoni Bonet, Punta Ballena, Uruguay
- 1946. Affonso Reidy’s Popular Housing Blocks
- 1947-A. Luis Barragán and Max Cetto, the émigré German
architect, begin working on the design of the first houses in
Mexico City’s Jardines del Pedregal subdivision.
- 1947-B. Seeking to symbolize postwar efficiency and
organization, Latin American cities embrace the North American
“architecture of bureaucracy.”
- 1947-A. Oscar Niemeyer sketches the UN building in New York but
takes no credit.
- 1947-B. Mario Pani—Multifamiliares
- 1947-C. Agrupación Espacio
- 1949. La ciudad frente al río is released, showing the
transformations of Le Corbusier’s plan for Buenos Aires.
- 1950. Public housing reaches a monumental scale: Mario Pani,
Carlos Raúl Villanueva, Affonso Reidy, Oscar Niemeyer.
- 1951-A. Carlos Raúl Villanueva, Villanueva Residence
- 1951-B. PROA magazine publishes Arquitectura en Colombia,
articulating an identity that survived the second half of the
century.
- 1951-C. Lina Bo Bardi inaugurates her Casa de Vidro.
- 1952. The debates of plastic integration, modern architecture,
and the development of new city forms come to the forefront in two
major universities: the UNAM in Mexico City and the Universidad
Central in Caracas, Venezuela. The first exemplifies figurative,
legible, and socially conscious art; the second, abstraction.
- 1952. Eladio Dieste, Iglesia de Cristo Obrero, Atlántida,
Uruguay
- 1953-A. Affonso Reidy: halfway between the Carioca school and
the Paulista school
- 1953-B. El Eco Experimental Museum in Mexico City opens its
doors, advocating for an “emotional architecture.”
- 1953-C. Max Bill’s critique of the São Paulo Biennial has a
significant impact in Brazil: Oscar Niemeyer writes a “mea culpa,”
Sérgio Bernardes invests in designing a technological utopia, and
João Filgueiras Lima devotes his life to prefabrication.
- 1953-A. Félix Candela, Church of Our Lady of the Miraculous
Medal, Mexico City
- 1953-B. Mario Roberto Álvarez, Teatro General San Martín,
Buenos Aires
- 1954. Le Corbusier, Curutchet House, La Plata, Argentina
- 1955. Eladio Dieste—Tectonics driving the accidental
architect
- 1955-A. Fruto Vivas, Club Táchira
- 1955-B. The Helicoide in Caracas: The Ultimate Parking and
Shopping Center
- 1955-C. Gio Ponti, Villa Planchart
- 1956. Brasília: A modernist utopia?
- 1957-A. Mies van der Rohe, Bacardí Buildings for Havana, Cuba,
and Mexico City
- 1957-B. Lina Bo Bardi, São Paulo Museum of Art
- 1959. The appeal of Corbusian monumentality and béton brut:
Clorindo Testa’s Government Building in La Pampa and, with SEPRA,
the Bank of London and South America in Buenos Aires
- 1961-A. Fidel Castro, in conversation with Ernesto “Che”
Guevara, decides to convert a golf course into art schools in
Cuba.
- 1961-B. João Batista Vilanova Artigas and Paulo Mendes da Rocha
articulate the Paulista school: free ground plan, generous social
spaces, and opaque envelopes.
- 1961. João Batista Vilanova Artigas, School of Architecture and
Planning, University of São Paulo
- 1962. Nelson Bayardo, Columbarium, Montevideo
- 1963. In Bogotá, Rogelio Salmona takes old bricks to a new
dimension in Torres del Parque.
- 1964-A. The military dictatorship ends Delfim Amorim and Acácio
Gil Borsoi’s investigations into an architecture for the Brazilian
northeast.
- 1964-B. Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, Museo Nacional de Antropología,
Mexico City
- 1964-C. Martín Correa and Gabriel Guarda, Las Condes
Benedictine Monastery Chapel
- 1965-A. Parque do Flamengo: Roberto Burle Marx redefines the
Brazilian landscape by rediscovering the country’s own local
species.
- 1965-B. The (re)invention of Curitiba: from the plan of Jorge
Wilheim to the implementation by Jaime Lerner
- 1965. Juan Borchers, Cooperativa Eléctrica de Chillán,
Chile
- 1966. United Nations as client and advocate: Emilio Duhart’s
CEPAL Building in Santiago
- 1967. Hélio Oiticica builds Tropicália, challenging the
traditional boundaries between art, popular culture, construction,
and architecture.
- 1967. Jesús Tenreiro-Degwitz—Venezuelan Postmodernism
- 1968. The Olympic Games provide Mexico City with opportunities
for new forms of national representation through architecture;
deadly student protests highlight the contested use of public
space.
- 1969-A. Inventing new educational paradigms, Alberto Cruz
Covarrubias and Godofredo Iommi (poetically) found the Ciudad
Abierta in Chile.
- 1969-B. PREVI: Two opposing governments in Peru bring in the
best architects in the world to address squatter settlements.
- 1969. Francisco Bullrich publishes on Latin American
architecture.
- 1971. Formalizing the legacy of the Madí (Movimiento de Arte de
Invención) and utopian urban projects, Gyula Kosice proposes a
hydrospatial city.
- 1971. National Theater, Guatemala
- 1974. Teaching under duress: La Escuelita, dictatorship, and
postmodernism in Argentina
- 1975. Filgueiras Lima, Capela do Centro Administrativo da
Bahia
- 1976. Mexican postmodernism: Teodoro González de León’s Colegio
de México expresses modern architecture’s new historicizing
sensibilities.
- 1977-A. Éolo Maia, Capela de Santana ao Pé do Morro
- 1977-B. Bruno Stagno House, Costa Rica
- 1979. Pampulha magazine is launched in Minas Gerais, marking
the beginning of Brazilian postmodernism.
- 1980. The Pritzker Architecture Prize is awarded to Luis
Barragán, and photography is at the center of the myth.
- 1983. Niemeyer returns to Rio de Janeiro to design the
Sambódromo and the CIEPs: architecture gets closer to popular
needs.
- 1983-A. Ramón Gutiérrez publishes Arquitectura y urbanismo en
Iberoamérica.
- 1983-B. Severiano Porto, Balbina Environmental Protection
Center, Brazil
- 1985-A. In the midst of a “not-so-lost” decade ...
- 1985-B. Lina Bo Bardi and the SESC Pompéia inaugurate an
interest in adapting existing structures.
- 1988. Brazilian Museum of Sculpture
- 1990. Chilean postmodernism is challenged by José Cruz and
Germán del Sol.
- 1991. Angelo Bucci and Alvaro Puntoni win the competition for
the Brazilian pavilion at Seville Expo 1992, marking the end of the
postmodern reign and the beginning of neomodernism.
- 1993. Pablo Beitia, Xul Solar Museum (Pan Klub Foundation)
- 1994-A. Quae sera tamen: Architecture for the Favelas
- 1994-B. As a model for internationalization, NAFTA becomes
emblematic of the new character of late-twentieth-century Mexican
architecture.
- 1997. Smiljan Radic, Charcoal Burner’s Hut
- 2000. Colombian Renaissance: In Bogotá and Medellín, mayors and
architects work together to create better cities.
- 2000. Alberto Kalach, GGG House, Mexico City
- 2001. Solano Benítez’s Tomb for His Father, Paraguay
- 2002. Rafael Iglesia, Pavilions at Parque Independencia
- Provocations for a Conclusion: Islands No More
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Illustration Credits
- Index
Promotional Information
"This is the most comprehensive theory and practice (and even
built-environment policy) survey of twentieth-century Latin
American architecture ever attempted. I believe it will be a very
important contribution to the field... The book contains an erudite
and discriminating collection of writings and projects." -- Rafael
Longoria, ACSA Distinguished Professor of Architecture, University
of Houston, and coeditor of AULA: Architecture and Urbanism in Las
Americas "It is no small task to write a history of modern
architecture of the vast region known as Latin America and the
Caribbean... This project required collecting and organizing the
information currently scattered in a series of books and journals,
with some areas well represented (Mexico and Brazil in the lead)
and others barely documented (Central America and Bolivia, for
example). Not only is this book commendable, it is also timely,
given the growing interest in the region on the part of scholars,
professionals, and educators." -- Patricia Morgado, Associate
Professor of Architecture, North Carolina State University
About the Author
LUIS E. CARRANZA is Professor of Architecture at Roger Williams
University in Bristol, Rhode Island. He is the author of
Architecture as Revolution: Episodes in the History of Modern
Mexico, and he has published and lectured nationally and
internationally on Latin American modern architecture, focusing
primarily on Mexico.
FERNANDO LUIZ LARA is Associate Professor of Architecture at the
University of Texas at Austin, where he serves as Chair of the
Brazil Center at the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American
Studies. He is the author of The Rise of Popular Modernist
Architecture in Brazil.
Reviews
"[A] major achievement, both in its scope and in its depth. It is
sure to entice newcomers and keep the experts inspired."
*Hispanic American Historical Review*