Modern Architecture in Latin America

Abstract

The definitions of “Latin America” and “modern architecture” have long been debated, are routinely contested, and are increasingly inclusive. For the purposes of this bibliography, “Latin America” refers to the geographical area south from the US–Mexico border region to the southern tip of the Americas in Chile and Argentina. It includes Brazil and the Spanish-speaking parts of the Caribbean. “Modern architecture” refers to buildings built beginning around 1900 through approximately 1975. The unevenness of architectural production across, and scholarship on, Latin American countries generally tracks their relative size and wealth, with Mexico and Brazil having the greatest volume of buildings and books. The cultural, economic, ecological, and political diversity of Latin America, along with the sheer size of the territory and the different historical experiences of people within the region rightly cause scholars to venture generalizations with considerable caution. Nevertheless, it is possible to identify some formal patterns and recurring themes. Formally, architecture here followed roughly the same trajectory as it did in western Europe and the United States: historicist styles dominated early in the century, with some art nouveau influence; stripped rationalism and Art Deco, often with pronounced classicist characteristics, followed. The expansion of modernist idioms at mid-century, particularly in Mexico, Brazil, and Venezuela and often in ways that prominently incorporated murals, mosaics, sculpture, and landscape design drew international attention. The trend toward large-scale, visually massive works and an increased use of exposed concrete and brick defined later decades. Internationalism—borne in the formal and theoretical influences of European architecture, supported by study of foreign developments via journals, nurtured in architects’ travels and professional exchanges, and vitalized through European emigration to the region—frequently mixed with consideration of the particularities of regional or national cultures and conditions. Three major themes dominated architecture: history, social concern and underdevelopment, and the relationship of cosmopolitan urban centers (most often capital cities) to rural areas and vernacular typologies. These themes were frequently bound up with debates about race, class, national culture, and modernization. Internal migration and rapid urbanization in the mid- and late 20th century fueled new planning schemes and much new building. Although private patronage was important, many of modern Latin America’s major works were publicly funded. Politics underlay numerous commissions, while explicit political aims shaped others. In many instances modernist forms functioned as aspirational expressions of states’ modernizing ambitions rather than as aesthetic responses to industrialization.