Building the New World: Modern Architecture in Latin America (Latine America studies)

by ValerieFraser (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2000

  $38.19

  Brasilia, Caracas, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro ...cities synonymous with some of the most innovative and progressive architecture of the past century. The period between 1930 and 1960 in particular saw a dramatic upsurge in Latin American modern architecture as the various governments strove to make public their modernising intentions. This book focuses on major state-funded architectural projects, featuring not only the high-profile prestigious buildings like the House of Representatives in Brasilia but also social architecture such as schools and low cost housing developments. Architects like Pani, Costa, Reidy and Niemeyer, who undertook this work with considerable autonomy and significant financial resources, in effect became social planners, their avant-garde aesthetic and technical experimentation often being teamed with radical social agendas. By 1960, the year in which Brasilia was inaugurated, economic growth in the region was slowing and faith in the modernist project in general was faltering. The English-speaking world, which had previously endorsed and even envied Latin American architectural production, changed its opinion and largely dismissed it from the history of twentieth-century architecture. Building the New World redresses the balance. It provides an accessible introduction to the most important examples of state-funded modernism in Latin America during a period of almost unimaginable optimism, when politicians and architects saw architecture as, literally, a way of building themselves out of underdevelopment and into the new world of a culturally rich and socially inclusive future.