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Exhibition
Latin America
in Construction:
Architecture
1955-1980
Museum of Modern Art, New York,
March 29-July 19
Review by Thomas Wensing

This is a momentous exhibition

covering 500 modern works from
more than a dozen South American
countries. It celebrates the 60th
anniversary of Henry Russell
Hitchcock’s 1955 MoMA show ‘Latin
American Architecture since 1945’
and was organised over a period
of five years by curator Barry
Bergdoll, head of the of the
department of architecture and
design, together with a team of
experts and contributions from
research teams across the South
American continent. neo-liberal turn became fully apparent. Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Caracas, Mexico make the frantic pace of urban growth quality of the grey-painted models of sections on the way in which Latin criticism has a certain validity,
1 – From the exhibition in New York
Its focus is on the post-war period The exhibition is thematically City and Havana. The clips, dating palpable and it optimistically sets the the Chileans worked particularly well American architecture was exported it misses a much larger point that 2 – From the exhibition
until 1980, an era of unprecedented arranged to give some structure to the from the Twenties to the Fifties, have spirit for the rest of the exhibition. in conveying the spatiality and mass to the rest of the world and a gallery the exhibition makes; it immerses 3 – Oscar Niemeyer. Cathedral Under
Construction, Brasilia, Brazil
urbanization and modernisation, breadth of materials and large been juxtaposed to cover the The following two rooms are of the concrete works of, for instance, of utopian and dystopian explorations. you in the high quality of modern 4 – Eladio Dieste. Church in Atlantida, Uruguay,
and coincides with the application geographical distances. The prelude in modernisation in each of these cities dedicated to the UNAM campus in Clorindo Testa’s Bank of London It should be apparent that an Latin American architecture, and (1958)
5 – Miguel Rodrigo Mazuré (Peruvian,
of development theory, or the first gallery starts off with by way of the usual modernist tropes: Mexico City, the UCV Campus in in Buenos Aires and João Batista exhibition that covers so much in doing so finally corrects a long- 1926–2014). Perspective of hotel in Machu
developmentalism, by most exquisite compilations by Joey Forsyte zeppelins, airplanes, healthcare, the Caracas, Venezuela, and the design Vilanova Artigas’ Faculdade de ground, that shows so many projects standing Eurocentric and Western Picchu (1969)

Latin American governments. of rare film footage from major cities construction of apartment blocks, and construction of the new capital Arquitetura e Urbanismo in São Paulo. across countries and time, may lack bias in the historiography of the
Developmentalism, according such as Montevideo, Buenos Aires, São factories and railway lines. The films of Brasilia in the heartland of Brazil. The exhibition concludes with smaller in focus and depth. Although this modern movement.
These projects were of course
2
political projects in which radical 5 3, 4 & 5 copy
Exceptional and
enormous urban growth
modern design was used to reinforce as per word
fostered a climate of
national identities, intended to doc supplied
with pics
express faith in progress and a bright
architectural innovation future, but were above all model
and experimentation wm

1 & 2 Thomas Griesel 3 © Arquivo Publico do Distrito Federal 4 Leonardo Finotti 5 © Archivo Miguel Rodrigo Mazuré
cities or city quarters meant to guide
the future of urbanisation and urban
to Bergdoll, is ‘the notion that it was planning in the respective countries,
the role of the state to promote and possibly across the continent.
modernisation and to attend to the The large scale of the model city
urban challenges it brought’, a doctrine is set against innovations in domestic
which by the Eighties had been fully architecture in the section At Home
swept away by neo-liberal economic with the Architect, a room dedicated
policies, and the postmodern critique to the design of the freestanding
on the relative merits of large-scale, single-family house. This treasure
top-down, urban planning methods. trove moves beyond the usual
This exceptional and enormous suspects of Barragán and Legorreta
urban growth in Latin America after to include many other, mostly
the Second World War not only unknown, gems. Unfortunately the
meant that capital cities and former majority of designs needs to be
provincial towns turned into accessed by way of a display of the
megalopoli, but also fostered a catalogue and through iPads.
climate of architectural innovation and The next three topics, of
experimentation. This allowed Latin Transforming the Urban Landscape,
American countries to shake off the A Quarter Century of Housing,
dominance of European and and Density and Innovation
American cultural influence and aim to document the large-scale
develop native, modern architectural urban transformations taking place
traditions of exceptional quality. in cities across the continent. It is
Henry-Russell Hitchcock in these sections that I felt that the
conceded in 1955 that ‘the quality exhibition was able to capture the
of current Latin American building essence of the variety of Latin
exceeds our own’, and going through American architecture at its best.
the kaleidoscopic array of A combination of original material,
architectural output in the current drawings and photographs,
exhibition, which ranges from complemented by newly constructed
Uruguay to Mexico, the impression large models by students of the
is that this level of quality has at least Catholic University of Chile and
been sustained until the effects of the University of Miami. The handcrafted

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