Mid-20th-century Latin American design is taking over New York, as last month saw the opening of two major exhibitions showcasing the power and promise of Latin American modernism. Indeed, the last decade has seen a resurgence of interest in design from these cultures, and the storied region is finally getting its due.
© Leonardo Finotti
Plaza of the Three Powers, Brasília by Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer. All images courtesy Museum of Modern Art.
“Latin America in Construction: 1955–1989” is now on view at the Museum of Modern Art, featuring over 500 original works depicting major architectural projects from the era. This exhibition signals a growing global interest in the radical experimentation that took place in those countries over the course of 25 years, starting 60 years ago today. Brasília, Mexico City, and Rio de Janeiro were among the most modern-looking cities in the world, where architects like Oscar Niemeyer, Mario Pani, and Carlos Raéul Villanueva were creating new urban landscapes alongside Lina Bo Bardi, Miguel Arroyo, and Clara Porset, who were also driving the domestic design realm into the modern age. (A similar exhibition called “Moderno: Design for Living in Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela 1940–1978” pinpoints the rise of modernist interior and industrial design, shown at the Americas Society through May 16.)
MoMA’s show picks up where its last major Latin American architectural survey, “Latin American Architecture Since 1954,” left off with a largely archival exhibition that expands the definition by surfacing obscure and overlooked projects and initiatives, i.e. the Proyecto Experimental de Vivienda (PREVI Experimental Housing Project) in Lima, Peru, which demonstrated the need to create low-cost housing to accommodate the postwar population boom. Ingenuity in modernist campus design led to the creation of the ciudad universitaria (“university city”), where master-planning for higher education was also a way to prototype miniature versions of a utopian city, like the Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas.
The Bank of London and South America, Buenos Aires, Argentina, by Clorindo Testa
Architizer had the opportunity to speak with Barry Bergdoll about New York’s current obsession with Latin American design, why Instagram is changing the game, and the future of architectural exhibitions. Here’s what the exhibition’s lead curator (and A+Awards juror) had to say:
On why is it so important to survey Latin American architecture right now:
Barry Bergdoll: We are grotesquely uneducated in this country about the originality and inventiveness of many Latin American architects in postwar decades. Textbooks in first-year architectural history courses are so completely U.S.- and European-dominated. It’s unbelievable all the architecture we have not encountered. And why do it now? There is this resurgence of interest in Latin American architecture and a new generation of interesting work. In part, that has generated interest in midcentury modern work. It also really connects with debates and interests right now such as incremental housing. PREVI Experimental Housing Project comes to mind. I can’t help but think about Alejandro Aravena and all of the discussions his work has generated over the last eight–10 years now. It’s about generating an urban attitude. For people who haven’t traveled to Latin America, it’s very useful to encounter this architecture that’s completely different from the stereotypical image of totally privatized barbed-wire cities.
The Hotel Humboldt in Caracas, Venezuela by Tomás José Sanabria
The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL), Santiago, Chile by Emilio Duhart
On the exhibition’s mixed-media presentation:
We wanted very much to show the architect’s hand and design process rather than just showing the building as an object through photography, hence the emphasis on drawings. To rely exclusively on photography would be literally and metaphorically to see architecture through the lens of another artist rather than the architect. Yet of course photography was a really important part of the production and perception of architecture in the 20th century. But we take this mixed-media approach using video, newly constructed models, and yet the material is overwhelmingly from the period itself.
On social media:
People want to see current images of the buildings, too. What’s been its fate? That was one of the large motivations for launching the project with Instagram. Over 15,000 photographs were taken in the first six weeks. We’re in a different photographic culture now than the exclusive reliance on Leonardo Finotti or, a generation earlier, Ezra Stoller, both of whom of course appear in the show. This is the DIY Instagram culture and some of the quality compositions that came in are quite remarkable. And the thing I really hadn’t realized is when we picked the sites for the InstaMeets, it hadn’t occurred to me that these people were the ones interacting with the architecture today. These pictures detail the Latin American views presented and their voices are metaphorically expressed at the end of the show.
Perspective View of the Towers, Torres de Satélite in Ciudad Satélite, Mexico City by Luis Barragán
Cover plan of concert hall for Luis Ángel Arango Library, Bogotá, Columbia by Esguerra Sáenz y Samper
On the focus on construction:
We wanted construction to be viewed in a literal and metaphorical way. We’re also interested in how individual Latin American countries were constructing themselves through these construction projects, their politics and the ideology of developmentalism. As economic advancement occurred, all eyes were on Latin America. There was a lot of publicity about these acts of construction. Since this history has hardly been written by many people, it’s this writing of history of Latin America in this period that is also under construction.
Eladio Dieste at Atlantida Church, Uruguay
© Leonardo Finotti
Church in Atlantida, Uruguay by Eladio Dieste
On women in Latin American architecture:
Latin America is no different from North America or Europe. Women are very underrepresented in architecture. It was a Mad-Men world of architecture in that period and probably more emphatically so in Latin America. The contribution of women designers is very frequently in the interior of the home. But this MoMA show focuses largely on the creation of public realm. The exhibition’s reading room shows how the house was a retreat from the public sphere. And all the more so because it was a period of political turmoil in many of these countries. Frequently, these very beautiful houses are completely divorced from the political context. That made the interior a refuge. That said, there are important women designers in Latin America, from Lina Bo Bardi to the members of the Argentina time MPSSSV in Argentina and others that are crying out to be studied.
There’s a lot more work to be done now, though. The history of U.S. and European architecture has done more to take on the role of women architects and unveil their talents.
São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP), Sao Paulo, Brazil by Lina Bo Bardi
On the importance of hand-drawing:
So many well-known architects have seen the show and love the beautiful drawings. We don’t necessarily rely on the industry of the professional renderer to seduce the client. Architects still draw in their sketchbook. In fact, hand-drawing is likely to be all the more precious in the future. One of the great problems of the digital formats is that everybody’s work looks pretty much the same. There’s a great flattening in architectural projects in the way they’re presented in the digital world. And this leads to a great nostalgia. Will there even be exhibitions in the future?
On the future of architecture exhibitions:
I think there is a real hunger for a sense of authenticity in a world where everything is available on your computer screen. We have a crisis of public space here at MoMA. People are very eager for what they perceive as authentic, but also to be in social spaces that are real, with human beings, rather than to be in social media where you’re not sure if the person you’re talking to really has the name they claim to have. This is feeding the attendance boom in many museums. Presumably, the architecture exhibit will not completely die.