Latin America in Construction: MoMA redefines the International Style

MoMA's latest exhibition, Latin America in Construction, is an invigorating and incisive survey of modern architecture between the years of 1955 and 1980. Courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2015
(Image credit: Thomas Griesel)

In 1929, while lecturing in Buenos Aires, Le Corbusier deftly sketched some classical references - a broken pediment; orders Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian; an approximation of the Parthenon - and then crossed them out with a big red "X." 'Ceci n'est pas l'architecture,' he scrawled below, in downward sloping cursive. 'Ce sont les styles.'

That drawing, created in the same year as René Magritte's famous painterly protest of a pipe, is among the first works that visitors encounter in the Museum of Modern Art's invigorating and incisive survey of modern architecture in Latin America, and it acts as a kind of opening bell for a 25-year, 11-country (Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico) bout of old versus new in which innovation, complexity and radical originality emerge on top.  

Corbusier's sketch does more than set the tone for a regional rethinking of academic tradition and the Beaux-Arts legacy of city planning, explains MoMA curator Barry Bergdoll. Bergdoll has organised the exhibition over the last seven years, with Patricio del Real, Jorge Francisco Liernur, and Carlos Eduardo Comas. 'It points to the fact that Le Corbusier had gone to South America in 1929 - he only visited North America for the first time in 1935 - and Frank Lloyd Wright in 1931, yet no Latin American buildings were included in that seminal defining [MoMA] show, The International Style, which was anything but international!'

This ambitious survey picks up where yet another landmark MoMA show - Latin American Architecture Since 1945 - left off. 'The 1955 exhibition was a photographic field report on contemporary architecture of the previous decade,' says Bergdoll. 'This is a historical inquiry into a quarter century that ended thirty-five years ago.'

Visitors are plunged into 'a region in motion', with the help of a seven-screen installation that plays 693 precisely coordinated excerpts of archival footage that reveal the rapidly changing rhythms of life in major cities such as Montevideo, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro amidst Latin America's spectacular post-1945 urbanisation. 'These archival films…allow a view of the work in human context of how a building is birthed, how it lives, and how it may even fade to dust,' notes Joey Forsyte, who researched and edited the mega-anthology.

A myriad of approaches to the ideal future city come into focus through approximately 500 original works, from newly commissioned large-scale models and a portfolio by Brazilian photographer Leonardo Finotti to original drawings and ephemera. Set against a vast yellow timeline wall of key historical events, thematic sections tackle topics such as campus design and the ciudad universitaria (university city), the modernist dream fulfilled of Brasília, and the global export of Latin American urban planning models. The result is a rich network of ideas, influences, and collaborators including Alexander Calder, whose 'acoustic clouds' float in the auditorium of Carlos Raúl Villanueva's Aula Magna at La Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas. Notable too is Louis Kahn, who tapped Luis Barragán for help on the decidedly non-tropical court of the Salk Institute in California.

If the density, pace and sheer range of such a show sounds like it could overwhelm, well, that's by design. Bergdoll expects visitors to leave surprised by 'the sheer quantity of excellent architecture, the breathtaking speed of urban transformations and the vast variety of innovations and explorations,' along with plenty of individual discoveries. 'A building like the Banco de Londres in Buenos Aires, or the Torres del Parque in Bogota should be as famous as Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater or Guggenheim for example,' he adds, 'and Lina Bo Bardi's SESC Pompeii is a built utopia.

The seven-screen installation of coordinated.

The seven-screen installation of coordinated excerpts of archival footage, revealing the rapidly changing rhythms of life in major South American cities.Courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2015

(Image credit: Thomas Griesel)

A number of the 500 works on show.

A number of the 500 works on show are large-scale models, tracking the development of design over the years

(Image credit: press)

Black and white image.

Tomás José Sanabria's Hotel Humboldt, Caracas, Venezuela, 1956. Courtesy of Fundación Alberto Vollmer

(Image credit: Fundación Alberto Vollmer)

A man is wearing hat.

Eladio Dieste overseeing the construction of his Atlantida Church in Uruguay, c.1959.Archivo Dieste y Montañez

(Image credit: Marcelo Sassón. Archivo Dieste y Montañez)

Perspective plan for Miguel Rodrigo Mazuré's Hotel.

Perspective plan for Miguel Rodrigo Mazuré's Hotel in Machu Picchu project, 1969. Courtesy of Archivo Miguel Rodrigo Mazuré

(Image credit: Archivo Miguel Rodrigo Mazuré)

Black and white image and it has pillers.

View of Atlas Building, Lima by Walter Weberhofer Quintana, 1953. Courtesy of Walter Weberhofer

(Image credit: Walter Weberhofer)

Interior view of Eduardo Terrazas' Mexican Pavilion at the Triennale di Milano .

Interior view of Eduardo Terrazas' Mexican Pavilion at the Triennale di Milano of 1968. The design was based on an Olympic logo by Terrazas and Lance Wyman. Printed matter was by Beatrice Trueblood. Courtesy of Eduardo Terrazas Archive

(Image credit: Eduardo Terrazas Archive)

Black and white architect image

Edificio Palmas 555 in Mexico City by Juan Sordo Madaleno, 1975. .Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Sordo Madaleno Arquitectos

(Image credit: Guillermo Zamora)

Image of building in black and white.

Augusto H. Álvarez's Banco del Valle de Mexico - also in Mexico City, 1958.  Archivo de Arquitectos Mexicanos, Facultad de Arquitectura, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

(Image credit: Guillermo Zamora)

A drawn cover plan for the concert hall in Bogotá's Luis Ángel .

A drawn cover plan for the concert hall in Bogotá's Luis Ángel Arango Library (Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango) by Esguerra Sáenz y Samper, 1965. Courtesy of Archivo de Bogotá

(Image credit: Archivo de Bogotá)

A social Housing Complex in San Cristobal, Bogotá by Rogelio Salmona and Hernán Vieco.

A social Housing Complex in San Cristobal, Bogotá by Rogelio Salmona and Hernán Vieco, 1963-1966. Courtesy of Fundación Rogelio Salmona

(Image credit: Paolo Gasparini, Rogelio Salmona)

Beautiful building view.

Leonardo Finotti's photograph of Salmona's Torres del Parque residential complex in Bogotá, 1964-70. Courtesy of Leonardo Finotti

(Image credit: Leonardo Finotti,  Leonardo Finotti)

Beautiful view of the image.

The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL), Santiago by Emilio Duhart, 1962-1966. 

(Image credit: Courtesy of PUC Archivo de Originales)

A man is standing and watching the view.

The Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro (MAM) by Affonso Eduardo Reidy, 1934-1947.

(Image credit: Courtesy of Núcleo de Documentação e Pesquisa - Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro)

Clouds and greener is looking beautiful.

Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer's Plaza of the three powers in Brasilia, 1958-60, as shot by Leonardo Finotti.Courtesy of Leonardo Finotti

(Image credit: Leonardo Finotti, Leonardo Finotti)

Perspective view of the towers of Torres de Satélite.

Perspective view of the towers of Torres de Satélite (1957), Ciudad Satélite, Mexico City by Luis Barragán. Barragán Archives, Barragan Foundation, Switzerland. New York

(Image credit: Courtesy of Barragan Foundation, Switzerland / Artists Rights Society (ARS))

A drawing of the hopsital in Corrientes.

A drawing of the hopsital in Corrientes, Argentina by Amancio WIlliams.

(Image credit: Amancio Williams Archive)

The Bank of London and South America in Buenos Aires.

The Bank of London and South America in Buenos Aires, designed by Clorindo Testa, 1959-66. Courtesy of Archivo Manuel Gomez Piñeiro and Fabio Grementieri

(Image credit: rchivo Manuel Gomez Piñeiro and Fabio Grementieri)

Beautiful art of olden times.

Transformador de Cuerpos, Buenos Aires, Argentina - a pencil and ink drawing by Mario Gandelsonas and Marta Minujin, 1966. Courtesy of Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the Architect

(Image credit: Museum of Modern Art)

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