The Rise of Modernist Architecture in Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina, 1890–1940

Why did machine-age modernist architecture diffuse to Latin America so quickly after its rise in Continental Europe during the 1910s and 1920s? Why was it a more successful movement in relatively backward Brazil and Mexico than in more affluent and industrialized Argentina? After reviewing the historical development of architectural modernism in these three countries, several explanations are tested against the comparative evidence. Standards of living, industrialization, sociopolitical upheaval, and the absence of working-class consumerism are found to be limited as explanations. As in Europe, Modernism diffused to Latin America thanks to state patronage and the professionalization of architects following an engineering model. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Latin American countries borrowed from Europe both the ideal of the oligarchical republic, and the architectural eclecticism and monumentalism that still characterizes the Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City, the Avenida Central of Rio de Janeiro, and the Avenida de Mayo in Buenos Aires. French beaux-arts classicism appealed to the europhile-landed elites that ruled Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina for about one hundred years after independence in the 1810s (Gutiérrez and Viñuales 1998, 162–65). Modernism in architecture only appeared on the Latin American scene after dramatic turning points, that is, in the wake of revolution and counterrevolution, the shift from upper-class rule to the rule of the masses, the introduction of nationalist economic development programs, and in some cases, the installation of authoritarian regimes seeking legitimacy through public works. The rise of a modernist architecture in Latin America only within a few years of its appearance in Europe was somewhat of an improbable event given the region’s relative backwardness. Like Spain during the 1930s, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina are instances of “modernism MODERNIST ARCHITECTURE 7 without modernity,”1 of countries whose intellectual and cultural life was well ahead of economic and technological realities. The modernist materials par excellence—glass, steel, reinforced concrete—were not widely available in Latin America before World War II. Moreover, to the present day about 60 percent of all dwellings are erected by their own occupants (through self-help), and only 10 percent are designed by architects (Eliash and San Martín 1998, 53). Just as the classicism of turnof-the-century Latin American architecture was implemented by the Europeanizing tastes of elite architects, the rise of modernist architecture had to do with the persuasions and perseverance of a distinctively elite group of local architects influenced by European trends, with a few touches of indigenous influence (Bullrich 1969). The arrival of exiled modernist architects from Fascist and Communist Europe during the 1930s and 1940s contributed to the process. The Latin American modernists, while elitist, shared with their European counterparts a belief in social progress through good design. Latin American architects, however, did not merely imitate European developments. They actively sought to incorporate local influences, which in some cases led to the abandonment of key modernist principles. This paper focuses on the three most dynamic countries in the region—Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina—in order of their historical development of a modernist architecture. The goal is to understand the reasons that account for the varying degrees of receptiveness to this new architectural conception. The Mexican Revolution of 1910–17 and its subsequent institutionalization eventually brought to power a group of reform-minded technocrats who saw in modernist architecture a way to improve public services and lifestyles. In Brazil, Getúlio Vargas’s ideas about a “new state” (estado novo) paved the road to modernism after 1930. In Argentina the process was more protracted, although it started as early as 1916 with the election victory of the Radicals, followed by the military coup of 1930, and Juan Domingo Perón’s election to the presidency in 1946. Yet the rise of modernist architecture in Latin America also had to do with the educational backgrounds and experiences of the architects themselves and their propensity to think about architecture as engineers. THE ORIGINS OF MODERNIST ARCHITECTURE Machine-age modernism in architecture has been studied intensely by a number of scholars (e.g., Banham 1960; Jencks 1973; Frampton 1980). The modernist architects “sought to merge aesthetic innovation with 1. I owe this expression to Ramón Gutiérrez (1998a, 20). 8 Latin American Research Review economic rationality” (Larson 1993, 50) by applying a mechanical metaphor to the design of houses, public buildings, schools, factories, and everyday objects. They found their inspiration in industrial buildings, Cubism and abstract painting, and new models of work organization such as scientific management or Taylorism (Guillén 1997).2 European architectural modernism insisted on the aesthetic potential of efficiency, precision, simplicity, regularity, and functionality; the production of useful and beautiful objects; the designing of buildings and artifacts that would look and be used like machines. The aesthetic order that emerged from European modernism in architecture has been defined by its three main principles: “Emphasis upon volume—space enclosed by thin planes or surfaces as opposed to the suggestion of mass and solidity; regularity as opposed to symmetry or other kinds of obvious balance; and, lastly, dependence on the intrinsic elegance of materials, technical perfection, and fine proportions, as opposed to applied ornament” (Barr 1995, 29). European modernism in architecture represented an apotheosis of the mechanical, planning, productivity, and efficiency. As an artistic movement, modernism was rational in the sense that “architectural forms not only required rational justification, but could only be so justified if they derived their laws from science” (Collins [1965], 198). It was functional in the dual sense of making “full use of modern technology and its honest expression in design . . . and [embracing] a scientific approach to human needs and uses in programming, planning and design” (Bauer 1965, 48). This paper’s analysis of Latin American architecture between 1890 and 1940 is based on the ten leading architects, each in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, as identified in four key histories of modernist or twentieth-century architecture, and five encyclopedias of architecture (see the Appendix). Their statements, writings, and works serve as the basis for the assessment of the vibrancy of the modernist movement in architecture in each of the three countries. MEXICO: REVOLUTION AND ARCHITECTURE In the thirty years following the revolution of 1910–17, a staggering number of buildings were constructed in Mexico, including single-family homes, apartment complexes, government agencies, hospitals, movie theaters, and schools (Myers 1952). While the new regime promoted a modernist style with a certain touch of indigenous sensitivity in an attempt to turn Mexico into one of the “progressive” countries of the world, 2. Scientific management or Taylorism was an attempt to organize work according to the principle of the division of labor, measuring the time and skill required for each task, and providing monetary incentives so that the worker maximized output. MODERNIST ARCHITECTURE 9 many architects still subscribed to the more nationalistic neo-Prehispanic and Neocolonial styles (Cetto 1961; Méndez-Vigatá 1997, 61). The Mexican revolutionaries themselves were not in agreement as to what kind of architecture was best fit to achieve their social and economic goals. In fact, the Mexican Revolution was notorious for the “absence of an ideology,” to paraphrase Octavio Paz (1993, 143). The Muralists and Architecture Architects of diverse political persuasions were enlisted by the revolutionary state, in some cases to improve working and living conditions, yet in others to glorify the revolution and the regime. Several laws were passed to promote “low-cost,” “economical housing,” and “workers’ housing” (Gutiérrez 1998a). By far, the most activist agency was the Ministry of Education because of its control of architectural and artistic education, and also because free mass and secular instruction was at the top of the revolutionaries’ agenda, in a country with a 72 percent illiteracy rate in 1921 (Meyer 1991, 208). The goal of expanding educational opportunity required the construction of hundreds of schools throughout the country. The first activist Minister of Education was José Vasconcelos (1920–24), who had spent many years in exile in the United States. He was a traditionalist with a taste for neocolonial art and architecture, and a staunch critic of things American or modern: Mexico had a university before Boston, and libraries, museums, newspapers and a theater before New York and Philadelphia. To build is the duty of each epoch, and buildings shall be the glory of the new government. . . . We did not want schools of the Swiss type . . . nor schools of the Chicago type [a veiled reference to modernism]. . . . In architecture, too, we should find inspiration in our glorious past. (Quoted in Méndez-Vigatá 1997, 66–67; see also Fraser 2000, 23–32; Vasconcelos 1963) Vasconcelos made a momentous decision early on, which was to sponsor the muralists—Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros among others—to use public facades to glorify Mexico, the revolution, and the regime’s educational policies. This move had several important effects. First, it helped highlight the need to find and incorporate the local dimensions of art and architecture. In 1923 the Manifesto of the Union of Workers, Technicians, Painters, and Sculptors proclaimed that the popular art of Mexico is the most important and the healthiest of spiritual manifestations and its native tradition the best of all traditions. . . . We proclaim that all forms of aesthetic expression which are foreign or contrary to popular feeling are bourgeois and should be eliminated. (Quoted in Meyer 1991, 209) Still, the leading muralists were influenced by the European avant-garde. Second, the privileged treatment of the muralists had the effect of 10 Latin American Research Review imposing certain constraints on architects, especially the requirement to build vast wall surfaces in cement and not glass, and the added emphasis on ornamentation.3 Perhaps the most important effect of the state’s sponsorship of the muralists was the architectural tastes they came to propound. Rivera, while an admirer of colonial buildings, did not agree with Vasconcelos’s promotion of neocolonial and Californian architecture, and displayed an interest in the functional aspects of modernist architecture. Moreover, as director of the Central School of Plastic Arts in 1929–30, Rivera pushed very hard to introduce reforms, presenting architecture as a useful social endeavor geared towards the design of utilitarian buildings (López Rangel 1986, 15–19, 24–26). The muralists furthered a conception of art as a public enterprise at the service of the government (Paz 1993, 147). Rivera was also adamant that architecture should advance the cause of the poor (López Rangel 1986, 29). Architectural Eclecticism during the 1920s Vasconcelos and other government officials sponsored architects such as Carlos Obregón Santacilia, a great-grandson of President Benito Juárez, who designed schools in Neocolonial style, various government buildings in art deco, and the Monument to the Revolution in Mexico City in a mix of California and vernacular (Mijares Bracho 1997; Fraser 2000, 32–34). Other important architects of this early period included José Villagrán García, the architect of the neocolonial National Stadium of 1929 (Méndez-Vigatá 1997, 66, 67), and Adamo Boari, a personal friend of former dictator Porfirio Díaz, who designed various “revival” public buildings during the 1910s and 1920s. It was during the presidency of Plutarco Elías Calles (1924–28) that modernism appeared in Mexico. Obregón Santacilia and Villagrán García both started to design some modernist buildings, while continuing to build in neocolonial and even neoclassical styles. Villagrán García’s gradual evolution towards modernism was key because of his prominent teaching position at the National University. As Méndez-Vigatá (1997, 77) has pointed out, he remained an eclectic architect, mixing beaux-arts elements (aesthetic proportions, optical corrections) with the influences of modernism (the concepts of utility and honesty in architecture). In 1927 Obregón Santacilia wrote forcefully about the need for the “Mexican architect to join the international architectural movement” (quoted in López Rangel 1986, 17). These two architects designed a now 3. It is revealing to note that the architects trained in the beaux-arts tradition admired Rivera. See the journal of the Society of Mexican Architects, El Arquitecto: Revista de Arquitectura y Artes Mexicanas 2, no. 5, (1925): 1–40; 2, no. 8 (1926): 3–36. MODERNIST ARCHITECTURE 11 famous modernist house in the San Miguel neighborhood of Mexico City, praised by Rivera because its “beauty was based on the economy of material and maximum utility . . . even the electricity counter played a decorative role” (quoted in López Rangel 1986, 18). It was also during the 1920s that Mexican engineers reasserted their roles as technocrats in the new regime (Lorey 1990). “The individual that holds the key to the future is the Engineer. Illustrious is the Engineer, and grandiose are his accomplishments. It is through the Engineer . . . that the Creator is shaping the fate of humanity.”4 Some engineers suggested that Mexican architects learned from Gothic so as to arrive at a logical and balanced design of the various parts of the building. They argued very strongly for a collaboration between architects and engineers.5 The Mexican engineering profession, while not as mesmerized by Taylorism as in certain European countries or in Brazil, was keenly aware of the need to incorporate scientific methods of organization, and its chosen leaders firmly believed that the engineer should be trained not only in technical subjects but also in economic and organizational ones.6 A Mexican Modernism during the 1930s The truly architectural revolutionary in Mexico was Juan O’Gorman, a follower of Le Corbusier’s functionalism (Luna Arroyo 1973, 94). O’Gorman’s ideas were embraced by the governments of the 1930s, especially that of legendary president Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–40). O’Gorman was the founder of the Union of Architects in the Fight for Socialism (1937–41), and a personal friend of Leon Trotsky’s, who had left the Soviet Union for exile in Mexico. With inspiration from muralist Diego Rivera, O’Gorman found a way to resolve the perennial conflict between the past and the present by incorporating pre-Hispanic motifs (Luna Arroyo 1973). A painter and muralist, as well as architect, he was forceful in his commitment to modernism: “We should not forget that men are only rational animals, and to proceed through any medium that is not the one of maximum efficiency through minimum effort, is not to proceed rationally.” In a manner reminiscent of Le Corbusier, whom he read assiduously, he proclaimed, “A house . . . will be a tool, just as the automobile is becoming a tool” (quoted in Burian 1997, 127, 4. See the editorial in the inaugural issue of the journal of the National School of Engineering, Ingeniería 1 (1927): 5. 5. Ingeniería 6 (1932): 375; 8 (1934): 93. 6. See journals of the Association of Engineers and Architects of Mexico, Revista Mexicana de Ingeniería y Arquitectura 1 (1923): 46–50, 374–84; 9 (1931): 234–57; 14 (1936):