01. Banco de Londres y América del Sur, model, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1966. Architect Clorinda Testa and SEPRA Arquitectos
Foto Alder Catunda

The first sight is powerful.

The arrival in the spacious halls of the sixth floor, occupied by the show Latin America in Construction: architecture - 1955-1980, doesn’t make us remember the most sophisticated exhibitions at MoMA, with carefully diagrammed walls are, low light, refined tones and highly aestheticized curatorship that one often associate to the museum’s achievements. The approach to the Latin American show takes the visitor with a sense of strength and force. At the very entrance, seven screens with simultaneous projection precipitate on the public the sights and sounds of a time of intense hope in development. And then, design, architecture and city planning were touched with an epic élan.

The internal party-walls do not reach the high ceiling. Their ugly internal structure of galvanized steel was left on sight, above the fully built portion of drywall. On the walls were displayed photographs, precious original drawings and blueprints next to screens showing slides and film clips without sound. The frames of the pieces were not uniformed. Higher, here and there, other films are projected directly on the wall. Midway models in various scales cumulate the space. All around, the expography seems to reaffirm the title 'in construction' that provides the key proposed by the curators to unravel the sub-continent.

Latin America in Construction: Architecture 1955–1980, schematic plan, MoMA, New York, USA
Imagem divulgação [MoMA]

The first curatorial "construction" of Latin America comes from the comparison of two major universities: the ones at Mexico City and Caracas. The juxtaposition of these projects – that doesn’t need any text - articulates distant parts of Latin America. Patricio del Real, one of the four curators of the show, told me that the 1947 drawing by Teodoro González de León for the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México – UNAM is one of the gems exposed. "The plan was repeatedly referred in the bibliography, but we were not sure that the risk really existed." It was "discovered" in the University archives and is displayed side by side with the overall plan of Mario Pani and Enrique del Moral (of 1947-54). It allows us to understand the gestation of ideas that led to the construction of the largest Latin American university.

Analysis of Brasilia, handwritten notes of Raúl Villanueva for classes at the University of Caracas, Venezuela
Foto Gustavo Rocha-Peixoto

But the same room displays the 1960 design made by Carlos Raúl Villanueva to the Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas with the famous Great Hall energized by colorful acoustic slivers by Alexander Calder. Other examples could have been cited to show how the great Latin American universities were conceived as ideal thumbnail modernist cities – Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Santiago, Havana ... But the two examples are enough to introduce the magnificent next room in which one can see photos, sketches and models of the planning and construction of Brasilia. We can see immediately that the curators were not only interested in juxtaposing two good examples of universities, but glimpsed a common idea of ​​modern city whose climax was to be reached with the new Brazilian capital. A system of thought is insinuated by the approach to these examples. And it is soon confirmed by handwritten notes Raúl Villanueva for his classes in the Venezuelan university (dated in about 1965). The teacher then used the analysis of Brasilia as a matter of course to their students in Caracas.

Soon the Brazilian visitor finds immediate familiarity in beautiful watercolor perspective by Walter Weberhofer Quintana and Jose Alvarez Calderon to the headquarters of Companhia de Seguros Atlas in Lima, Peru. The 1953 project (the sketch is from 55) shows a façade with horizontal brise-soleils with Brazilian atmosphere over triple-heighted pilotis wide-open to the street with cantilevered rooms. The gist evokes the spirit of the best Brazilian verve of the Roberto brother’s, Alvaro Vital Brazil and their generation.

Companhia de Seguros Atlas, Lima, Peru, 1955. Watercolor: Walter Weberhofer Quintana e José Alvarez Calderón
Foto Gustavo Rocha-Peixoto

In the next room one can see the project entered by Francisco Méndez Labbé in the contest for the Navy school of Valparaiso, Chile. It was foreseen for the winding riverside over the Pacific Ocean, but was not built. It would include five long buildings of about 300m in length leaning from a promontory over the ocean. The strong winds at the site would be modulated by a curved cover which was designed – and studied in laboratory – with openings like the wings of an airplane. The possible connection that catches my Brazilian eyes is with the locals residential complexes by Affonso Eduardo Reidy to Gávea and Pedregulho, Rio de Janeiro. There, the elongated shape of the buildings accommodates the winding topography. But is also directly related to the next project over the MoMA wall. It was made by the Instituto de Arquitectura of the Universidad Católica de Valparaíso for the Avenida del Mar in the same situation. According to Patricio del Real, it was praised in a letter by Lucio Costa as very important example that might be taken into consideration.

One cannot overlook the recurrence of the pillar clusters that concentrate the structure of tall buildings on the ground floor. The type was inaugurated by Oscar Niemeyer and Hélio Uchoa “V pillars” at the Hospital da Lagoa in Rio de Janeiro (1952-58). The Rio hospital is not on show, but conjugated pillars appear in the SENA building (Servicio Nacional de Aprendizaje) in Bogota, Colombia designed by German Samper Gnecco in 1960.

FAU USP, model, São Paulo, Brasil, 1961. Architects Vilanova Artigas and Carlos Cascaldi
Foto Alder Catunda

FAU USP, model, São Paulo, Brasil, 1961. Architects Vilanova Artigas and Carlos Cascaldi
Foto Alder Catunda

Similarly, the pillars and the unified roof of the CEPAL building (Comisión Económica para América Latina), designed by Emilio Duhart in Santiago, Chile in 1962, foreshadow the Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo of the Universidade de São Paulo (FAU-USP) - built between 1966 and 1969 by Villanova Artigas. The iconic Architecture School in São Paulo appears, indeed, very well in the exhibition with good drafts and a beautiful split model.

The presence of Brazilian architecture is central in the show. Brazil allows articulate the modern experience in Latin America. Upon discovering this, we remember that a beautiful model of the Ministry of Education building in Rio de Janeiro (by the team led by Lucio Costa) was shown at the very entrance of the first room. The building was opened in 1946, one decade before the initial date of the time framing of the exhibition. But it was this pioneering initiative that inaugurated the system of thought and practices that articulates the museographic discourse.

Ministério da Educação e Saúde, model, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1936-45. Architects Lúcio Costa, Oscar Niemeyer, Affonso Eduardo Reidy, Jorge Machado Moreira, Ernani Vasconcellos and Carlos Leão
Foto Alder Catunda

Some gigantic models arranged in the middle of the fluid spaces add interest and power to the show discourse. An enormous scale model of the Torres del Parque by Rogelio Salmona in Bogota (1964-70) is displayed near the back wall, but it already instigates the visitor since it begins to insinuate between the gaps of the part-walls. The huge set that dominates the Colombian capital landscape has a strong vertical presence in the halls of the New Yorker show. The study model for the Escuelas Nacionales de Arte in Havana by Vittorio Garatti, Ricardo Porro and Roberto Gottardi draws attention for being the just opposite of this: discreet and delicate intervention, organically integrated into the topography, shaded by palm trees; whose curves are confused with the landscape.

But of all the models the most striking is from the Bank of London and South America designed by Clorindo Testa ahead of SEPRA in the Argentinean capital. The magnificent model was sectioned in order to let visitors instigated by velvety exposed concrete curves that combine finesse and brute force; rawness and refinement. The object has, on the show, the presence of a ghostly apparition. In a way it dialogues with the FAU-USP, the Torres del Parque, and the MASP (Museu de Arte de São Paulo) and the SESC Pompeia (Serviço Social do Comércio) by Lina Bo Bardi, to define a particular way of Latin American Brutalism. The refusal of the coverings ceases to be the simple expression of a moralizing materialism and acquires a poetic force with no parallel outside the sub-continent.

Banco de Londres y América del Sur, model, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1966. Architect Clorinda Testa and SEPRA Arquitectos
Foto Alder Catunda

The cavernous forms of the monumental bank in Buenos Aires hypnotize the visitors. At any time there is a mass of excited heads commenting on the model.

The exhibition was named Latin America in construction and received a subtitle with two deadlines. The year 1955 seems obvious reference to the exhibition Latin American Architecture since 1945 shown at MoMA that year. It's not so easy to guess what defines the final year of 1980. Yes, it is true that it accomplishes a period of 25 years - a full quarter of century. But this arithmetical explanation does not match the will of interpretation that leads the libretto of the show. From 1980 on Latin America democratized, but the economies were then very weakened and containment policies of state expenses began to prevail. The economic pragmatism may have stifled the strength that animates the exhibition. On the other hand, a postmodern fad proliferated from the United States and Europe. Ready commercial formalisms become endemic. From Rio Grande to the Tierra del Fuego a vulgar and emasculated architecture emerged. Imported ideas have been applied uncritically in Latin America. The end of the dictatorships had a high economic cost and its end was accompanied by serious economic crisis from north to south with rampant inflation. That would cripple, for more than one decade, all major projects. An era of harsh criticism replaced the age of Invention. Modernist achievements were recriminate; its creators became demonized. Distrust devoured hope. Planning went into crisis and perished.

The last room displays 'export' projects and achievements. A few cases where it seems that modernism in Latin America attracted interest outside home. It was an attempt to disguise the end of the dream. We know that the sequence of the history of Latin American architecture – after 1980 – is quite depressing. But the final taste that lingers long in the mouth after the visit is very good. Between 1955 and 1980 the curators have rediscovered a rich and bold continent. By far, no other region of our planet witnessed such amount of experimentation in architecture, construction and urban projects in these 25 years. After the immediate postwar period, the Continent has become the scene of a continuous process of urbanization. The sense of progress took over hearts and minds. Within this, industrialization settled. And modern architecture has emerged as symbol and instrument of all that.

In the initial year of that period, MoMA exhibited a sample of Latin American architecture under the baton of the architectural critic and historian Henry Russell Hitchcock that Barry Bergdoll called 'photographic report'. At that time the Museum hired the photographer Soichi Sunami to travel the continent recording modern architecture in beautiful images. The black and white photographs over rigid panels were glued directly on the colored walls of MoMA and constituted an effort to formulate a modern Latin American style. In this it followed Hitchcock’s modus operandi. In 1932 he and Phillip Johnson had organized in the Museum the famous International Style exhibition that was intended to formulate the grammar of a new modern style in a world without borders. The World of Johnson and Hitchcock in 1932 did not include Latin America. Hitchcock named the material gathered in 1955: "Latin American Architecture." The curators of the recent exhibition were more prudent and avoided to adjectivize the set of objects. They preferred to speak of a Latin America that builds itself.

Centro Cultural San Martin, model, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1964. Architect Mario Roberto Alvarez
Foto Alder Catunda

The Latin American show by Hitchcock had no drawings, documents, movies. It was a collection of exterior images of photogenic buildings built in the 10 previous years. Indeed, about 10 years prior to that, the Museum had exhibited another collection of architectural images: the famous Brazil Builds exhibition, organized by Phillip Goodwin with photos by Kidder Smith. The amazing thing is that these three exhibitions constitute the totality of what the MoMA ever exhibited of architecture in Latin America.

Agora mais de 500 itens foram trazidos de 11 países para abarrotar as salas luminosas do sexto andar do santuário da arte moderna mundial, no número 11 West da rua 53 em Manhattan. No meio do labirinto de divisórias as paredes de gesso acartonado não chegam ao teto e revelam sua intimidade construtiva. O conjunto parece um galpão de obra em plena construção. As transparências e a fluidez dos espaços permitem a quem chega antever o que vem pela frente. E faz o visto ressurgir e precipitar-se novamente sobre o visitante magnetizado. Não há um percurso único, mas uma construção aberta e inacabada. Visões sobrepostas e simultâneas que não se fecham em si, que não se resolvem. A estrela não é a museografia. O importante não parecem ser nem mesmo as imagens e documentos. O que a exposição inteligentemente põe em construção é a idéia positiva de futuro que se aloja por trás das ousadias projetuais.

Now more than 500 items were brought from 11 countries to cram the well lit rooms of the sixth floor of the sanctuary of the global modern art, at 11 West 53 Street in Manhattan. Amid the labyrinth of parti-walls plasterboard do not reach the ceiling and reveal their constructive intimacy. The space looks like a work shed under construction. Transparencies and the fluidity of the spaces allow those that enter to foresee what lies ahead; and makes the already seen reappear and precipitate again over the magnetized visitor. There is no single route to be followed. Instead, an unfinished construction opens to be roamed: simultaneous and overlapping views do not close on themselves; paths are not solved. Museography is not the star. Even the images and documents do not seem to be the most important thing. What the exhibition cleverly puts in construction is a positive idea of ​​future that lodges behind the projective audacities.

A timeline drawn over the yellow rear wall of the exhibition tells the historical background of extra-architectural events over the 25 years. It was scratched up high, almost outside the visual limit of the show, hovering over the initiatives of social housing. This chronology shows with subtlety the rise and fall of dictators and regimes. And so, skillfully, it disclaims the exhibition to face this thorny reality. Precisely here lays one of the key operations that allowed reveal the strength of the displayed set of archtitecture: to ignore political interferences; the colors of the regimes and the horrors, not small, of dictatorships. What did reveal the power of architecture was to bracket the regimes and tyrannies oscillating between fragile democracy projects – and focus the objective on the design and on the architectural and urban achievements.

É fácil achar o que não está exposto. Cada visitante poderá sair da mostra com sua lista pessoal do que não foi contemplado; com seu inventário de queixas individuais por não ver consignados seus edifícios prediletos. Países inteiros ficaram de fora. Diante de um período tão longo, de um território tão vasto e de uma produção tão significativa as escolhas são inevitáveis. Nem há, tampouco, grandes novidades. O que está exposto são os grandes clássicos do continente. Não podia ser diferente. Perante o silêncio geral dos museus de arte do Mundo sobre arquitetura latino-americana, a tarefa dessa mostra tinha de ser o reconhecimento e a consagração do cânon.

It's easy to find what is not exposed. Every single visitor may leave the show with his personal list of what was not contemplated; with its inventory of individual complaints for not seeing his favorite buildings. Entire countries were left out. With such a long period, such a vast territory and such a significant production choices are inevitable. There are also no novelties. What is exposed are the great classics of the Continent. It couldn’t be different. Facing the general silence of the World's art museums on Latin American architecture, the task of this show had to be the recognition and consecration of the canon.

The show was organized by Barry Bergdoll, Curator and Patricio del Real, curatorial assistant, both from the Department of Architecture and Design at MoMA; along with Jorge Francisco Liernur, Universdad Torcuato di Tella, Buenos Aires and Carlos Eduardo Comas, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil with the assistance of an advisory committee from several Latin American countries.

The ephemeral event (open to the public from March 29 to July 19, 2015) is complemented by a substantial 320 pages catalog fated to become a reference book like the rare surviving copies of the Hitchcock catalog and Brazil Builds. It has important texts of the three main curators. Bergdoll’s (who was, until recently, the Chief Curator of Architecture at the MoMA) is called Learning from Latin America and proposes to derive lessons from the great continental laboratory for a historical and contemporary reassessment of the architectural legacy of this period. It is followed by the contributions of the two guest curators. Comas’ text approaches the Brazilian case in its carioca and paulistana aspects, while Liernur targets the developmental motivations of urban and architectural design.

In the catalog, the images of displayed buildings and projects were systematized by country with texts by Silvio Plotquin (Argentina), Ruth Verde Zein (Brazil), Barry Bergdoll (Caribbean), Fernando Pérez Oyarzun (Chile), Carlos Niño Murcia (Colombia) Eduardo Luis Rodríguez (Cuba) Louise Noelle (Mexico) Sharif Kahatt and Jean Pierre Crousse (Peru), Gustavo Scheps (Uruguay) and Silvia Hernandez Lasala (Venezuela). The publication also includes annotated bibliographies by country.

This astonishing exhibition launches new look at a region and a time often neglected by Europe and the United States and at which even us, the Latin-Americans seemed to face biased with distrust and irony. The beautiful show discloses a strong region with powerful capacity of accomplishment; great amount of high quality architecture and accelerated transformation.

The curators avoided adjective the continent's architecture, but what you learn by visiting the show is that, contrary to what many of us could think, Latin America actually exists.

note

Latin America in Construction: Architecture 1955–1980, a complex overview of the positions, debates, and architectural creativity from the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego, from Mexico to Cuba to the Southern Cone, between 1955 and 1980. On view March 29 through July 19, 2015, Latin America in Construction is organized by Barry Bergdoll, Curator, and Patricio del Real, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design, MoMA; Jorge Francisco Liernur, Universidad Torcuato di Tella, Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Carlos Eduardo Comas, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil; with the assistance of an advisory committee from across Latin America.

about the author

Gustavo Rocha-Peixoto, full professor at UFRJ, is historian and critic of architecture and cultural heritage.