The Road that is Not a Road and the Open City, Ritoque, Chile


Book Description

Pendleton-Jullian discusses influences behind the Open City - the work and working methods of Surrealist French poets, the words and creative attitude of Le Corbusier, the heritage of the South American landscape and culture.




Chilean Modern Architecture since 1950


Book Description

Chilean architecture—along with that of São Paolo and Mexico City—sets a benchmark for the intersection of modernism with vernacular influences in Latin America. Culture, landscape, and the geology of this earthquake-prone region have all served as important filters for the practice of post-1950s design in Chile. This volume introduces the modern architecture of Chile to readers in the United States. Looking primarily at domestic architecture as a lens for studying the larger movement, Fernando Pérez Oyarzun considers the relationship between theory and practice in Chile. As he shows in his chapter, during the early 1950s the School of Valparaíso offered the possibility of developing experimental projects accompanied by theoretical statements. There, visual artists considered poetry the starting point of modern architecture and contributed their radically modern views to the design process of the project. Next, Rodrigo Pérez de Arce examines the material context of architecture in Chile: the availability of materials and technologies, the frequency of violent earthquakes and related seismic activity, and the nation’s craft-based, labor-intensive building practices. He applies these considerations to a series of case studies to demonstrate how they interact with cultural, historical, economic, and even political influences. In the book's final chapter, Horacio Torrent reviews the interplay between the architectonic culture and modern shapes that came into sharp focus in the 1950s in Chile. In another series of case studies, he highlights the formation of a system of concepts, thought processes, instruments, and values that have given Chilean architecture a certain singularity during the last fifty years.




Modern Architecture and the Sacred


Book Description

This edited volume, Modern Architecture and the Sacred, presents a timely reappraisal of the manifold engagements that modern architecture has had with 'the sacred'. It comprises fourteen individual chapters arranged in three thematic sections – Beginnings and Transformations of the Modern Sacred; Buildings for Modern Worship; and Semi-Sacred Settings in the Cultural Topography of Modernity. The first interprets the intellectual and artistic roots of modern ideas of the sacred in the post-Enlightenment period and tracks the transformation of these in architecture over time. The second studies the ways in which organized religion responded to the challenges of the new modern self-understanding, and then the third investigates the ways that abstract modern notions of the sacred have been embodied in the ersatz sacred contexts of theatres, galleries, memorials and museums. While centring on Western architecture during the decisive period of the first half of the 20th century – a time that takes in the early musings on spirituality by some of the avant-garde in defiance of Sachlichkeit and the machine aesthetic – the volume also considers the many-varied appropriations of sacrality that architects have made up to the present day, and also in social and cultural contexts beyond the West.




The City Cultures Reader


Book Description

Cities are products of culture and sites where culture is made. By presenting the best of classic and contemporary writing on the culture of cities, this reader provides an overview of the diverse material on the interface between cities and culture.




Modern Architecture in Latin America


Book Description

Designed as a survey and focused on key examples and movements arranged chronologically from 1903 to 2003, this is the first comprehensive history of modern architecture in Latin America in any language. Runner-up, University Co-op Robert W. Hamilton Book Award, 2015 Modern Architecture in Latin America: Art, Technology, and Utopia is an introductory text on the issues, polemics, and works that represent the complex processes of political, economic, and cultural modernization in the twentieth century. The number and types of projects varied greatly from country to country, but, as a whole, the region produced a significant body of architecture that has never before been presented in a single volume in any language. Modern Architecture in Latin America is the first comprehensive history of this important production. Designed as a survey and focused on key examples/paradigms arranged chronologically from 1903 to 2003, this volume covers a myriad of countries; historical, social, and political conditions; and projects/developments that range from small houses to urban plans to architectural movements. The book is structured so that it can be read in a variety of ways—as a historically developed narrative of modern architecture in Latin America, as a country-specific chronology, or as a treatment of traditions centered on issues of art, technology, or utopia. This structure allows readers to see the development of multiple and parallel branches/historical strands of architecture and, at times, their interconnections across countries. The authors provide a critical evaluation of the movements presented in relationship to their overall goals and architectural transformations.




Valparaíso School


Book Description

"The School of Architecture at the Catholic University of Valparaiso, Chile, underwent a transformation in 1952 when a group of young architects led by Alberto Cruz began teaching at the school. The Valparaiso School, as it became known, acquired an international reputation for its radical stance and its commitment to dialogue between architects and other disciplines. From 1970 onwards, it began to focus much of its research and design activity on the Open City project, which had been created by a group of architects, artists and poets with a vision of a city with "no master plan, no imposed ordering devices, and no hierarchical networks of infrastructure." Originally set up as a laboratory-type environment, this alternative community has since become a place of residence and work for like-minded people. Valparaiso School: Open City Group provides an insight into this radical experiment in urban development through a series of essays and photographs."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved




Thirteen Ways


Book Description

Robert Harbison offers a novel interpretation of what architectural theory might look like. The title is based on Wallace Stevens' "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird", and like the poem, Harbison's work is a composite structure built of oblique meanings and shifts that give a portrait of architecture in which symbol and metaphor coexist. 10 illustrations.




The Architecture of Light


Book Description

Reviewing the use of natural light by architects in the era of electricity, this book aims to show that natural light not only remains a potential source of order in architecture, but that natural lighting strategies impose a usefully creative discipline on design. Considering an approach to environmental context that sees light as a critical aspect of place, this book explores current attitudes to natural light by offering a series of in-depth studies of recent projects and the particular lighting issues they have addressed. It gives a more nuanced appraisal of these lighting strategies by setting them within their broader topographic, climatic and cultural contexts.




National Identities and Socio-Political Changes in Latin America


Book Description

This study frames the social dynamics of Latin American in terms of two types of cultural momentum: foundational momentum and the momentum of global order in contemporary Latin America.




Santiago Calatrava


Book Description

"This is the first time that I have made the commitment to give a series of talks with the specific intention of communicating my experience. The things I am saying, I am saying for the next generation-people who will set and invent other styles and who will find their own way, just as I have integrated the works of those who have been working before me."-from Santiago Calatrava: Conversations with StudentsWith these words, Santiago Calatrava launched a recent series of lectures at MIT filled with insight, anecdote, and hard information about the practice of design. As the most important figure at the intersection of architecture and engineering, Calatrava reflects on his person path and ties it to his design work. Includes original sketches by Calatrava.