Radical Functionalism

A Social Architecture for Mexico

Luis E. Carranza (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

210 Seiten

2021
Routledge (Verlag)
978-1-032-00354-2 (ISBN)

Artikel merken

Radical Functionalism: A Social Architecture for Mexico provides a complex and nuanced understanding of the functionalist architecture developed in Mexico during the 1930s. It carefully re-reads the central texts and projects of its main advocates to show how their theories responded to the socially and culturally charged Mexican context. These, such as architects Juan Legarreta, Juan O’Gorman, the Union of Socialist Architects, and Manuel Amábilis, were part of broader explorations to develop a modern, national architecture intended to address the needs of the Mexican working classes.

Through their refunctioning of functionalism, these radical thinkers showed how architecture could stand at the precipice of Mexico's impending modernization and respond to its impending changes. The book examines their engagement and negotiation with foreign influences, issues of gender and class, and the separation between art and architecture. Functionalist practices are presented as contradictory and experimental, as challenging the role of architecture in the transformation of society, and as intimately linked to art and local culture in the development of new forms of architecture for Mexico, including the "vernacularization" of functionalism itself.

Uniquely including translations of two manifesto-like texts by O’Gorman expressing the polemical nature of their investigations, Radical Functionalism: A Social Architecture for Mexico will be a useful reference for scholars, researchers and students interested in the history of architectural movements.

Luis E. Carranza is Professor of Architecture at Roger Williams University and Adjunct Associate Professor at the GSAPP at Columbia University. He obtained his BArch from the University of Southern California and PhD in Architectural History and Theory from Harvard University. His research and publications are centered on how social movements and their theoretical ideals manifest themselves through modern art and architecture in Latin America and Mexico in particular. His publications include Architecture as Revolution: Episodes in the History of Modern Mexico (2010), Modern Architecture in Latin America: Art, Technology, Utopia (with Fernando Lara, 2015), and Experiments in (Radical) Functionalism (2020).

Introduction: Polemical Functionalism: Functional Art or Artistic Building; 1. Building Revolution: Mexican Architecture in the First Part of the Twentieth Century; 2. Functionalism and Social Progress; 3: Alter(n)ative Functionalism; 4: Radical Functionalism; 5: Between Art and Technology; 6: Place, History, and (Local) Culture; 7: Representation and Reception; 8: The City in the Functionalist Imagination; Epilogue: Organic Functionalism; Translations: "Artistic" Art and Useful Art; Presentation for the Sociedad de Arquitectos Mexicanos, 1933

Erscheinungsdatum	29.12.2021
Reihe/Serie	Routledge Research in Architecture
Zusatzinfo	1 Line drawings, black and white; 49 Halftones, black and white; 50 Illustrations, black and white
Verlagsort	London
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 234 mm
Gewicht	521 g
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918)
	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► 1918 bis 1945
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Technik ► Architektur
ISBN-10	1-032-00354-5 / 1032003545
ISBN-13	978-1-032-00354-2 / 9781032003542
Zustand	Neuware