Lessons from Urban and Architectural Experiences in Latin America
The prevailing intellectual tradition in the West, in describing or justifying phenomena, tends toward categorizing the vast and diverse range of ideas and experiences into dual, irreconcilable, and homogeneous frameworks, simplifying complex issues and contradictory situations and reducing their solutions or methods of analysis to mutually repelling polarities that often become the site of absolutist partisanships and irresolvable disputes, failing to correspond to reality or to the relativities and non-simple states that actually exist. Meanwhile, a broad spectrum of ideas, experiences, or phenomena can be described or justified through the combination, compatibility, and alignment of opposites, and if placed in synergistic relation to one another, they can, while preserving their respective capacities and capabilities, yield a sum greater than their algebraic total and become enriched in richer dimensions. The practical and theoretical shortcomings of polarizing perspectives and homogenizing doctrines have given rise to new theoretical ventures aimed at enabling fundamental and comprehensive reassessments of prior modes of thought in the sciences, philosophy, art, and other disciplines, to help break through existing impasses and to enable the reading and explanation of new issues or the re-reading and re-explanation of existing subjects—thus placing new horizons and paths before us. On this basis, a re-reading of the contemporary and present-day achievements of the countries of the Latin American region in the realm of urban and architectural matters serves as a prime example and a full-length mirror of the coexistence of challenging yet conciliatory and synergistic tensions and conflicts between polarities such as modern and traditional, global and local, individual and collective, elite and popular, idealist and realist, abstract and concrete, self-referential and hybrid, as well as the friction and accommodation—worthy and synergistic—between these dimensions, in the domain of urban planning and architecture, and even between the two disciplines themselves. Unique experiences in engaging with the city and architecture that, approximately over the past century, have emerged in these countries against historical backgrounds and belonging to ancient cultures, the experience of passing through colonialism by Europeans, predominantly collectivist inclinations, sharp cultural and geographical diversity, transition to modernity in the post-colonial era concurrent with and alongside the spread of urbanization, industrialization, the establishment of modern civil foundations including modern healthcare and education and the creation of the infrastructure necessary for them, the discovery and extraction of oil (not in all countries) and the acquisition of oil wealth as well as the establishment of an industrial economy, confrontation with challenges such as severe political unrest, social instabilities and deep economic inequalities, poverty, insecurity, crime, violence, and extensive informal settlements—up to the present day, have advanced in tandem with these transformations, evolving through various types of experiences appropriate to each of these conditions and in every period, offered in the form of new solutions by urban planners and architects in these countries. The urban planning and architecture of the countries of the Latin American region are, in truth, the product of responding to this ensemble of conditions and the result of the synthesis born of the effort to merge the opposites or dualities I mentioned earlier—a process that, in the transition from the first half of the twentieth century to its second half and in stepping across the threshold of the twenty-first century, reveals gradual changes at each stage, such that progressively in the balance among the spectrum of these tendencies, the second pan of the scale of these polarities has grown heavier relative to the first, gaining ever greater weight as we move forward. In general, the outlook of the northern parts of the Latin American region has been toward North America, while the southern parts have looked toward Europe; and as noted, these countries are extraordinarily diverse and plural in cultural and geographical terms. At the same time, many shared characteristics exist among them, including the warm temperament of the people, passionate art, the benefit of an extremely beautiful natural setting, and intense sunlight. All of these qualities have, in some manner, been reflected in the cities and architecture of this region, lending them a distinctive atmosphere. The fundamental distinctions between the cultures and geographies of this diverse region compared to other parts of the world, together with the particular challenges that have always confronted these societies, set them sharply apart from other parts of the globe, in a manner that is strikingly present and prominently reflected in urban life, architectural space, and art, and even in the temperament of the people. It is precisely on the basis of these distinctions that this vibrant and pulsating center in the arena of contemporary design has been recognized, praised, or critiqued in the world, and has consistently offered worthy achievements and diverse, richly instructive experiences to this arena. In continuation of this tradition, and concurrent with the renewed emergence and collective growth of the countries of this region—with a combined population
of approximately half a billion people and, as of 2009, a GDP that places them among the growing economies of the world (for example, with Brazil at the center, as one of the ten emerging economies globally)—today, the urban experiences, architectural output, and architects of these countries are attracting increasing attention beyond their borders and, by playing an active role in shaping a portion of contemporary urban planning and architectural culture, are taking ever firmer steps toward engagement with the global network of designers. As previously noted, the urban and architectural experiences of Latin America, while heterogeneous and diverse, share many commonalities, the foremost of which is their success in presenting a new position or third way for overcoming the difficulty arising from their encounter with contemporary doubts and crossroads, concurrent with the exposure of the inefficacy of rigid presuppositions, radical discourses, and polarizing perspectives that had escalated during the modern era. Instances of this approach abound in the contemporary and present-day experiences of this region, among which one can point to the two dominant discourses in twentieth-century Brazilian architecture and urbanism—namely, the international tendency of Costa, Niemeyer, and Reidy in Carioca Modernism, and the vernacular tendency of Bo Bardi, Artigas, and da Rocha in Paulista Brutalism—or the rivalry between the rationalist-functionalist and organic-regionalist tendencies in Colombia. Likewise, the experiences of the era of state-led developmentalism in Brazil, including the voluntarist planning, modernist urban planning, and monumental, elitist, and abstract building designs in the new Brasilia—the work of Costa and Niemeyer in the mid-twentieth century—and, in contrast, Brazil's civic urban movements at the beginning of the twenty-first century, which led to changes in urban legislation toward the democratic administration of the city, the spread of social urbanism through guaranteeing the function of urban land on the basis of public interest (meaning prioritizing use-value over exchange-value) with the active participation and engagement of citizens and civil society. Also, the experience of building social housing for the low-income population and protecting it from the speculation of the real estate market, to which must be added the clever plans and programs for confronting the problems of impoverished neighborhoods and informal settlements through the participation of local communities for the comprehensive cultural, social, and economic improvement of their condition—without the need to segregate these groups or physically eliminate their neighborhoods as manifestations of poverty, or to gentrify these areas with luxury, expensive commercial complexes—which, as proven by tested experiences, themselves fuel inequality. Among the most outstanding examples of the latter category, in the form of urban actions and plans, one can point to architectural works containing programs capable of attracting the participation of people and local communities (in the form of bottom-up activism, in contrast to idealist, technocratic, bureaucratic, and top-down plans and programs) in addressing the social, cultural, and economic problems of the troubled, impoverished, and marginalized slums of the city (usually on the outskirts), to help improve their condition under the slogan "the best for the most disadvantaged." For example, by establishing physical connections and creating contact between the residents of these areas and the more affluent parts of the city (such as stitching these zones together by means of a public transit system like cable cars, as in the cities of Rio or Medellin, which through facilitating commutes and enabling cultural and social encounters and class mixing in these areas, have improved the condition of the disadvantaged sectors, including in employment). Or another example, in the construction of community centers in the form of cultural or educational buildings with multi-purpose capacity, beyond the original and fixed program envisioned for them, operational at all hours, serving the general public and not merely designated users. Examples of these actions, referred to as "social urbanism," have in recent years achieved successful results in the cities of Bogota and Medellin in Colombia, gaining worldwide renown. These impacts are, in reality, the product of realistic, practical, small-scale plans and programs with reasonable budgets, aimed at realizing non-utopian aspirations (in comparison with large-scale plans and programs such as the new Brasilia by Costa and Niemeyer some fifty years earlier), with a wide range of impact and quick returns, designed creatively by distinguished designers of these countries—among the most prominent of whom one can mention Mazzanti and his works in Colombia. In the field of planning, designing, and constructing housing for low-income classes, and ideas such as enabling the phased development of each unit through gradual intervention by the residents themselves over the course of occupancy, effective and fascinating initiatives have been undertaken in these countries, the most famous of which is the work of Elemental (Alejandro Aravena) in Chile, which has gained worldwide renown. Continuing, I turn to another important and interesting aspect of design tendencies in Latin America. Realism, in the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, arose in opposition to Romanticism, which had been individualistic and aristocratic, to champion the valuation of real, everyday life and to reflect the conditions of society in literature and the arts—a considerable portion of this tendency stemming from left-leaning political aspirations of the time. Concurrent with these changes, the acceleration of industrialization, mechanization, and the rationalization of space, along with the modernists' increasing emphasis on abstract innovations and their severing of ties with prior intellectual and cultural sources of nourishment and the promotion of self-referentiality in modern art and architecture, caused the space of art, architecture, and even the cities of the modern era to suffer from a kind of emotional and substantive void. The term "magical realism," first used to describe the literary style of contemporary Latin American writers such as the Colombian Gabriel Garcia Marquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude and the Mexican Carlos Fuentes in the story Aura, refers to a space in which reality and the everyday life of people are astonishingly interwoven with legend (myth or history) without appearing unnatural. This phenomenon, in a sense, alludes to the mentalities and experiences of the people of Latin America and to perpetually unstable conditions in which wonder and reality have maintained a simultaneous and ordinary presence. Perhaps the emergence of "magical realism" can be attributed to a preemptive effort against the formation or growth of the emotional and substantive voids created in modern Western art and architecture, within the artistic and architectural products of the countries of this region. Architectural theorists, in describing the works of certain Latin American designers, have drawn upon this very term "magical realism," among the most significant examples being the works of Oscar Niemeyer and the curvilinear quality in some of his works, which, inspired by the feminine form, reflect an erotic quality, an organic character, and a spirit of imagination, poetry, and passion brimming with emotional fervor and human content. In describing these works, they have been referred to as real structures made manifest in dreamlike forms. Perhaps this quality can be considered one of the distinguishing features of the Latin modernists in comparison to the modern movement in Europe and North America (which were the primary conduits through which modernism entered Latin America), whose works are intensely rational and cold—a quality that can be called a conscious or unconscious (yet critical) resistance by the architects of this region to global modernism. A quality that, although from the perspective of the hierarchical, center-oriented mentality of twentieth-century radical theorists in America and Europe—measured against the dogmatic principles of the homogeneous and pure modernism of that era and the prevailing modernist presuppositions—was evaluated as lacking sufficient authenticity, derivative, and second-rate compared to the original European or American versions, when viewed through the lens of today's theoretical shifts and conscious reassessments, reveals a hidden quality in these experiences: a more balanced, more moderate, more multi-dimensional, and more holistic vision of becoming modern in these countries, which, while simultaneously attending to growth and transformation within architecture (or the city) itself through testing different and novel paths, has valued a conscious and critical exchange with the social, cultural, and geographical materials (and obstacles and problems), and through the synergistic and shrewd integration of these dimensions, has succeeded in reaching richer dimensions beyond them. In what follows and in the collection of articles in this issue, you will become acquainted with only corners of the vast range of diverse urban and architectural experiences in the Latin American region, as well as the tendencies and aspirations embedded within them.
* Special thanks to Reza Asgari for his assistance in reviewing and offering comments, Sarvnaz Emtiazi as the editorial assistant and direct companion at every stage of the work, all the authors, and likewise the incomparable and ever-present colleagues of the magazine.