Latin American Architecture

The progress that Aleijadinho had made toward the development of a sensuous, flexible, and uniquely Brazilian style subsequently suffered a setback as, during the 19th century, Latin American architecture as a whole turned to French-inspired historical styles. This change reflected the cultural dominance of France throughout Europe, especially in the technical academies where European architects were trained. Ironically, Latin American political independence, achieved around 1820, initially brought with it little cultural or artistic independence. Economic domination by powerful European nations, including Britain and France, increased in the cities. This so-called neocolonial period saw efforts to transform Latin America’s greatest cities—including Buenos Aires in Argentina and Rio de Janeiro—into Latin American versions of Paris, with its broad, tree-lined boulevards, art museums, and opera house. The Teatro Municipal (Municipal Theater) in Rio de Janeiro splendidly exemplifies the Parisian styles and fashions favored by the Brazilian upper class. It was designed by Brazilian architect Oliveira Passos and was completed about 1910. Monumental urban architecture in Latin America reflects the fact that cultural dependence on Europe only became stronger under the elite class ruling the newly independent countries.

During the 1920s Latin American architects at last began systematically to reject imported European styles and find their own creative, modern solutions. Even then, they remained heavily indebted to modern European ideas and architects such as the Swiss-born Le Corbusier, who traveled to South America in 1929 and 1936. The chief impact of Le Corbusier was to free those who came under his influence from the stale formulas of European academic and historical styles. Le Corbusier urged Latin American architects to use local and native elements in design, to embrace the flowing curves of the Latin landscape, and to approach the design process from a more spontaneous and emotional point of view. He encouraged the use of modern materials such as reinforced concrete to answer the need for low-cost, standardized housing in Latin American cities, and he proposed several utopian plans for cities.

Le Corbusier’s ideas influenced the first modern public building in Latin America, the Ministry of Education and Health in Rio de Janeiro (1936-1943), which was designed by Lúcio Costa, Oscar Niemeyer, and several other Brazilian architects in collaboration with Le Corbusier. Led by Niemeyer, the Brazilian design team introduced grace, flexibility, and structural lightness to Le Corbusier’s heavy concrete slab. The building also featured blue-and-white azulejotiles by Brazilian painter Cándido Portinari and a tropical roof garden designed by Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx.

Influenced by Le Corbusier and the tropical landscape of Brazil, Niemeyer developed a curving free-form style in reinforced concrete. His goal was to break with the rational and technological concerns of modern European designers to create a more expressive and poetic architecture that would be uniquely Brazilian. In this he was inspired by his teacher Lúcio Costa, who in turn was moved by the architecture of Aleijadinho in the state of Minas Gerais. The works of Aleijadinho and Niemeyer share a sensual interest in flowing curves, a baroque sense of drama, and a feeling for powerful sculptural effects. Niemeyer’s early masterpiece, the Chapel of São Francisco (1940-1943) in Pampulha reflects in reinforced concrete the architect’s modern version of a colonial baroque theme: a unitary nave—without aisles or bays—that focuses all attention on the high altar. Niemeyer’s most significant accomplishment is in the futuristic Brazilian capital of Brasília, for which he designed all the major buildings between 1956 and 1964.

Elsewhere in Latin America, the effects of Le Corbusier and the Brazilian experiment were strongly felt. In Venezuela architect explored the structural and expressive potential of reinforced concrete in buildings he designed for the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas, especially the Stadium (1950-1952) and the Aula Magna (Main Auditorium, 1952). In Mexico Felix Candela achieved a unique synthesis of advanced structure and poetic form in his thin, curved shells of reinforced concrete, best illustrated in his Cosmic Ray Pavilion (1951) on the campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City. On the same campus, Mexican architect Juan O’Gorman faced the concrete slab of his National Library (1952-1953) with mosaics depicting Mexican history. Like the Brazilians, both O’Gorman and his Mexican contemporary sought to combine simple geometric forms, modern materials, and indigenous elements from colonial, local, and vernacular, or popular, traditions. Barragán’s house (1947) in Tacubaya, Mexico, and the San Cristobal Estate (1967-1968) in Mexico City added to those design elements a poetic use of water, vegetation, and magical color.

Central to 20th-century architecture in Latin America has been the project of adapting the modern and the European to the local. Modern Latin American design has also been driven by a quest for cultural identity through architecture and by the utopian desire to use design to create a better world for the people of Latin America.