The Latin American Look
Since the war, one of the greatest building booms in history has changed the face of Latin America, and no letup is in sight. To house a population that is growing at double the world rate, the countries south of the border have built thousands of large-scale apartment projects, office buildings, stadiums, university halls and government buildings. In the major cities, new, skyscrapered skylines rise amidst one-and two-century-old slum clusters and rows of two-story stores. To portray a decade of tumultuous growth, Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art is currently displaying a photographic exhibit (assembled by Architecture Historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock) of 49 major building projects in ten Latin American countries and Puerto Rico. The display demonstrates that Latin American architects have not only developed a dramatic style of their own, but one ideally suited to their climate and way of life.
Common Style. Most modern Latin American architecture, whether along Mexico City's Paseo de la Reforma, Caracas' Avenida Bolivar or São Paulo's Avenida Anhangabaú, has a distinctive look. Almost all Latin American architects use combinations of louvers, grills, projecting concrete slabs and movable screens to control the dazzling sunshine; they share a lavish liking for color, usually dramatically set off against sparkling white. There is a dearth of structural steel and timber, so the designers have almost universally turned to reinforced concrete. It is a building medium that can easily become clumsy and heavy, but the Latin Americans have seized on its highly plastic quality to fashion shell-like vaulting, bold cantilevers, curving façades that give high sculptural qualities to their best buildings.
Many of the younger Latin American architects finish off their studies at U.S. universities, but so far, U.S. influence shows up chiefly in technical details like plumbing and elevators, in living-space layouts and the general addiction to the skyscraper principle. Main inspiration for Latin America's new architectural forms is the international style pioneered by such men as France's Ferret and Le Corbusier. A prime example: Brazil's beehive-fronted Ministry of Education and Public Health in Rio de Janeiro, the work of a team of architects including Le Corbusier and his brilliant Brazilian disciple, Oscar Niemeyer. Historian Hitchcock calls it "still perhaps the finest single modern structure in Latin America."