Constructs of Solidarity: Architecture a

Since the 1950’s, built environments across Latin America increasingly served as testing grounds for new strategies of urban solidarity in architecture. Writing on the rapid modernization of this period, social theorists in the region have identified solidarity as a distinct marker of Latin American modernity. This seminar examines the role of architecture in this recent history of Latin America with a focus on the cultural forms and social practices that fostered solidarity processes since the mid-twentieth century. Through interdisciplinary and cross-border collaborations, communities, architects, social thinkers, and policy makers combined experimental ideas of aided housing and public spaces with new social concepts in efforts to restructure Latin American cities reshaped by the “great urban explosion.” These social projects in architecture were closely followed by their North American counterparts and soon connected vaster Pan-American territories. Seen primarily as the pursuit of egalitarian and inclusive values in the built environment, we will examine the many forms that these constructs of solidarity in Latin America assumed in architecture during the following decades.

Conceived to look closely and critically at the projects, social concepts, and institutions behind solidarity programs and designs, this seminar will concentrate on two interwoven threads: 1. Architectural theories and projects that fostered community, cross-class, or state programs of solidarity in the design of housing, public spaces and services; 2. The social theories and institutions that supported these approaches in architecture. From self-construction to “superbloques,” and from self-organized social movements to state-sponsored pre-fabrication, we will investigate the strategies through which Latin American communities and professionals redefined collaborative practices and pursued ideas of emancipation, autonomy, and social citizenship. Adopting a comparative and relational approach, we will examine how these architectural concepts, technologies, and social theories subsequently informed Pan-American movements for housing and building aid across Latin America.