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.

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 Amabilis, 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.

Designed as a survey and focused on key examples and movements arranged chronologically from 1903 to 2003, this is the first comprehensive history of modern architecture in Latin America in any language. Runner-up, University Co-op Robert W. Hamilton Book Award, 2015 Modern Architecture in Latin America: Art, Technology, and Utopia is an introductory text on the issues, polemics, and works that represent the complex processes of political, economic, and cultural modernization in the twentieth century. The number and types of projects varied greatly from country to country, but, as a whole, the region produced a significant body of architecture that has never before been presented in a single volume in any language. Modern Architecture in Latin America is the first comprehensive history of this important production. Designed as a survey and focused on key examples/paradigms arranged chronologically from 1903 to 2003, this volume covers a myriad of countries; historical, social, and political conditions; and projects/developments that range from small houses to urban plans to architectural movements. The book is structured so that it can be read in a variety of ways-as a historically developed narrative of modern architecture in Latin America, as a country-specific chronology, or as a treatment of traditions centered on issues of art, technology, or utopia. This structure allows readers to see the development of multiple and parallel branches/historical strands of architecture and, at times, their interconnections across countries. The authors provide a critical evaluation of the movements presented in relationship to their overall goals and architectural transformations.