Modernity for the Masses

Ana Marâia Leâon's manuscript studies how the discourse and practice of modern architecture was transformed by its encounter with large populations and volatile politics in midcentury Argentina. The country saw a shift in power from landowning elites tothe working class beginning in the 1930s, and with that shift came large migrations from the countryside into Buenos Aires. The urgent need for housing that followed created both an opportunity and a set of challenges for architecture--practical challenges, certainly, but also political and philosophical ones. How close to the centers of power should potentially revolutionary populations live? How dense or dispersed should their housing be? As these questions suggest, this is ultimately a study of the place where, in the author's words, the discourse of modern architecture met the mandates of totalitarian governments." A deeply interdisciplinary work, Modernity for the Masses accesses architecture, politics, and culture through the work of Catalan architect Antonio Bonet--and specifically, through the unbuilt housing projects of Bonet. (The "dreams" of the subtitle evoke the strong influence of surrealism and psychoanalysis on both Bonet and the culture more broadly.) The focus on unbuilt work not only allows a new perspective on Bonet (himself understudied), but it permits a crucial perspective on the shifting nature of political regimes in the postwar years. As Leâon writes, "These were far from schematic or utopian projects--these housing schemes were sponsored by different authoritarian regimes and reached a high degree of design development before folding to different political and economic circumstances. As such, they stand in for a particular combination of ambition and frustration common to South American modern architecture--one in which the potential of the new was alternatively bolstered and discarded by different regimes.""--