Moderno examines how design transformed the Latin American domestic landscape in a period marked by major stylistic developments and dramatic social and political change. Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela entered an expansive period of economic growth in the late 1940s which was accompanied by the purposeful modernization of major cities and the conscious importation of the International Style. This volume explores how the period’s influx of European and North American architects, designers, artists and entrepreneurs in Latin America influenced a generation of local architects and designers beginning to see themselves as active players in the creation of modern national identities.
With incisive essays by Gabriela Rangel, Jorge Rivas Perez, Lourdes Blanco, Ana Elena Mallet, Christina L. De Leon, Maria Cecilia Loschiavo Dos Santos, and Luis Canstaneda, along with historical texts by Clara Porset, Lina Bo Bardi and others, plus designer biographies. An important contribution to the understanding of Latin American postwar modernism and its relationship to American and European counterparts, especially noteworthy for its inclusion of Venezulan designers along with the more canonical figures from Brazil and Mexico.
