Hardback
300 x 240 mm, 11 7/8 x 9 1/2 in
240 pp
350 colour illustrations
ISBN 1904313566
Latin American Houses
Following up on her successful book
20 Houses by 20 Architects, critic and historian Mercedes Daguerre explores Latin America's modernist tradition through the one-family houses of the region's best and brightest contemporary architects. The book covers nineteen structures built in Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Peru, Uruguay, and Argentina.
Mercedes Daguerre
- The work of 19 of Latin America's most innovative contemporary architects
- Generous landscape format captures expansive horizontal nature of houses
- Introductory text traces development of Latin-American modernism from early twentieth century to present
Since the early twentieth century, Latin America has been home to some of the most compelling architecture--from the large-scale and otherworldly civic structures of the Brazilian Oscar Niemeyer to the more intimate work of Mexico's Luis Barragan. In her new book Latin American Houses, historian Mercedes Daguerre shows that this tradition of architectural innovation lives on in the work of such contemporary architects as 2006 Pritzker Prize-winner Paulo Mendes da Rocha (Brazil), Mathias Klotz (Chile), Angelo Bucci (Argentina), and LBC Arquitectos (Mexico), among others.
Focusing on one-family houses that have been built over the past decade, this lively new title explores the elegance and innovation with which today's Latin American architects evolve their modernist heritage. In some cases, as with Chilean Smiljan Radic Clarke's Pite House--a dramatic concrete bunker that cantilevers over a rough Pacific shoreline--the lineage is clear, as are the materials and strategies used to contend with often inhospitable locations. Others, like Mexican architect Michel Rojkind's bright red "ribbon" PR 34 House, reveal forms better known in such places as Japan. Wherever their location or material, however, the nineteen houses presented in Daguerre's new book are indication that Latin American architects are not content resting on their laurels.
Mercedes Daguerre is a lecturer and researcher at several European and American univesities, and has a number of publications to her name on the history of contemporary architecture. She is currently an editor at the magazine Casabella.