ARQUITECTURA MODERNA LATINOAMERICANA LATIN AMERICAN MODERN ARCHITECTURE
La fundación de las revistas especializadas permitió el registro continuo y la promoción selectiva de la arquitectura que se iba produciendo en el país. The founding of specialized magazines allowed the continuous record and the selective promotion of the architecture that was taking place in the country.
In the field of politics, government passed into the hands of the Liberal Party starting in the 1930s, which initiated some reforms regarding the possession of land in the countryside and the rights and freedoms for new social actors: the proletariat and the middle classes. An educational reform was established declaring it public, secular and compulsory, thus restating the program promoted by General Francisco de Paula Santander right after the declaration of independence from Spain. The main project of this reform was the restructuring of the Universidad Nacional, founded in 1867 by the liberal radicals. The end of the Second World War marked the arrival of new materials to the local construction market. The exploration of the technical and plastic possibilities of concrete, steel and glass defined the architectural designs that were most clearly identified as modern. Historians have placed the institutional origin of modern architecture in Colombia at the confluence of four foundational acts: the Colombian Society of Architects (SCA) in 1934, the first architecture school in 1936 - Universidad Nacional -, Ingeniería y Arquitectura magazine in 1939 and Proa magazine in 1946. In addition, from 1934 on, the Office of National Buildings of the MOP took over the responsibility of all the buildings that until then were incumbency of each ministry, schools, prisons, barracks, national buildings, etc. The creation of the SCA opened the field to the definition of the scope of the profession, its responsibilities and rights, and made possible the mandatory consultative presence of architects in urban policy and planning decisions. The foundation of the first school of architecture was part of the liberal educational and academic reform that was materialized in the successive projects for the University City of Bogotá (CUB), which became a manifesto of a new architecture, white and clean. The first buildings of the CUB were designed by architect Leopoldo Rother, who was hired as professor of project design and later of theory in the recently created School of Architecture. For his theory class Rother elaborated a manual similar to the Neufert, although with an additional component of pedagogical relevance: the aesthetic valuation of modern buildings in diverse latitudes. The first Architecture course in the country was started by separating it from the courses at the School of Engineering that had allowed a
few engineer-architects to graduate during the 1930s. Its first seven graduates obtained their degree in 1941. Until then, demand for professionals had been met by graduates from abroad or with foreign architects such as Thomas Reed, Gastón Lelarge or Julio Casanovas and Raúl Manheim, Chilean architects graduated in Germany, who throughout the 30s developed a successful professional practice designing style houses for the Bogota high class. In those same years Italian architects Bruno Violi - the Perret of Colombia, according to Le Corbusier - and Vicente Nasi arrived in the country. The founding of specialized magazines allowed the continuous record and the selective promotion of the architecture that was taking place in the country - with more emphasis in Bogota - contributing to the formation of a specialized public with an inclination towards the so-called modern architecture. Colombia has historically been a country of cities. The network of urban centers that was established during the colonial period as a strategy to militarily dominate a territory fragmented by topography, was enriched with new cities founded during the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Two major milestones mark the country’s entry into urban planning in the modern sense: the hiring of Karl Brunner as director of the Department of Urbanism of Bogotá in 1933 and the contract for the drafting of the Regulatory Plan for Bogota to Le Corbusier - in association with the TPA - in 1949. This plan definitively marked the urban layout of Bogotá by including the rule of the 7Vs as a principle of road hierarchy, giving prominence to the circulation system that is still applied today. In Colombia the modern building almost always had to interact with pre-existing urban forms. This feature singles out the Colombian experience and has guided the curatorial proposal of the three issues of the AOA Magazine that will be dedicated to the study of modern architecture in that country. In this first article, a group of eight exceptional works is examined because the key of their design was not found in the interaction with the urban form, but in regard with functional aspects, the technical-structural solution, the climate or subjective formal programs.
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