Modern Mexico & Guatemala: 19th-21st Century Architecture

Catalog description

This course examines the architectural history of modern Mexico and Guatemala, with an emphasis on the 20th century, but drawing on the 19th and 21st centuries as well. We will use architecture as a lens through which we study how both the high-style design vanguards and the vernacular built environment were responses to forces such as industrial modernization, urban growth, economic fluctuation, international relationships, political and social revolution, indigenous discrimination, genocide, and cultural regeneration. Throughout the course we will look at the countries' urban and rural architectural evolution as explicit and implicit expressions of identity (Mexicanidad or Guatemalidad).