Pan American articulations: places of America and of the architect in the Interwar from Pan American congresses of architects

Abstract

The present research project aims to understand the effects of articulations between the different places of architecture and America during the Interwar period from the first five editions of the Pan American Congresses of Architects (1920, 1923, 1927, 1930 and 1940). For this, the speeches and theses elaborated for each edition of the Congresses, officially published by the Executive Committee of each meeting under the title of Actas y Trabajos, and the debates on specialized and technical journals of the five countries whose engagement was more constant in the delimited editions (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and the United States). On the other hand, documents that allow us to understand the diplomatic dimension of this agenda, such as the Reports of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil and the Pan-American Union bulletins, will be privileged. The hypothesis of work stands in the assumption that the professional conflicts as well as the symbolic dimension of the production of these architects and the political and theoretical, or intellectual, debates about the continent's role in the new global dynamics have a mutual implication. Therefore, the different defenses and controversies about architectural styles and movements and professional practices produced, as they were tensed by, effects on the role of the continent between the two world wars of the twentieth century. From these aspects, it is intended to investigate the effects of articulations operated on these discourses by professionals during the Interwar period in the disputes about the idea of a continental consensus on the projects designed for and by the American architects and how this allowed the election of the architecture as a politically effective and culturally significant language in the face of the pluralistic readings of Pan-Americanism. (AU)