Radical cities : across Latin America in search of a new architecture /
Justin McGuirk.
- London : Verso; 2014.
- 296 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
From Buenos Aires to San Salvador de Jujuy : Dictators and Revolutionaries -- From Lima to Santiago : A Platform for Change -- Rio de Janeiro : The Favela Is the City -- Caracas : The City Is Frozen Politics -- Torre David : A Pirate Utopia -- Bogotá : The City as a School -- Medellín : Social Urbanism -- Tijuana : On the Political Equator.
"In Radical Cities, Justin McGuirk travels across Latin America in search of activist architects, politicians and radical communities. From Chile to Brazil, and from Mexico to Argentina, McGuirk discovers people who have begun rebuilding and redesigning their environments in radically new ways. After decades of political and architectural failure, a new generation has returned to the problems of the city to address the poverty and inequality. This is a generation of activists, pragmatists and social idealists, and together they are testing new ideas that the rest of the world can learn from. An architect in Chile has designed a new form of social housing where only half of the house is built, allowing the owners to adapt the rest; Medellín, the murder capital of Colombia, has been transformed with innovative public architecture; squatters in Caracas have taken over a 45-story skyscraper, Torre David; and architect Jorge Mario Jáuregui has upgraded Rio's favelas in exciting new ways"--
9781781682807 (hardback)
2013051123
Architecture and society--History--Latin America--21st century. Cities and towns--Growth.--Latin America City dwellers--Political aspects--Latin America. POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / City Planning & Urban Development. ARCHITECTURE / Urban & Land Use Planning.