Vol. 19 No. 1 (2021): Dossier: Mass media and international spread of post-war architecture (1945-1980)

The papers included in this special issue attempts to maps the processes of international spread of architectural culture through the mass media, assuming as a tentative timeframe the period after the second world war and extending until 1980, with a special interest in the doubly constitutive relations and exchanges that took place between the main scene of international disciplinary debate with those local or regional in Latin America. It intends to reveal how certain ideas about architecture and the city were disseminated through publications in architecture magazines, exhibitions and conferences, including also the audiovisual media.

The question arises as to how a series of projects and works, both architectural and urban, as well as practices and theories linked to a specific framework, were presented in the international environment through state, professional and educational communication channels -institutionalized or not- in a period of radical cultural reconstruction and disciplinary redefinition. At the same time, it is worth asking how were this set of ideas and projects read from “foreign” contexts? How did visions produced “from within” and those formulated “from without” interacted with each other?