Delusions of grandeur

Abstract

This text is a book review of the work "Latin America XL. Experimentations of collective modern living", an adaptation of Dr. Sálvora Feliz's doctoral thesis, which explores the critical mass where architecture and territory intertwine. The book addresses the influences of Le Corbusier and the concept of neighborhood unity in Latin American planning between 1920 and 1960, converging on the notion of large-scale residential infrastructure. The work catalogs more than 50 cases, using a descriptive methodology and generic categorizations. The abstraction over which the author flies over the architectural experiments of the Latin American context suggests a homogeneous interpretation, omitting important political and social nuances. The review defends, supported by the notion of Greatness in architecture coined by Rem Koolhaas, that the XL dimension requires exploring multiple agents and sensibilities that influenced the infrastructural expansion of collective housing, to enter and decipher the residential agenda of Latin American modernity.