Blog post

Radical Cities in Latin America

7 July 2014

On June 27th, 2014, writer and curator Justin McGuirk, author of Radical Cities: Across Latin America in Search of a New Architecture, presented his ideas on radical Latin American city-building in the Serptentine Pavilion 2014, designed by Chilean architect Smiljan Radić.

Justin McGuirk is a writer, critic and curator based in London. He is the director of Strelka Press, the publishing arm of the Strelka Institute in Moscow. He has been the design critic of the Guardian, the editor of Icon magazine and the design consultant to Domus. In 2012 he was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture for an exhibition he curated with Urban Think Tank.

This colourful journey through Latin America covers the Nonoalco-Tlatelolco housing estate in Mexico City, "where the idea of Latin American modernity went to die"; PREVI: where architects united to tackle social housing; the explosion of slum building in Rio; and the Torre David – intended as banking headquarters, now occupied by 3,000 squatters.  

Serpentine Galleries Park Nights 2014: Justin McGuirk from Serpentine Galleries on Vimeo.

Filed under: architecture, latin-america, urbanism