Caribbean modernisms.The discourse on the modern dwelling in four architectural magazines, 1945-1960.

The dissertation examines the relationship between modernity, dwelling and architecture in the Caribbean through an analysis of the postwar disciplinary debates in four architectural magazines Arquitectura (Cuba), Proa (Colombia), Arquitectura/México (Mexico) and Integral (Venezuela). The complexity of the debates on the house shows how the definition of what was modern was not limited to the professional domain, but was simultaneously a cultural, political and disciplinary construction. This research adopts Bourdieu’s theoretical framework regarding the field of cultural production to examine the architectural magazines’ involvement in the production and reproduction of architectural knowledge, and their capacity to establish a common standard of living as the key criterion for modernity and to legitimate a professional practice faithful to the needs of modern living. The investigation reconstructs the collective imagery on the modern dwelling, by scanning all the production mechanisms – debates, advertisement, projects, ideas, technical progress and modernization processes – diffused and discussed through the architectural magazines, that had a critical ongoing impact on the domestic architecture culture. There are three main narratives to this research: The modern image of the home, which analyses the single ideas, spatial and formal innovations and modernizing factors that shaped a common vision of the modern home, an approach that examines the house not as a unified entity but as one modeled by a series of paradigms, theories, programs and technological choices related to the cultural setting and its modernizing processes; collective housing: social housing and the tall urban building and the single-family house, proposes a transversal examination of the three housing typologies radically transformed by modernity in the Caribbean – or born with it – to observe the theories, projects and debates that defined the modern dwelling, through a review of the production apparatus behind the changes on each category, and that is, the institutions linked to its development, their impact on the various fields of the discipline, the changes on the architectural referents, the new spaces and programs to accommodate modern living ideals, the paradigm shifts caused by the implementation of new types supporting different social interactions, and the productive structures and modernizing forces that made essential, and possible, certain living standards.