ABSTRACT
There is an assumption that Latin American architecture lives within the paradox of modernism without modernity. This assumption is based on the fact that this geo-cultural region has not achieved “modernity” in standard terms of industrialization and capitalism. Nevertheless, modernization has penetrated the cultural landscape and produced a particular state of development. This could be understood as a mixture of pre-Columbian and Spanish-colonial cultural patterns with the clash of the American Anglo-Saxon modernization of the twentieth century. In this particular secular hybridization, in which modernism coexists with cultural traditions and rooted customs, Latin American modernity can be defi ned essentially as a “multiplied outcome of overlapping cultures.” As identifi ed by Garcia Canclini, “modernity in this region is a hybrid culture based on the negotiation of modern and traditional practices and unique to each country.”1
