“Corbusians” In Uruguay

The presumed overriding influence of Le Corbusier in Latin American architecture has produced a distorted view of his actual influence in the period prior to the Second World War. Of late, this viewpoint has been reinforced by the pageantry around the 1929 visit, which continues to generate texts on a trip that had no significant outcome in terms of the architecture of the countries he visited. ¹ Certainly it had an effect on the visitor himself, but this has been analyzed at length. ² Neither did the eloquent sermons of Le Corbusier produce masses of instant adherents in Uruguay, and those exceptional cases in which the Swiss master’s theoretical directives were followed and his formal codes explored are clearly evident. In practice, these are limited to a list of direct collaborators and a handful of followers. Le Corbusier’s key Uruguayan disciples were Carlos Gómez Gavazzo (in the atelier for five months in 1933–1934), Justino Serralta (1948– 1951), and Carlos Clémot (1949–1950). It seems easy to connect the first visit in 1933 with Le Corbusier’s 1929 trip, but a more detailed analysis allows us to appreciate that this was not in fact such an obvious choice for Gómez Gavazzo. On the other hand, the visits of Serralta and Clémot were; with the war just ended, Le Corbusier appeared as a sound European alternative to the ascendant trends coming from the United States.