Presentation by Sarah Selvidge, UC Berkeley

Sarah Selvidge holds a PhD in History from UC Berkeley and is currently a Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Scholar in the History of Art and Architecture and a Postdoc in Architecture in the College of Environmental Design at Berkeley. She works on urban design and politics, especially the ways that avant-garde ideas impact economic policy and social welfare. Her current book manuscript, Modernism and Miracles: Housing in Post-revolutionary Mexico analyzes Mexican housing policy as it evolved from a utopian project of social transformation after the Mexican Revolution to market-based initiatives in the 1970s, demonstrating that housing policy played a central role in Mexico’s transition to neoliberalism. She is also beginning a project about garbage and its relationship to urban growth in twentieth-century Mexico city.

This presentation tells the story of Mexico’s multifamiliares, superblocks designed by Mario Pani for federal employees during the Mexican Miracle, a period of sustained economic growth and a focus on urban industrialization. The massive buildings stood as a bold symbol of the power and patronage of the federal government. Mexican architects and policymakers promised that through vertical density and economies of scale, the city could solve its housing crisis. I describe the design and construction of three multifamiliares, their impact on the built environment, and their role in shaping policies of urban infrastructure and social welfare.