Laboratory of Architectural Publications (LEA)
UNAM
Architecture and Print Media: A critical research from the sixteenth century
Created in 2017, the Laboratory of Architectural Publications (LEA, for its Spanish acronym) aims to become a space for the study of the cultural history of mass-media, particularly print media, related to the history of architecture and urbanism. Its mission is to promote critical dialogue betweenjournals, books, electronic media and the built environment.
As part of LabUNAM, LEA embodies the traditional idea of a laboratory; that is, it is a “space for the experimental study of a science or for conducting tests and analyses.”[1] Thus, all LEA activities are conceived as experiments that seek to explain architecture and the disciplines with which it is related. Although architecture is not a “hard” science, its parts and processes can be analyzed as in any chemistry, biology, or physics laboratory. Architecture, understood as a broad culture, manifests itself in multiple products or expressions: books, buildings, exhibitions, academia, magazines, photographs, and so on. Each of these manifestations has been more or less important at different historical moments, and this importance has been expressed in the media in diverse ways and with varying degrees of intensity.
Also, like most laboratories, LEA is a space that creates controlled conditions—as close to an ideal as possible—for conducting experiments. Experiments carried out by laboratories under controlled conditions seek to discover, find, or create new and better living conditions that generally do not yet exist in everyday reality. Through processes and conditions that are different—artificial—from those found in nature—material or, in our case, also social and cultural—they seek to change and improve those conditions. These are changes that would occur much more slowly in the natural course of the world, in nature, and in a culture.
[1] Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Methods. Ways of understanding and intervening in the world
The Laboratory of Architectural Publications seeks to analyze the relationship between architecture and print media from the sixteenth century to the present, and how these relationships have contributed to the culture of their time. These analyses will begin in Mexico and other Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries, but will necessarily expand their scope to include Europe and the United States, territories whose architectural and publishing cultures are constantly reflected—for better or for worse—in the media of the former.
The relationship between print media and architecture expresses particular ways of observing, understanding, and intervening in the world. From the mid-nineteenth century to the present, our discipline has addressed most of its most important concerns through the media, such as the use of new technologies, the social changes they promote and are supposedly meant to bring about, the city in which they are embedded and constructed, and their often conflictive relationship with history and identity.
What is not said in books and magazines
We will study what is not there, what failed to appear on the surfaces of books, magazines, and brochures—that is, everything that made a text, an image, or a plan visible on paper; all the processes, exchanges, and conflicts among architects, editors, magazine owners, and institutions, which often form a body of knowledge that expresses, with greater clarity, depth, and richness, the culture of the time when a building was designed or constructed. This “past” of publications implies a determined confrontation with the archive and its documents, which we will analyze as something that is never innocent and that, in and of itself, is incapable of expressing an absolute truth or serving as immaculate evidence in a court of law.
Appearances, omissions and architectural memory
Architectural publications have become firmly established in the collective imagination of architects, with varying degrees of strength. Each has followed a different path from its initial publication to the present day, encountering obstacles and opportunities—both material and ideological—that have opened—or closed—the door to their place in our collective memory, allowing us to recognize them in our present. In studying the appearances and disappearances, the remembrance and oblivion of these publications, we will attempt to discover what architecture relinquishes, what it clings to, and what the consequences of all this are for architectural culture, its buildings, and the cities in which they are realized.
Traditional media and new forms of interpretation
Traditional architecture publications—almost by definition conservative and not critical of others—have existed within a universe comprised of other types of print media—popular, commercial, legal, revolutionary, and so on—and, over time, have been surrounded and influenced by radio, television, and, more recently, digital media, which have shaped many of their changes and development. If we want to understand architecture and its impact—both negative and positive—on our culture, we must study how it is interpreted, critiqued and assimilated by other media, in which we can find perspectives that broaden the boundaries of traditional definitions of design disciplines.
Lines of research
1968. The Olympic City and its architecture through the printed media
The vast urban expansion resulting from Mexican Olympic architecture has been little studied in depth. An examination of the relationships, negotiations, and contradictions between sports and cultural venues and the social and artistic changes represented by the 1968 uprisings could illuminate the mechanisms—until now understudied—by which Olympic architecture either withstands or resists these very changes.
Clara Porset. Industrial Design, editorial design and architecture
Clara Porset is one of the most important industrial designers in Mexico. Despite her relatively short career, she maintained close ties with several prominent figures in Mexican, Cuban, American, and other international media culture. Her political stance placed her at key events in twentieth century history, such as the Cárdenas era and the Cuban Revolution. This project seeks to analyze the relationships and contradictions between the Clara Porset archive and library at the UNAM's Center for Research in Industrial Design and the media representations of her work and thought.
Esther Born. The book on the consolidation of modern Mexican architecture
Born's book, The New Architecture in Mexico, is the first major essay and the catalyst for the publication of some of the most important books on modern Mexican architecture, such as Irving Evan Myers's Mexico's Modern Architecture (1952) and Max Cetto's Modern Mexican Architecture (1961). On a broader scale, Born's book may have served as the basis for other important books on modern Latin American architecture published by external authors and publishers, such as Philip Lippincot and George E. Kidder Smith's Brazil Builds (1943), Henry-Russell Hitchcock's Latin American Architecture since 1945 (1955), and perhaps even (much more recently), Barry Bergdoll's Latin America in Construction (2015).
Max Cetto. The book of a Mexican-German
Max Cetto arrived in Mexico City in 1939, and in 1961—22 years later—he published the book Modern Mexican Architecture. Initially a bilingual German-Spanish edition, it was later transformed into a two-version edition: one German and English, and the other simultaneous, English and Spanish. The edition was published by Gerd Hatje of Stuttgart, in agreement with Praeger of New York. During the 23 years he had lived in Mexico City, the German-born architect had become acclimatized and even a naturalized Mexican citizen. He had participated in important architectural experiments and was among the most outstanding architects and artists in the country.
AEReA. Experimental collection of architectural records
Since July 2019, LEA and a team motivated by rescuing the printed architectural and urban history contained in publications from the predecessor institutions of the Faculty of Architecture (FA) began taking the necessary steps: from the physical labor of carrying boxes of books and magazines and arranging the publications on the shelves, to the development of an academic project for the creation of AEReA. Fernanda Barrera, a professor in the Faculty of Art History, and a team of social service students from the Faculty of Architecture and the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, with the approval of the Coordination of Libraries and Archives, carried out actions to rescue and document the materials and proposed possible lines of research for future projects.