Designing Pan-america - 9780292723252

"This book will be an important contribution to the fields of architectural history and cultural studies. . . . At its strongest, it presents a wealth of information regarding the translation of the Pan-American spirit into architectural or built form. It offers us, through focused archival research, precise discussions and debates that lead not only to the formation of the architectural object but also to the very framing of the questions that the architects needed to pose to themselves in order to successfully meet these objectives. It provides, in short, hitherto unpublished and unknown data from the archives of the Pan-American Union and other sources important to this institution. In addition, the book has the rare ability to take this very specific information and connect it to other, broader developments in the United States and Latin America as well as to architectural culture." LUIS E. CARRANZA, Professor of Architecture, Roger Williams University

"This is a significant contribution to the field of critical `orientalist' studies as applied to architecture. . . . This text breaks new scholarly ground by examining a topic that has never been proposed before: the construction of an ideological landscape involving Pan-Americanism." STEPHEN FOX, Fellow of the Anchorage Foundation of Texas and Adjunct Lecturer in Architecture, University of Houston and Rice University

"With this engrossing story about how architects and planners sought to express an ideal of hemispheric unity in the built environment, Gonzalez brings a fresh approach to an old question: Do the Americas have a common history? Deeply researched, cohesive, and fabulously illustrated with images of architectural projects both completed and never realized, Designing Pan-America is required reading for the new, comparative American studies." KIRSTEN SILVA GRUESZ, Professor of Literature and Director, Latino Literary Cultures Project/Proyecto culturas literarias latinas, University of California, Santa Cruz