{"product_id":"modernity-for-the-masses","title":"Modernity for the Masses","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e2022 PROSE Award Finalist in Architecture and Urban Planning\u003cbr\u003e 2022 Association for Latin American Art Arvey Foundation Book Award, Honorable Mention\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThroughout the early twentieth century, waves of migration brought working-class people to the outskirts of Buenos Aires. This prompted a dilemma: Where should these restive populations be situated relative to the city’s spatial politics? Might housing serve as a tool to discipline their behavior?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEnter Antonio Bonet, a Catalan architect inspired by the transatlantic modernist and surrealist movements. Ana MarÍa LeÓn follows Bonet's decades-long, state-backed quest to house Buenos Aires's diverse and fractious population. Working with totalitarian and populist regimes, Bonet developed three large-scale housing plans, each scuttled as a new government took over. Yet these incomplete plans-Bonet's dreams-teach us much about the relationship between modernism and state power.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eModernity for the Masses\u003c\/i\u003e finds in Bonet's projects the disconnect between modern architecture’s discourse of emancipation and the reality of its rationalizing control. Although he and his patrons constantly glorified the people and depicted them in housing plans, Bonet never consulted them. Instead he succumbed to official and elite fears of the people's latent political power. In careful readings of Bonet's work, LeÓn discovers the progressive erasure of surrealism's psychological sensitivity, replaced with an impulse, realized in modernist design, to contain the increasingly empowered population.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Texas Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54217981559128,"sku":"9781477321782","price":49.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0278\/1295\/4195\/files\/9781477321782_fc671541-8ff2-4996-8057-7bda87421938.jpg?v=1780109133","url":"https:\/\/agendabookshop.com\/products\/modernity-for-the-masses","provider":"Agenda Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}