The Daniels Faculty’s Mauricio Quirós Pacheco and Hans Ibelings, along with contributor Andrés Fernández, recently published Modern Architectures in Central America, an overview of different forms of modern architecture in Central America since the outset of the 20th century. 

“The purpose of this book is to study modern architecture in Central America from within,” says Assistant Professor Quirós Pacheco. “And not only as a global, generalized phenomenon, but also as a complex and local one, where each region and country has an equally important story to tell.” 

Although modern architecture constituted only a small percentage of total building production in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama, these buildings hold evident symbolic significance, functioning as models for desired societal, economic and cultural changes or as aspirational placeholders for a future state of modernity.  

Years in the making, the book features essays and contributions by Gloria Grimaldi, Sandra Gutiérrez, Martín Majewsky, Darién Montañez, Raúl Monterroso and Florencia Quesada Avendaño, plus a set of never-before-published images by Leonard J. Currie from his posthumous slide collection at Virginia Tech. 

The book is available for purchase online.

If you are in Toronto and want to pick up a copy locally, contact mauricio.quiros@daniels.utoronto.ca.