Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction : Polemical Functionalism: Functional Art or Artistic Building -- Building Revolution: Mexican Architecture in the First Part of the 20th Century -- Functionalism and Social Progress -- Alter(n)ative Functionalism -- Radical Functionalism -- Between Art and Technology -- Place, History, and (Local) Culture -- Representation and Reception -- The City in the Functionalist Imagination -- Epilogue: Organic Functionalism -- Translations: Juan O'Gorman, "'Artistic' Art and Useful Art" (1934) -- Juan O'Gorman, "Presentation for the Sociedad de Arquitectos Mexicanos" (1933)

"Radical Functionalism: A Social Architecture for Mexico provides a complex and nuanced understanding of the functionalist architecture developed in Mexico during the 1930s. It carefully re-reads the central texts and projects of its main advocates to show how their theories responded to the socially and culturally charged Mexican context. These, such as architects Juan Legarreta, Juan O'Gorman, the Union of Socialist Architects, and Manuel Amábilis, were part of broader explorations to develop a modern, national architecture intended to address the needs of the Mexican working classes. Through their refunctioning of functionalism, these radical thinkers showed how architecture could stand at the precipice of Mexico's impending modernization and respond to its impending changes. The book examines their engagement and negotiation with foreign influences, issues of gender and class, and the separation between art and architecture. Functionalist practices are presented as contradictory and experimental, as challenging the role of architecture in the transformation of society, and as intimately linked to art and local culture in the development of new forms of architecture for Mexico, including the "vernacularization" of functionalism itself. Uniquely including translations of two manifesto-like texts by O'Gorman expressing the polemical nature of their investigations, Radical Functionalism: A Social Architecture for Mexico will be a useful reference for scholars, researchers and students interested in the history of architectural movements"-- Provided by publisher.