Maristella Casciato

Catalogue of the TECHNOSCAPE exhibition, which will be held at MAXXI in Autumn 2022, focusing on the relationship between artistic and scientific disciplines, nowadays closer than ever, and the consequent contacts between technique, creativity and social awareness. Architecture, engineering and science have overlapped on numerous occasions during the 20th century. First in the heroic phase and then in the mature phase of the reinforced concrete, then with the affirmation of hi-tech construction methods in the 1970s and 1980s and finally with the eruption of digitally controlled technologies. TECHNOSCAPE explores this alliance, responding to MAXXI's mission to look towards the future of our planet and the disciplines that modify its spaces. The volume follows the dual register of the exhibition, first dealing with how technology is making architecture, urban planning and other related disciplines more aware of their technical and scientific responsibility and capable of opening up new lines of research. The focus shifts then to structural engineering, comparing current masterpieces with previous historical modernist examples.

In the century between 1830 and 1930, following independence from Spain and Portugal, major cities in Latin America experienced large-scale growth, with the development of a new urban bourgeois elite interested in projects of modernization and rapid industrialization. At the same time, the lower classes were eradicated from old city districts and deported to the outskirts. The Metropolis in Latin America, 1830-1930 surveys this expansion, focusing on six capital cities-Havana, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile, and Lima-as it examines sociopolitical histories, town planning, art and architecture, photography, and film in relation to the metropolis. Drawing from the Getty Research Institute's vast collection of books, prints, and photographs from this period, largely unpublished until now, this volume reveals the cities' changes through urban panoramas, plans depicting new neighborhoods, and photographs of novel transportation systems, public amenities, civic spaces, and more. It illustrates the transformation of colonial cities into the monumental modern metropolises that, by the end of the 1920s, provided fertile ground for the emergence of today's Latin American megalapolis.

Chandigarh Casablanca documents two different but complementary urban realities that have played a fundamental role in the imagination, the definition, and the redefinition of the 20th-century modern city. Modern urbanism has traditionally ascribed universal value to avant-garde ideas originating in Europe and North America, and developments in non-Western regions as derived from those original models. This study shifts perspective in search of a new understanding of the modern city, taking into consideration the complex history of diverse cultures and changing borders. Focusing on a range of issues from the symbolic use of architecture to construct stunning monuments, to the creation of public spaces, housing design and social facilities, it features many images by two non-western photographers, Yto Barrada (French Morocco) and Takashi Homma (Japan), to construct a relevant definition of the modern city in a global sense.

Chandigarh Casablanca documents two different but complementary urban realities that have played a fundamental role in the imagination, the definition, and the redefinition of the 20th-century modern city. Modern urbanism has traditionally ascribed universal value to avant-garde ideas originating in Europe and North America, and developments in non-Western regions as derived from those original models. This study shifts perspective in search of a new understanding of the modern city, taking into consideration the complex history of diverse cultures and changing borders. Focusing on a range of issues from the symbolic use of architecture to construct stunning monuments, to the creation of public spaces, housing design and social facilities, it features many images by two non-western photographers, Yto Barrada (French Morocco) and Takashi Homma (Japan), to construct a relevant definition of the modern city in a global sense.