Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Episode 6 - Architects in Power: Shaping Mexico City in the 20th Century with Sarah Selvidge

Architects in Power: Shaping Mexico City in the 20th Century (Sarah Selvidge)

In this episode, Sarah Selvidge speaks with interviewer Katherine Zubovich about the ways that architects and architectural thought shaped Mexico City through the turbulence of the 20th century. As Mexican governments faced all the problems of a rapidly growing city - most especially, a stubborn housing crisis - Sarah explains how transnational, artistic ideas of modernism and functionalism had concrete impacts on building one of the largest cities in the world.

Sarah Selvidge is a PhD candidate in History at UC Berkeley whose research focuses on Mexican intellectual and political history. Her dissertation, entitled “Modernism and Miracles: Architecture, Housing, and the State in Mexico," is a history of transnational ideas about cities, and the roles that these ideas played in shaping national politics and the built environment in Mexico in the 20th century.




Interviewer: Katherine Zubovich
Run time: 48:35