Ana María León's book explores the connections between modernist architecture, totalitarian nation-state projects, and “dreams” for modernity through mass housing in Buenos Aires between the 1930s and the late 1950s. More specifically, it is about the trajectory of modernist Catalan architect Antonio Bonet (1913–89) in Buenos Aires. Formed and trained in Europe with José Luis Sert and Le Corbusier (among others) and imbued in surrealist art, Bonet left a Spain caught in a civil war and the emergence of fascism. His practice in Argentina involved the development of several large-scale housing programs. León contextualizes Bonet's most significant projects (three of them unbuilt) within Argentine political and ideological conjunctures, the intellectual and artistic debates about the role of the masses and the avant-garde, and the scale of urban intervention entailed. From a decolonial, interdisciplinary, and transnational perspective, León explores the intersections between architecture, art, literature, visual culture, and psychoanalysis. Bonet represents...
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