The Time and Place of Architecture's Popular Modernism

This chapter reports the phenomenon of popular modernism in architecture, introducing some of its characteristics and discussing its place and time. It presents the high point of modernism in Brazil that occurred in the 1950s. It specifically concentrates on the city of Belo Horizonte, a city of some two million people located in eastern Brazil. The issue of architectural dissemination per se is covered. A geographical area is selected that contains not only a sufficient number of middle-class modernist houses, but also significant exemplars of so-called high modernism in public and commercial architecture.