Emilio Duhart: The Modernist
Cepal Building, Santiago, Chile, 1960-66.
Emilio Duhart was a Chilean architect (1917-2006) who was professionally active between 1941 and the beginning of the 1990s. Of all the relevant modern Latin American architects of the early and mid-twentieth century, Emilio Duhart is only partially known in the English-speaking world. One of the main reasons for this fact is that the literature available on his work is predominantly written in Spanish and, to a lesser degree, in French.
This central figure in modern architecture in Chile had first-hand contact with two leading personalities of the international history of modern architecture, Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier, the masterminds of international modernism. These facts turn him into a significant character, deserving of detailed consideration and analysis of his work, principles, and philosophy. In light of how little his complete portfolio is internationally known it is paramount to reassess the scope of his influence in the establishment of the modern architectural lexicon in Chile and the Latin American continent of the twentieth century.
Internationally he is best known for his Cepal Building (1960-66) in Santiago, which is considered by many Chilean and international architects and historians to be the best example of modern architecture in his native country. In the international literature written in English about modern architecture in Latin America, this latter project is omnipresent, cited as a relevant example of one of the foremost illustrations of modernism in the subcontinent for its excellence in formal and conceptual achievements.[i] From early on, his talent was detected by critical international players in the field, which led him to be highlighted in 1955 by the MOMA exhibition Latin American Architecture since 1945 with his Casa Marta H. de Duhart, built-in 1948. More recently, in 2015, he was included in the MOMA exhibition Latin America in Construction 1955-1980 with his Cepal Building.
The extent of his work is considerable: sixty-six projects created in Chile are part of his archive currently housed at the Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago.[ii] His architecture, prominently featured in Santiago and many cities of the provinces, exhibit a cohesive modernist imprint. His portfolio includes corporate, educational, industrial and administrative projects, private residences and "unités d' habitations," hotels, churches, an airport, and urban planning designs. However, no major retrospective of his work has ever been organized in his country of origin or anywhere else.
This essay explains the reasoning on the question of why we should pay attention to Emilio Duhart's oeuvre today after approximately 70 years he began his practice. First, it focuses on spotlighting the circumstances that expedited the modern architectural language in Latin America and Chile during the first three-quarters of the twentieth century. Second, it centers on the importance of illuminating certain aspects of architectural history that remain under obscurity in the international arena; in this instance, the full scope of the work of Emilio Duhart. These two aspects are intrinsically related to the professional considerations of the architect. Lastly, the essay describes the perspectives from which the work of Emilio Duhart will be most conveniently analyzed, defining the methods to be used in its analysis. Both a network and an object-based approach were selected to be appropriate ways to access the architect and his work. The aim is to converge into a more just and accurate account of the work of Duhart.
Cepal Building detail, Santiago, Chile, 1960-66.
Emilio Duhart the Architect
Before addressing these topics, it is necessary to describe Emilio Duhart's professional journey briefly. In Chile, Duhart is considered a pivotal figure in the history of modern architecture of the twentieth century, fulfilling a central role in bringing into the country his knowledge and experience through remarkable studies, accomplishments, and work experiences abroad. The years between 1936 and 1953 are marked by Duhart's absorption of modernity in architecture as a student. In this period, there were three crucial figures in the life of Emilio Duhart's early years as a student and young practitioner: Sergio Larraín, Walter Gropius, and Le Corbusier. These three personalities delineated a triangulation in Duhart's life between Chile, the United States, and France, which represents the base from which his career took off threading a critical view of the field intercepted with his interpretation of the modernist language. In his work in Chile, he reflected and incorporated the local and geographical context in addition to a Pan American view of the subcontinent.
Emilio Duhart is a descendant of a French Basque family who settled in a remote area of the South of Chile, the Cañete region, by the middle of the nineteenth century. They dedicated themselves to agriculture, commerce, and financial businesses. When Duhart was three years old, the family moved to Paris, where he attended school at the École Notre-Dame Sainte-Croix de Neuilly in Paris. In 1935, the family returned to Chile, coinciding with Emilio Duhart being ready to enter university.[iii]
He first studied architecture between 1936 and 1941 at the Universidad Católica de Chile. It is there that he encountered the architect Sergio Larraín (Chilean 1905-1999), who designed the first modern building in the country in 1929: the Edificio Oberpauer, in Santiago. This influential Chilean architect is considered a pioneering local figure who broke with the Beaux-Arts principles of Academia of the time, and whose legacy was to introduce modernism. Larraín was deemed the reference to emulate among the younger architects of the period, among them Emilio Duhart. Sergio Larraín was initially his teacher and then his advisor for his final project at the university before graduation. Subsequently, they became close friends and partners in many architectural projects.[iv]
In 1941, Duhart received a scholarship to complete post-graduate studies in architecture and urbanism at Harvard University, while Water Gropius was its director, absorbing first-hand the Bauhaus modernist principles through the most relevant representative of the movement.[v] In 1943, having completed his master's degree at Harvard University, Duhart worked as an assistant for Gropius and Konrad Waschmann in their General Panel Corporation Prefabricated Housing Project.[vi] During the same period, and associated with I. M. Pei,[vii] he was awarded the second prize in the USA Post War Housing Competition. Additionally, he worked for the USA War Program in the mission of the State Department in prefabricated housing, educational, and industrial architecture in California. Finally, he worked at the office of Ernest J. Kump in San Francisco before returning to Chile in 1945. After that, along with Sergio Larraín as a partner, he established a prolific professional practice.
In 1952, he received a scholarship to study at the Institut Supérieur d'Urbanisme de la Sorbonne in the Centre Technique du Bâtiment.[viii] Thanks to Gropius and to being part of the committee of international consultants for the UNESCO Project of Breuer, Nervi, and Zehrfuus, he worked for six months for Le Corbusier, where he was involved in his projects for India, and established a friendly relationship with the master.[ix]
Once back in Chile around 1953, he disseminated his philosophy and tenets through his architectural practice and teachings. After that, in 1970, he left the country permanently to settle in the Basque area of France.
In 1945, in the Architectural Congress in Stockholm, he received the "Diploma Prinz Eugen," and was elected advisor to the Chilean College of Architects, an entity which was founded in 1942. In 1977 he was awarded the National Prize in architecture in his native country.[x]
During his lifetime, Emilio Duhart also served as an academic at the Universidad Católica de Chile between 1946 and 1966, and at the Unité Pedagógique n°7 of the Grand Palais de l'École des Beaux Arts in Paris between 1970 and 1983.
Modernism in Latin America and Chile During the Twentieth Century
When Duhart was professionally active in Chile, some distinct conditions were being developed concerning architecture in Latin America and his native country. These conditions are essential to call attention to insofar the work of Duhart is part of a broader context being established, and to some extent, they explain it as a constituent of a merging of more significant events. D. J. Huppatz, in his article "Globalizing History and Global Design History," affirms that it is necessary to reassess historical thinking about "large-scale social, political, economic, and technological processes before addressing the potentials for repositioning design history." Under this perspective, it is interesting to review some issues raised by Valerie Fraser in her book "Building the New World: Studies in the Modern Architecture of Latin America 1930- 1960." In it, she states that during the period under her studies, Latin America exhibited an unmatched ingenuity and creative modernist architectural production. This fact was supported by governments that saw in modernity a way of getting away with the colonial past and creating a future, which would be modern and progressive. The world took notice, and for a period of thirty years, it paid attention. According to Fraser, the climactic moment came when Brasilia was designed in 1956 and completed in 1960, as the federal capital of Brazil. The new city was devised from scratch as the ultimate modernist urban planning endeavor. Its design brought both commendation and fierce criticism from Europe and the United States. After this episode, and as stated by Fraser, the field of architecture in the continent went into obscurity.
For Latin Americans of the period, modern meant newness in the sense of making use of new technologies and new materials such as glass, steel, and reinforced cement. The main demands were in planned expansion due to population growth in city centers and industrial growth to facilitate these new urban needs. Valerie Fraser adds, "For modernizing governments, modern architecture seemed to bring together all the various essential components of construction: utility and strength with economy and modernity." Modernity was a tool for nation-building.
Fraser states that from the late 1920s and on, a generation of Latin American architects borrowed ideas from Adolphe Loos, Walter Gropius, from the Russians and the Italians, but above all from Le Corbusier who became the dominant influence throughout the continent. Architects were very enthusiastic about his ideas, but at the same time, they adopted and developed them in their own terms. Fraser adds that the various manifestations of modernist architecture from the 1930s to 1960s in Latin American ultimately constitute what she calls "alternative modernisms." She adds, "with government backing, Latin American architects experimented with ways of adapting the European theories to contemporary Latin American reality, and each country came up with its own solutions, combining the modern and the national in different ways."
Emilio Duhart participates in this Trans American historical state of affairs, and Chile as a nation was under similar socio-political circumstances than the rest of the continent. Professionally, Duhart's most active years, in which he created the bulk of his projects, span from 1940 to 1970. More specifically, during that time, Duhart is predominantly inserted in the Chilean reality in which different factors were emerging and were influencing the field of architecture and also forging the modernist architectural vocabulary. Among them was the hygienist discourse of modern architecture, which had been introduced during the 1920s and was by the 1940s securely anchored and synergized with state policies on hygiene. The modern rationalizing of spaces (with its subdivisions of the kitchen, bathroom, bedrooms, and others), were seen by authorities as conducive to a more disease-free society, and at the same time, encouraging and preserving the single-family unit. These ideas influenced the spread of public housing at a time when a massive migration from rural areas were allocating in major city centers. What is remarkable is that these currents converged into the modernist language as its preferred solution.
Concurrently, the state's participation in commissioning institutional, educational, and housing architecture was present since the beginning of the turn of the twentieth century and ending after the coup d'état in Chile in 1973, securing the participation of architects in the construction of the new nation. Initially, between 1929, when the first modern building was raised in the country, until the early 1950s, there was a considerable amount of resistance to the modern movement. However, thenceforth, there was an exponential acceptance and growth in modernist buildings completed in Santiago and throughout the country.
Additionally, Duhart as a student at the Universidad Católica de Chile between 1936 and 1941, also participated in the nascent manifestations of defiance towards traditional French architectural academic principles, showing a natural interest and penchant toward modernism. Subsequently, he was intricately involved in the establishment of the academic reform on architectural education in Chile from Beaux-Arts to Modernism (1946-1949).
Although there were a group of architects who had already introduced modernity into the Chilean architectural landscape, most notably Sergio Larraín and Jorge Arteaga, the generation of architects of 1938, of which Duhart was part, made modernity their common practice and lexicon. Duhart, with his multiple travels, was a facilitating agent in cross pollinating the field of architecture with his knowledge and close contact with the founders of the modern movement, combining his trainings with elements of his native surroundings.
Chemistry Faculty, Universidad de Concepción, Concepción, Chile, 1957- 1967
Peripherical Historical Reconsiderations
According to D. J. Huppatz "the integration and interaction of different historical traditions is an ongoing project, but it is yet to make an impact on large-scale historical narratives," and the object of this inquiry on Emilio Duhart adjoins to this scheme. This case seems to be emblematic of the type of accounts that did not make it into larger historical narratives having been only partially acknowledged and not in its integrity.
The recording and methods of writing a "world history" is not new but started incorporating radical new directions only during the final quarter of the twentieth century.[xi] However, history has occurred despite historians not having paid attention to it. Such are the facts which have led to countless histories of the peripheries never being written about, or only bits and pieces of histories having been rescued. Moreover, those partial or incomplete recounts were in many cases considered because they were either readily available to the researcher or they best suited the narratives of the culture maker of the power centers. Re-surveying those accounts might be useful to a re-writing of more complete and accurate global historical account.
Emilio Duhart was professionally active during the period where world history had a particular program, and the research or lack thereof on his work must have been affected by it. He exercised his practice when the hegemonic powers were propagated from the West towards the peripheries with rigid "colonial structures of knowledge and conceptual categories"[xii] relating to the construction of historical narratives. Additionally, as already mentioned previously in this essay, his work is much more extensive than what is generally known outside his country of origin. It is under the perspective of these two anchors that a reconsideration of his oeuvre is necessary.
In his 2015 essay titled "Globalizing Design History and Global Design History, "D.J. Huppatz argues that a global perspective on design history is a necessity, citing Christopher Bailey when he writes "the need to develop a genuinely global field of inquiry has moved beyond being a challenge to becoming a duty."[xiii] In his article, Huppatz discusses various iterations devised by multiple theorists on how to construct a metanarrative of a global history of design in contrast to the way the canons of the West had established it during past centuries. History-making used to be a tool used to reaffirm colonial powers. In this regard, Huppatz maintains that the "Hegelian presumptions that Europe maturing into the West represented a model for modernity and progress became present in the writings of most historians." It is this way that before the 1960s historical narratives had a clear agenda taking off from the world-view of European and North American cultures, and had an established linearity to be followed under the parameters of modernization and the pre-set final goal of progress. If not participating in this program, the rest of the world was left in a non-existent, subaltern, or subordinate position related to historicism. It is this way that for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the peripheries had no other alternative but participating in the larger narrative imposed by the West, complying with rules already established or otherwise remaining with no history at all.
In the specific field of architectural history, Professor Jilly Traganou asserts that "beyond the global histories of architecture which unfold in highly prestigious architectural schools and at the financial centers of the world, numerous micro-narratives remain to be heard and written."[xiv] Such is precisely the case of Emilio Duhart, his practice, principles and ideas.
There is a particularly relevant quote from D.J. Huppatz in Globalizing Design History and Global Design History, which perfectly applies to the case of Emilio Duhart: "No doubt there is a great deal of material documenting design in various places written in languages other than English that is yet to be translated. Indeed, this issue highlights the English language as a dominant factor that has shaped design history and limited our understanding of design in a global context."[xv] As mentioned at the beginning of this essay, most research material available to study the work of Emilio Duhart is written in Spanish. Additionally, the fact that his archive is in Chile, a remote location even nowadays, makes total sense to embark in a revision of his remarkable trajectory. This undertaking could contribute to this knowledge participating of a larger pool for reconsideration of more expansive historical narratives.
Lycée Alliance Française, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1954-1956.
Research Methodology
The specific intellectual parkours of Emilio Duhart, with his first encounter with modernism in Chile and subsequently with his close contact with the international leaders of the movement, Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier, represents the base from which his career was initiated. However, the processing of his early acquisition of ideas and principles came to fruition when the architect came in contact with a peripheral geographical area, in Chile, where his professional practice occurred and the volume of his projects was realized. The application of this fusion was consummated in this distant from the center kind of reality, a circumstance that promoted his interpretation of the modernist language, leading him to the translation of the modern architectural language into the Chilean context. It is the products of this amalgam that this inquiry is interested in exposing.
To facilitate the task of untangling the ideas of the masters from those of the disciple, or in other words explaining how the disciple made the modernist lexicon into his own, two approaches were considered being the most appropriate to history-making to ensure to come to terms with a valid and reliable outcome. The first one, is an approach proposed by Anna Calvera in 1999 at the International Conference on Design History and Design Studies where she suggested a network model approach to history-making, rather than a one-way flow from the center to the peripheries.[xvi] As advanced by Calvera, a network model could also explore flows of information between places to understand specific cultural phenomena. This approach could be particularly relevant to our case study, to elucidate the flows from the United States, Europe, and Chile in multiple directions, through the experiences of Duhart the student and the practitioner. The center of such network should always be Duhart the architect, and the person. This way the account could bring to light the mind of the creator as a processor of information, as opposed to just a receptor and imitator.
The other source of inspiration for the analysis of Duhart's work is the Adamson and Riello position where they propose "the possibilities of an object-based approach to show how the object itself can produce its own global history or can be used as a way to challenge, revise, or relativize established narratives. How such 'microhistories' might be incorporated into larger historical narratives."[xvii] This perspective ensures that meanings emanate from the work itself, placing the influences in a secondary allocation and as basic material rather than a central one. This approach could be helpful in the case of Emilio Duhart to extract from the modern language he makes use of, the local and the personal suffused throughout his work. It could also aid in unearthing the conceptual and formal inputs he devised, revealing his translation of the language of modernism into the context of his native country.
Conclusion
Emilio Duhart was part of a movement in Latin America between the 1930s and 1960s when throughout the continent there was a remarkable modernist architectural production, so relevant that at the height of it, the world took notice and monitored it. However, after mounting criticism from the West of particularly the Brazilian take on modernism, the Latin American movement evaporated from international historical accounts.
Emilio Duhart, one of the preeminent Chilean personalities in the modern architecture of the twentieth century, is very little known in the English-speaking world, in part because the research material related to his portfolio is mostly written in Spanish. However, this prominent figure is cited in almost all the surveys of the architecture of Latin America of the twentieth century, albeit with just one project: the Cepal Building, for its formal and conceptual merits.
The present investigation intends to correct the faults mentioned above bringing to the fore the whole portfolio of this pivotal figure in Chilean architecture. The desired outcome of this effort is an illumination of the work of this architect whose education was based in three eminences: Sergio Larraín, Walter Gropius, and Le Corbusier. However, his work is not merely a repetition or imitation of the ideas of these personalities. They are an adaptation and reprocessing of them, in a dialog with his cultural and physical environment.
This essay proposes a network model approach in combination with an object-based approach, as discussed earlier in this essay. Both types of approaches are selected to guarantee two elements. First, the network model approach could facilitate a leveling of hierarchies of the field, to elucidate flows in multi directions rather than only from the masters to the disciple. Second, the object-based approach could make the production of the architect speak in multiple ways and help unearth the specific, the local, the auto-biographical in the work of Emilio Duhart, beyond the legacy of the masters.
A comprehensive view of such an intriguing architect of the twentieth century in Latin America would undoubtedly enlighten his portfolio, fill a gap in the accounts of modernism in Latin America, and ultimately it could aid in elucidating the lineage from Duhart's generation up until the contemporary architects of the country of Chile whom for the past fifteen years have been getting international attention.
Notes
[i] To name some examples: Fraser, Valerie, Building the New World: Studies in The Modern Architecture of Latin America 1930- 1960. London - New York: Verso, 2000; Hitchcock, Henry- Russel, Latin American Architecture since 1945. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1955; Damaz, Paul F., Art in Latin American Architecture. New York: Reinhold Publishing, 1963; Ragon, Michel, Histoire Mondiale de l’Architecture et l’Urbanisme, 1911-1971. Paris: Casterman, 1993; Bullrich, Francisco, Nuevos Caminos de la Architectura Latinoamericana. Barcelona: Blume, 1969; Castedo, Leopoldo, Latin American Art and Architecture. New York; Praeger Publishers, 1969.
[ii] Veronica Esparza Saavedra, “Emilio Duhart Harosteguy, un Arquitecto Integral: 1935-1992,” (PhD Diss, Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña, 2015), 27.
[iii] Esparza Saavedra, “Emilio Duhart Harosteguy, un Arquitecto Integral: 1935-1992,” 34-37.
[iv] Esparza Saavedra, “Emilio Duhart Harosteguy, un Arquitecto Integral: 1935-1992,” 76-79.
[v] Esparza Saavedra, “Emilio Duhart Harosteguy, un Arquitecto Integral: 1935-1992,” 139.
[vi] Esparza Saavedra, “Emilio Duhart Harosteguy, un Arquitecto Integral: 1935-1992,” 164.
[vii] Esparza Saavedra, “Emilio Duhart Harosteguy, un Arquitecto Integral: 1935-1992,” 158.
[viii] Esparza Saavedra, “Emilio Duhart Harosteguy, un Arquitecto Integral: 1935-1992,” 173.
[ix] Esparza Saavedra, “Emilio Duhart Harosteguy, un Arquitecto Integral: 1935-1992,” 180.
[x] Esparza Saavedra, “Emilio Duhart Harosteguy, un Arquitecto Integral: 1935-1992,” 164-166.
[xi] D, J. Huppatz, “Globalizing Design History and Global Design History,” Journal of Design History, Vol. 28 Nº2 (March 2015): 183.
[xii] Huppatz, “Globalizing Design History and Global Design History,” 186.
[xiii] Huppatz, “Globalizing Design History and Global Design History,” 182.
[xiv] Jilly Traganou, “From Nation Bound to Global Narratives of Architecture” in Global Design History, ed. Glenn Adamson, Giorgio Riello and Sarah Teasley (London – New York: Routledge, 2011), 172.
[xv] Huppatz, “Globalizing Design History and Global Design History,” 189.
[xvi] Huppatz, “Globalizing Design History and Global Design History,” 189.
[xvii] Huppatz, “Globalizing Design History and Global Design History,” 190.
Bibliography
Bullrich, Francisco, Nuevos Caminos de la Architectura Latinoamericana. Barcelona: Blume, 1969.
Castedo, Leopoldo, Latin American Art and Architecture. New York; Praeger Publishers, 1969.
Damaz, Paul F., Art in Latin American Architecture. New York: Reinhold Publishing, 1963.
Eliash, Humberto and Manuel Moreno. Architectura y Modernidad en Chile, 1925-1965. Santiago: Ediciones Universidad Católica de Chile, 1989.
Esparza Saavedra, Veronica. “Emilio Duhart Harosteguy, Un Arquitecto Integral: 1935-1992.” PhD Diss, Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña, 2015.
Fraser, Valerie, Building the New World: Studies in The Modern Architecture of Latin America 1930- 1960. London - New York: Verso, 2000.
Hitchcock, Henry- Russel, Latin American Architecture since 1945. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1955.
Huppatz, D, J. “Globalizing Design History and Global Design History,” Journal of Design History, Vol. 28 Nº2 (March 2015)): 182-202.
Ragon, Michel, Histoire Mondiale de l’Architecture et l’Urbanisme, 1911-1971. Paris: Casterman, 1993.
Traganou, Jilly “From Nation Bound to Global Narratives of Architecture” in Global Design History, ed. Glenn Adamson, Giorgio Riello and Sarah Teasley. London – New York: Routledge, 2011, 166-173.
