Join us on Thursday, May 13th, for a lecture and live Q+A discussion with Ernestina Osorio

Interdependence and the Construction of a Transnational Discourse of Mexican Modernism

In collaboration with the Cal Poly LA Metro Program in Architecture and Urban Design

Lecture is Free and Open to the Public

Ernestina Osorio

Ernestina Osorio teaches courses on the history and theory of architecture, art, and visual culture. She completed her Ph.D. in the History and Theory of Architecture at Princeton University after finishing her undergraduate studies with Distinction in Art History and Spanish literature at UC Santa Barbara, earning a professional degree in Architecture at UCLA, and practicing architecture and urban design. Her writing focuses on Mexico and studies architecture’s relation to cultural memory, visual culture, media, and urbanism. Osorio’s interests have been augmented by migration and travel experiences and the notion of constructed boundaries in the landscape and horizon. Her work explores built environments in Latin America and their diverse influences and tendencies, from Indigenous knowledge systems, the effects of ideological and technological developments, to the dissemination of architectural ideas across geographical and theoretical terrains. This presentation is part of an interdisciplinary project that examines the transnational and intercultural provocations, exchange, reception, and representation of Mexican architectural modernisms and the intellectual genealogies that shaped them. Osorio discusses how a convergence of architecture, art, photography, traditional arts, and anthropology in the early to mid-twentieth century represented attempts within these areas to highlight the inextricable link between Indigenous knowledge and Modernism in Mexico.

Introduced and moderated by Stephen Phillips, AIA, PhD, Principal of Stephen Phillips Architects (SPARCHS) and professor, director, Cal Poly LA Metro Program in Architecture and Urban Design (California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo)

Photos (Left to Right): Image of Ernestina Osorio; Image of the Pyramid of Cuicuilco; Image of Modotti Stairs.