TY - BOOK AU - López-Durán,Fabiola TI - Eugenics in the Garden: Transatlantic Architecture and the Crafting of Modernity T2 - Lateral Exchanges: Architecture, Urban Development, and Transnational Practices SN - 9781477314975 AV - NA2543.S6 L66 2017 U1 - 724/.6 23 PY - 2021///] CY - Austin : PB - University of Texas Press, KW - Architecture and society KW - History KW - 20th century KW - Architecture, Modern KW - City planning KW - Eugenics KW - Social change KW - Environmental aspects KW - ARCHITECTURE / General KW - bisacsh N1 - Frontmatter --; Contents --; Acknowledgments --; Introduction --; 1 Practicing Utopia --; 2 Paris Goes West --; 3 Machines for Modern Life --; 4 Picturing Evolution --; Epilogue --; Notes --; Bibliography --; Index; restricted access N2 - As Latin American elites strove to modernize their cities at the turn of the twentieth century, they eagerly adopted the eugenic theory that improvements to the physical environment would lead to improvements in the human race. Based on Jean-Baptiste Lamarck’s theory of the “inheritance of acquired characteristics,” this strain of eugenics empowered a utopian project that made race, gender, class, and the built environment the critical instruments of modernity and progress. Through a transnational and interdisciplinary lens, Eugenics in the Garden reveals how eugenics, fueled by a fear of social degeneration in France, spread from the realms of medical science to architecture and urban planning, becoming a critical instrument in the crafting of modernity in the new Latin world. Journeying back and forth between France, Brazil, and Argentina, Fabiola López-Durán uncovers the complicity of physicians and architects on both sides of the Atlantic, who participated in a global strategy of social engineering, legitimized by the authority of science. In doing so, she reveals the ideological trajectory of one of the most celebrated architects of the twentieth century, Le Corbusier, who deployed architecture in what he saw as the perfecting and whitening of man. The first in-depth interrogation of eugenics’ influence on the construction of the modern built environment, Eugenics in the Garden convincingly demonstrates that race was the main tool in the geopolitics of space, and that racism was, and remains, an ideology of progress UR - https://doi.org/10.7560/314951 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9781477314975 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9781477314975/original ER -