Eugenics in The Garden

European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe
109 (2020): January-June, book review 8

www.erlacs.org
Book Review
–– Eugenics in the Garden: Transatlantic Architecture and the Crafting of

Modernity, by Fabiola López-Durán, University of Texas Press, 2018
Fabiola López-Durán’s recent book challenges and unravels the little-known

history of the French eugenics movement in Argentina and Brazil from approx-
imately 1900 to 1960, and its impact on public health policy, urban planning,
and architectural design. Generally, the book builds upon broader arguments
regarding the relationships between political power, the state, and society in the
production and reception of architecture and urban design. The text extends
ideas initially explored in the 1980’s by architectural theorists and historians
including Manfredo Tafuri’s neo-Marxist history of modern architecture in
relationship to society, workers, and capitalist markets, and Barbara Miller
Lane’s examination of architecture and ideology in Nazi Germany; as well as
recent post-colonial critiques of foreign domination, capitalism, and culture in
twentieth-century Latin American architecture and urbanism by scholars in the
1990’s and 2010’s such as Robert Alexander González, Luis E. Carranza, and
Fernando Lara.
López-Durán’s introduction reveals the underlying premise of the book:
that the influential ideas of the French evolutionist Jean Baptiste Lamarck
(1744-1829) who claimed, “that [physical characteristics and behaviour] in-
duced by the environment were biologically transmitted…from generation to
generation… [and became] a critical instrument in the crafting of modernity in
France during the Third Republic (1870-1940) and in the culturally and scien-
tifically influential nation states of Latin America.” (5-6) Thus, the book as-
pires to “spark a new understanding of modernity as an elaborately conceived
ethos of progress and rational order that was carried out by systematic spatiali-
zation;” utilizing “a methodological approach through which the dynamics of
modernity and eugenics are investigated.” (14-15) The author investigates
transnational issues related to post-colonialism, gender, race, class, and the
built environment by utilizing a range of critical tools from social criticism; not
only critiquing modernism as merely an aesthetic practice, but examining for
the first time to my knowledge, the eugenic dimensions of modernism in urban
DOI: http://doi.org/10.33992/erlacs.10673 © Edward R. Burian. Open Access book review dis-

tributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) Li-
cense https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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Book review 8 | ERLACS No. 109 (2020): January-June
design and architecture in Latin America, and in the process, re-evaluating he-
roic figures of modernism such as Le Corbusier and Lucio Costa.
Chapter 1 examines the origins of utopian visions for urban societies in Lat-
in America transformed by sanitization, segregation, and sterilization in novels
and medical journals written by physicians. Chapter 2 assesses the influence of
the architecture and landscape design of the 1889 Paris World’s Fair with ex-
hibits on workers’ housing, social hygiene, and colonized peoples; as well as
members of the “Musée social,” an organization that studied the social prob-
lems of French society, including architects who developed hygienic urban
plans for major Latin American capital cities, including Brazil. The urban de-
sign of Rio de Janeiro with the levelling of the mountain of Morro do Castelo,
is revealed in terms of hygienic and eugenic agendas. Chapter 3 explores
modernism in Argentina in relation to the project of improving a weak society
in terms of a hygienic urban plan for Buenos Aires developed by Emilio Coni
that included disinfection stations, worker’s housing to encourage healthy re-
production, and puericulture health and education centres. Chapter 4 is the
most persuasive of the book and examines modernism, eugenics, and the nor-
mative standards in the iconic work of Le Corbusier. Le Corbusier’s little-
known interest in eugenics is examined in terms of puericulture, medical cor-
rection, and his desire to “engineer modern life,” and “instrumentalize nature”
(149) in the design of his L’Esprit Nouveau Pavilion. Le Corbusier’s interest in
“whitening” and “improving” (180) the human race are revealed in his sketches
and writings following his travels to Brazil including his ideas for creating a
“new Brazilian man” (182) in his design for the Ministry of Health and Educa-
tion, as well as his ideas regarding the standardization of the human body in his
Modulor system.
The most compelling portions of the text utilize little-known projects and
trajectories of professional careers to support the author’s arguments regarding
eugenics and race. These include the following: the little discussed design by
Élisée Reclus for a “Great Globe” project for the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris in
which society is perceived as an abstract subject under surveillance and man-
agement (1); the useful observation that the pursuit of eugenic urban planning
and architectural projects occurred in both leftist and conservative regimes in
Latin America (8, 11); the dehumanizing exhibition of colonized people at the
1889 Paris World’s Fair including recreations of villages in North Africa and
jungles of South Africa (49); the little-discussed aspirations of Neo-colonial
architecture by French architects in Rio de Janeiro (71); the racial policy of
dispersing black citizens of Rio de Janeiro to prevent their perceived immorali-
ty (78); the astonishing claim by Lucio Costa on the necessity for selective ra-
cial immigration for the creation of good architecture (80); the little-known
architectural plans of the French novelist Émile Zola to facilitate racial im-
provement (87); Le Corbusier’s little-discussed observations regarding the
problems of race and degeneration after his trips to South America and his ar-
chitectural responses (155); and his interest in the Alexis Carrel, a Nobel prize
winning eugenic white supremacist who played a leading role in implementing
eugenic policies in Vichy France (156); among others.
The author draws upon on scarce primary sources from newspapers, maga-
zines, advertising, and interviews. Footnotes are well researched, extensive,
and detailed, while the bibliography indicates the work of a thorough scholar
who has examined scarce sources. The graphic design of the book is well com-
posed and features sharp photographs from rare archival sources. Areas of the
book that could be improved in future editions include further editing the at
times repetitive text, as well as occasional overstatements and totalizing
claims. However, these are minor flaws in what is an important book of inno-
vative scholarship that breaks new ground. López-Durán’s book is timely given
the current racial tensions of the United States, and will be useful to scholars of
urban and architectural history, theory and criticism, public health policy, and
political and economic history of Latin America; and especially to those inter-
ested in the social and cultural criticism of modernist urban design and archi-
tecture in relation to ideology, politics, and race.
Edward R. Burian, University of Texas at San Antonio

[email protected]

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European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies

Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe

109 (2020): January-June, book review 8

–– Eugenics in the Garden: Transatlantic Architecture and the Crafting of

Fabiola López-Durán’s recent book challenges and unravels the little-known

DOI: http://doi.org/10.33992/erlacs.10673 © Edward R. Burian. Open Access book review dis-

Edward R. Burian, University of Texas at San Antonio

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