To balance and to weave: the construction of an interchange through the first two SAL

Abstract

This article discusses the establishment of cultural meetings happening at precise moments in time which were dependent on the direct engagement of the parties involved. In particular, it focuses on the construction of an exchange that happened regularly over a 10-year period that left deep marks in Latin American architectural culture in the 1980s and 1990s: the Seminars of Latin American Architecture (SAL). Prior attempts to explain the appearance of SAL often emphasized multiple origins. If, on the one hand, the position of multiple sources highlights the individual countries' contributions, it could also lead to the idea that those seminars resulted from fortuitous circumstances, the combination of isolated experiences and coincidences. This paper demonstrates that both the different origins and the engagement of a group of critics contributed to the construction of those seminars. This article demonstrates the existence of an operational effort by some of the individuals who organized the first two seminars, an effort that tried to give meaning and coherence to the above experiences which were initially disconnected. To do so, this article focuses not only on the multiple origins, but also on the work of these individuals, and the strategies and devices that combined to transform a set of multiple interests into a common reflection. The covered period spans from the first exchange essays to II SAL, when this work seems complete.