Modern Architecture of Quito

Situated at the crossroads of the foreign and the vernacular, Quito – the capital of Ecuador, with its world-famous yet understudied built environment – stands as a testament to architectural in-betweenness. This book interweaves history and theory to explore how near and far influences have shaped its unique character. Case studies present diverse and unexpected episodes in the architectural history of this city, spanning the intricacies of its topography, the design of modernist houses and the appropriation of the motel typology. Together, they show how fluxes of different origins have created an architecture marked by diversity and interrelation. To theoretically frame these investigations, this anthology readdresses the notions of the global and the local, examining their tension and unavoidable coexistence, while introducing the in-between as a phenomenon with many variations and embodiments, increasingly referenced in architectural thinking. This book not only furthers the evolution of these concepts but also demonstrates their value as tools for analyzing the architectures of Latin America and the Global South more broadly. With contributions from a new generation of Ecuadorian architecture scholars, Modern Architecture of Quito is a must-read for students and researchers studying how architectural modernism developed in Latin America.