Docomomo International is an international organization dedicated to the documentation and conservation of modern architecture – as expressed by the acronym “International Committee for Documentation and Conservation of buildings, sites and neighbourhoods of the Modern Movement”. The non-profit organization, founded in the Netherlands in 1988, aims to list and care for the built heritage of modernism and to raise public awareness of the values of modern architecture. Since then, Docomomo has grown into a global organization, bringing together working groups from more than 80 countries and regions and more than 3000 members in Europe, the Americas, Asia, Oceania and Africa. Delft University of Technology serves as its current headquarters. The most important forum for Docomomo is the biennial international conference, which addresses the entire organization.
The 18th Docomomo International conference, entitled Modern Futures: Sustainable development and cultural diversity, was organized by the Chilean working group in Santiago de Chile from 9 to 14 December 2024. The event was hosted by the School of Architecture of the Catholic University of Chile. Santiago represents many of the factors and problems South American cities face. Quite a few émigré architects and engineers from Europe, including Hungary, proved to be influential in the city’s history. Chile is also a key place where the challenges, the problems and the needs of the Global South take shape. As the title of the conference suggests, speakers representing different parts of the world addressed local issues with global and future-oriented assets and many discussed the adaptation of existing modern buildings to meet the needs of today and the future. The sessions focused on a wide range of subjects from heritage protection, adaptive reuse to theoretical and historical aspects. The topics included urban design, interdisciplinary approaches, the challenges of the Global South (South America and Africa), education, the community life of modern residential areas, roof gardens, the relationship between modern architecture and climate change, modern interiors, modern textiles as an integral part of the interior, women architects, international networks of modernism, and exhibitions about or created within the modern movement. A total of about 240 lectures and 6 keynote speeches were given at the conference in 40 sessions. The lectures were published in the 1650-page conference proceedings, which will also be available online from the summer of 2025.
Ágnes Anna Sebestyén, curator or the museum gave a lecture entitled Presenting Architecture, the Archive and Microhistories: The Opening Exhibition of the New Home of Hungarian Architecture in the session Noncanonical Curatorial Narratives: Rethinking the Role of the Architecture Exhibition. She talked about the exhibition entitled Stages and Spaces: Modern Houses in Hungary 1928–1945, which was held in the exhibition space of the Hungarian Museum of Architecture and Monument Protection Documentation Center, the Walter Rózsi Villa right after its opening in 2022. The exhibition was curated by Pál Ritoók, Fanni Izabella Magyaróvári and Ágnes Anna Sebestyén. Sebestyén’s lecture focused on the renovation of the villa, the building itself, the concept of the exhibition, and the involvement of the family of the villa’s designers and clients. One of Rózsi Walter’s grandsons, Sebastian Goldberger Konstandt, who lives in Santiago, was also present in the audience.
Along with the conference, several excursions took place, during which the participants could visit the most significant modern buildings in Santiago. These included four modern neighbourhood units built in the 1950s and 1960s, Villa Portales, Villa Los Presidentes, Villa Olimpica and Villa Frei, as well as iconic Chilean modern buildings such as the Las Condes Benedictine Abbey (designed by Gabriel Guarda and Martin Correa, 1960–1964) and the ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America) building (designed by Emilio Duhart, 1966).
Ágnes Anna Sebestyén’s stay in Santiago also made it possible to examine the Chilean period of two Hungarian architects and engineers, with the help of David Maulén de los Reyes, a lecturer in architectural history at the Technical University of Santiago. The architect Tibor Weiner, who graduated from both the Technical University of Budapest and the Bauhaus, lived and worked as an architect and university lecturer in Santiago de Chile between 1939 and 1948. Weiner taught architecture at the University of Santiago in 1946–1947 and was an important figure in the school’s educational reform, during which architectural education was placed on a new foundation including Bauhaus principles. This reform was in effect until 1963. Weiner had Chilean students who later became influential figures in Chilean architecture such as Miguel Lawner. Weiner designed several residential buildings and a bank in Santiago, and together with Ricardo Müller he designed the Concepción market hall (1940, the building partially burned down in 2013, the remaining structure is currently under heritage protection) and the fire station in Chillán. Weiner’s archive is held in the Museum Department of the HMA MPDC containing materials related to his Chilean period – photographs, drawings, documents; the research in Chile helped their contextualization. Another Hungarian, Carlos Sandor, also played an important role in architectural education and modern architecture in Chile. Sandor came to Chile also in 1939 (as a political refugee due to his participation in the Spanish Civil War), but unlike Weiner he did not return to Hungary, but worked in Chile as a structural engineer for the rest of his life together with leading modern architects of his time including Abraham Schapira, Raquel Eskenazi and Miguel Lawner. Most of the residential buildings he designed as a structural engineer in the 1950s and 1960s still stand today in the Providencia neighbourhood of Santiago.
Ágnes Anna Sebestyén
