Modern house. Half a century of Colombian domestic architecture

Hypothetically, the first modern Colombian house must have appeared between the 1930s and 1940s, although until now it is not known which one it was or where it was built. The fact is that from then on, well into the nineties, housing in Colombia changed direction, abandoned its roots and turned towards everything that modernity could offer. Its virtues were functionality, hygiene, clarity, efficiency: no useless spaces or dark corners, no superfluous ornaments.

This book is a serious attempt to understand and explain this house "which is not one but many", its spaces and its forms, its locations and its textures, its relevance. Its author, the architect Alberto Saldarriaga, and the photographer Antonio Castañeda, unite efforts to present and explain in an excellent succession of texts and photographs the best existing examples of this architecture in the decades from 1940 to 1960, a precursor in many aspects of later contemporary architecture.