In this episode, I talk to Luis Carranza a researcher whose work focuses primarily on modern architecture and art in Latin America (with an emphasis on Mexico). His work emphasizes how the relationships between social, literary, philosophical, and theoretical ideas impact the conceptualization and materialization of architecture and design. Luis is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and Professor of Architecture and of Art and Architectural History at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island. He obtained his B.Arch. at the University of Southern California and his PhD in Architectural History and Theory from Harvard University. He has published Architecture as Revolution: Episodes in the History of Modern Mexico (University of Texas Press, 2010) and Modern Architecture in Latin America: Art, Technology, Utopia (with Fernando Lara, University of Texas Press, 2015). We talked about writing history, researching, and doing archival work in Latin America and specifically in México, and how the culture of material conservation and access needs to change. We also discuss the work of women architects in Latin America and México, and how it hasn't been included in the narrative of modern architecture of the territory, its link to the archive culture, and the need to research and publication of those histories. We discussed teaching history of Latin America, the meaning of being modern in these territories, and how these courses are still on the margins of the narratives of modern architecture history. Luis told us about his courses, the material they produce, and why they are still considered non-western histories. 

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