The Center Won't Hold

While global in scope, the argument is developed from Latin America. In The Center Won’t Hold, architect and writer Florencia Rodriguez proposes that Latin America should not be understood as a peripheral case requiring explanation, but as a position from which the contemporary world can be reinterpreted.

Long accustomed to operating amid instability, scarcity, incomplete modernisations, and overlapping realities, architectural practices across the region have developed forms of engagement that illuminate conditions increasingly experienced worldwide. Through a series of contemporary works and projects, Rodriguez argues that Latin America offers not an alternative to modernity, but a productive vantage point from which to understand what comes after it. In doing so, she positions the region not as an object of analysis, but as a source of concepts, sensibilities, and architectural intelligence capable of contributing to a broader rethinking of architecture after postmodernism.