Brutalism in Uruguay

Uruguay built one of Latin America's earliest and most sophisticated concrete cultures, supported by a strong engineering tradition that included Eladio Dieste's brick shells. Julio Vilamajó anticipated the postwar mood with the Facultad de Ingenieria, Universidad de la República (1953) in Montevideo, an exposed reinforced concrete complex begun in the 1930s and often cited as a proto-brutalist landmark. The Catalan exile Antoni Bonet i Castellana, who had worked in Le Corbusier's atelier, brought further modernist ideas to the Uruguayan coast, including the Capella Susana Soca (1959). State institutions continued the idiom into the 1970s with large concrete headquarters such as the Banco de Prevision Social (1975).