A Foreign Look on the Latin American City: Karl Brunner's "Manual" of Urban Planning

Karl H. Brunner’s Manual de Urbanismo (1939, Bogota City, Colombia) was a decisive influence on Latin-American town planners. Bruner worked in Chile (1929-33) and  Colombia (1933-48) and as a Chilean municipal officer ("Consejero Urbanista"), he came to Brazil in 1929. In 1930, he created the First Urban Planning Seminar in Latin-America, following the National Faculty of Architecture of Vienna model. He published a two-volume manual (1941) on housing, sanitation, building, housing estate and circulation. The third volume - never published, but sketched – focused on urban planning, zoning, green areas, airports and urban art. Bunner’s Manual evidences his links to both Camillo Sitte's ideas and the German "Städtebau" tradition. His Manual promoted modern urban planning in Latin-america between 1940 and 1960 and offered a mix of ideas and influences from Sitte, the Garden City Movement, Thomas Adams, and Raymond Unwin. However Brunner considered Le Corbusier's ideas to be utopian. This paper explores the way this manual presents the Latin-American city. As a foreigner, Brunner is a study case of how "urbanism" was thought and used to conciliate the regional aspects of each city. This work focuses on Brunner’s visions, proposals, and designs for a Latin-American city. It examines the kind of urban plans and theories Brunner adapted to resolve “specific” Latin-American urban problems. This presentation will explore how Brunner's Manual resonated in a transatlantic interchange of modern urban planning theories and designs.