Dominicans are modern by attitude and by necessity. The recurring patterns of destruction and reconstruction defined by the hurricanes that annually pass through and the constantly shifting political climate in the country has always necessitated a detachment from previous efforts, and created within the nation an almost permanent state of preparedness to deal with any crisis. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the American military occupation of the island was just the most recent in a long line of foreign interventions, which each left behind their own legacies in the built environment.

The Dominican Republic is the land of firsts in the Americas. It is where the first European community was established in the Americas, and where Christopher Columbus’remains are today, monumentalized in the Faro a Colón. It is the location of the first urban grid in the Americas, which became the model for town planners worldwide. It is the location of the first university, the first church, the first hospital. The country has historically always been at the forefront of development in the “New World” not only for its geographic location, but also for its continued economic and industrial strength within the Caribbean. It is this pioneer mentality that underlies the growth and development of the country throughout the modern era.

In 1930, climactic and political events coincided in a perfect storm to produce the ultimate tabula rasa. The ascension of Rafael Trujillo’s dictatorial government and the impact of the Hurricane San Zenón just three weeks later allowed the nascent government to consolidate power through the reconstruction of the urban and architectural environment. Trujillo and his government embraced the opportunity to rebuild bigger and better in the modern era, and the chance to move beyond the influences of Western colonialization and occupation that had defined the capital city of Santo Domingo.

Modernism in the Dominican Republic was absorbed and filtered through the climactic, cultural, and political context. After San Zenón destroyed the wooden structures that amounted to fifty percent of the buildings in Santo Domingo, an official governmental recommendation was issued that all new construction be made of concrete. Concrete became not only an ideal of modernity, but also a symbol of safety. All architecture made of the material was defined in collective subconscious as a symbol of progress. Builders and fabricators adapted the material to the tropical environment by experimenting with methods of perforation to allow for ventilation and drainage, and created multiple architectural possibilities through the different patterns of these bloquescalados. The typically industrialized mechanization of the concrete blocks became a handcrafted process in the Dominican Republic in order to achieve the unique perforated shapes. This adaptation of industrialized processes and products into handcrafted ones is common in the country. During the growth of the sugar industry in the late nineteenth century, locals took the excess sugar sacks and by cutting and sewing, created rag rugs with which to decorate their homes. The juxtaposition of vernacular techniques applied to industrial fabrication and materials has always been essential to Dominican culture and development.

Throughout the twentieth century, Santo Domingo continued to urbanize and grow outside the historic defensive walls of the colonial city, through the first regional highways, transversal urban avenues, and monumental projects that embraced expansion and openness, while the government simultaneously imposed an increasingly strict regime. Held to honor Rafael Trujillo on the 25th anniversary of his rule, the Feria de la Paz y Confraternidad del Mundo Libre (Fair of Peace and Fraternity of the Free World) of 1955 was the reaffirmation of the tropes of modernism created post-San Zenón. While San Zenón created a consolidation of local forces, the Fair was the presentation of the country as a global power and within the region, orchestrated by the dictator. The fairgrounds defined a new urban center to the West outside of the colonial city, with strong vertical and horizontal axes that literally opened up to the Caribbean Sea. Simultaneously, the highly edited presentations of the fair demonstrated the closed and controlling nature of Trujillo.

The Dominican Republic has continuously and historically been a nation of multiplicities and juxtapositions. Nowhere is this clearer than through the evolution of the fairgrounds of the Feria de la Paz. While pavilions that once housed industrial and national exhibitions now serve the country’s most powerful governmental bodies, structures that have been left empty are co-opted by informal vendors during the day and illicit enterprises at night. The original goals of the fair were ostensibly to present an image of stability, power and progress to the international community. Today, the fair goes beyond those goals by presenting a unique national identity of duality and contradictions. Modernism in the Dominican Republic is defined by the historic and contemporary, day and night, formal and informal, political and recreational, and it is those dualities that make it distinctly Dominican.

 Rubén Hernández Fontana, Christy Cheng, Irina Angulo Luna, Ricardo Valdez , Emil Rodríguez Garabot, Sachi Hoshikawa
Curatorial Team