Ethel Arias Duarte

The raid of an uruguayan in ecuadorian architecture

Abstract

In the 1950s a series of Uruguayan architects were based in Ecuador; many of them widely recognized and documented in the local environment. Ethel Arias, Uruguayan architect born in 1925, was part of a privileged group of professionals, national and foreign, who executed emblematic buildings at that time. However, little has been documented of this professional who was the first woman to practice architecture in Ecuador. The study involves brief biographical aspects, the contextualization of the 1950s, a review of the complexities of being a woman in a conservative environment with a masculinized profession, and her learning in Ecuador between the colonial and the indigenous. Finally, his most relevant work, the reconstruction of the Government Palace, is analyzed as part of a discourse on modernity in Quito, with an emphasis on technical decisions as shapers of space, which maintains its characteristics despite several subsequent interventions.