Architecture, catholicism and rurality in Uruguay

Horacio Terra Arocena's career

Abstract

This text presents the uruguayan architect Horacio Terra Arocena (Montevideo, 1894-1985) through the key areas of action that defined his career. He was a renowned professional who presided over the Society of Architects and the Instituto Nacional de Viviendas Económicas. He participated in the Pan American Congresses of Architects and was a teacher at the Faculty of Architecture. He wrote essays on art theory and aesthetics and also a science fiction novel. He was a politician, parliamentarian representing the Civic Union and author of various laws.

As an agent of the catholic social space, he directed the newspaper El Bien Público, took charge of the magazine Tribuna Católica, and was the architectural advisor to the Curia of Montevideo, advising Monsignor Antonio María Barbieri. The neo-thomism of Jacques Maritain and the interpretation of time by the jesuit Teilhard de Chardin had a significant influence on his thinking, within the context of a renewed catholic interest in the spiritualism of Henry Bergson.

This article describes and analyzes the activity that Terra Arocena developed as a catholic architect. The argument is based on a methodology that refers to a qualitative study of various written sources. It is based on a detailed study of catholicism, from which emerges a persistent appreciation of rurality that rose up against the city and coincided with a current of architectural thought that discussed the values ​​of large cities. In this context, the public function allowed him to carry out concrete actions to make the installation of an agrarian culture a reality in Uruguay, trusting that the farming solution could solve housing problems, both in the countryside and in the cities suburbs.