Architecture

 Periods

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Fourth Period: Spans the dictatorship of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo (1930-1960).

Features:

  • The San Zenón Tornado provided an impetus for urban renewal in the capital. The use of wood as a building material decreases and concrete is popularized.
  • All that is built during this time is a demonstration of tyranny. Public buildings emerged with monument-style architecture that eloquently expressed the rhetoric of power. Public buildings can therefore be generalized by their simple and solid geometric structure.
  • In the 1936, Santo Domingo suffers the irony of changing its name to Ciudad Trujillo or "Trujillo City".
  • Development of public housing. The city's first housing projects arose during this time at the hand of the Dominican State: Social Improvement Expansion (1940) and Working-Class District (1944), designed by Henry Gazón, and the neighborhood Barrio María Auxiliadora (1945).
  • First condominiums appear. Apartments in these buildings had high ceilings.
  • Modernist Style: Rationalist, functional movement defined by simple, pure surfaces and basic forms, neo-plastic harmonies and spatial influences.
    • Undecorated floors and facades.
    • Rooftop gardens.
    • Extended windows.
    • High buildings on pilings or pillars.
    • Precise lines
    • Use of low ceilings