Join us for the opening of the second installment of the 2023–2024 Out of the Box exhibition series, dedicated to the works of Amancio Williams (1913‒1989), one of the key figures of modern architecture in Latin America.

Far from Nostalgia, curated by architect and historian Claudia Shmidt, displays the extensive personal archive of Williams’s letters, reflecting how integral correspondences were to his practice and emphasizing the relevance of his ideas to contemporary architecture. These letters, written to politicians, leading cultural institutions, and influential architects, reveal his unwavering insistence on the possibility to construct his projects, and provide further context and insight into the development of his theories.

Come discover the exhibition in our Octagonal Gallery, opening at 5pm. The conversation with curator Claudia Shmidt will begin at 6pm in the Paul-Desmarais Theatre, followed by a celebration in the bookstore.

Structured as a study in three acts, the Out of the Box exhibition series features Studio Muoto (Paris), Claudia Shmidt (Buenos Aires), and Pezo von Ellrichshausen (Concepción) as guest curators, each with distinct backgrounds in architectural practice and history. Together, the resulting exhibitions present new and expanded readings of Amancio Williams’s work within the Argentinian context and beyond, and situate social, environmental, and political dimensions of his practice within the contemporary architecture scene.

Donated to the CCA by the Williams family in 2020, the vast output of projects and proposals produced by Amancio Williams’s office over several decades from the 1940s through 1980s is evidenced through an expansive archive of drawings, photographs, correspondence, and models.

Claudia Shmidt is an architect and Doctor in History and Theory of Arts of the University of Buenos Aires. She is a professor and researcher at the University Torcuato Di Tella (Argentina). Her main research topics are the history of public state architecture during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the history of construction oriented to the study of the development policies of reinforced concrete technologies; and the historiography of modern architecture in Latin America, with a special interest in the intellectual biography of Francisco Bullrich.