CATALOGO QUINTAPATA

significance buildings of this historic street and the care that is needed to restore and
maintain these structures as symbols of modernity in the capital city. Calle El Conde is where
Santo Domingo’s first modernist structures are built, including the first concrete constructions,
buildings that exhibit the Art Deco style, and that feature the earliest elevators.
In effect, modernist architecture in the Dominican Republic is important proof of the
country’s participation in larger global movements, particularly modernism, as an important
symbol of sophistication. The minimalist ethos of modernism would be seemingly opposed to
the “excesses” of the tropical landscape. Instead, it represented a new vision for a future
that was spare, clean, efficient, and marked by European aesthetic ideals of these qualities.
Although the historic city center of Santo Domingo has been named a UNESCO World
Heritage Site, this is primarily due to the colonial buildings that that line its narrow streets.
However, the artists of Quintapata are most interested in the modernist buildings that line
this street, emblems of modernity interspersed among the grand old architectural works of
the colonial period. From this same period, other buildings such as the Palacio de la Justicia,
Edificio Copello, Hotel Jaragua, in Santo Domingo that also exhibit these characteristics.
Perhaps the most salient figure of the period in question is the architect Guillermo Gonzalez
who is described as the father of modern architecture in the Dominican Republic. Among his
most important goals were the clarity of a building’s floorplan, simplicity and purity of form
and comfort, all of which are evident in his works, including Edificio Copello on Calle El Conde.
Gonzalez was also responsible for the design of the buildings of the 1956 World’s Fair in the
Dominican Republic, also the subject of the country’s recent participation in the Venice
Biennale. Without a doubt, this grouping became the most influential set of buildings in the
country during this time. The buildings remain vital today, as they continue to house city
government offices, such as City Hall building/El Ayuntamiento and the National Congress
building.
As Omar Rancier has noted, Gonzalez was born during a time in which modernism was
developing as an avant-garde movement but in a United States that remained laden with
academic canons. Only later, the architectural styles of the U.S. would be molded by the
influence of architects like Walter Gropius, Louis Kahn and Mies Van Der Rohe. His praise of
Gonzalez’s work is partly due to his exploration of seeming contradictions between the
modernist style and earlier influences in Gonzalez’s works:
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