From Mexico to the Soviet Peripheries: Third World Architectural Agency

Abstract This essay reexamines the role of the Third World in global architectural exchanges during the Cold War, situating its analysis within the emergence of Third Worldism as a political and cultural discourse in Mexico. Focusing on the transnational impact of Mexican innovations—specifically Félix Candela’s thin-shell concrete structures and David Alfaro Siqueiros’s politically engaged spatial practice—it traces how these works were actively assessed and adapted across the Soviet peripheries. A study of primary sources from Mexican and Soviet contexts reveals the significance of the resulting architectural translations, which were mediated through platforms such as the International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures. The main objective of the essay is to show how Third Worldist ideals of neohumanism and cosmopolitanism contested dominant First and Second World paradigms. Having established this, it identifies a “third monumentality” that was a powerful spatial expression of solidarity grounded in multidirectional exchanges, political engagement, and the affirmation of regional identities.