On the other hand, photography (and certainly not mine) would not capture the subtlety of these details, and no still medium could capture their animation— the lively way they swing, articulate and pivot along their prescribed planes and arcs. Nor could photographs suggest their remarkable feel— the close tolerances, precise weighting and positive click that the furniture and cabinetry still have after 80 years; the way the doors close slowly by themselves. And the MdV is as much a house of grand, spatial gestures, as it is of minute, artisanal details. These too escape my photographs. So it really is for the best: I will try to describe here how the MdV feels.

The only photographs that I am able to post are of the facade, which is the aspect of the house I least want to illustrate. This is not because it is uninteresting, but rather because the MdV’s titular feature is so widely exposed. It does give me an opportunity, however, to discuss how the house has been represented photographically. Here it is, for example, as shot by François Halard, and included in Nicolai Ouroussoff’s New York Times review, “The Best House in Paris”:[1]

Maison de Verre facade (François Halard)

This lovely image is typical of recent representations of the home: a dead-on elevation of a monumental, glowing lantern. Yet my experience approaching the MdV that Saturday morning belied the expectations set by heroic images like these.  Passing through the unassuming street entrance to 31 Rue-St. Guillaume, and into the small courtyard, the view surprised me. It is cropped out of these photos (even more by the NYT than in Halard’s original), but the MdV only occupies about two thirds of the vertical real estate of the masonry structure into which it is inserted. Its scale feels like an almost humble intervention— except, of course, for its formal audacity.

Facade (author)

The dead-on treatment also collapses perspective on a house one might expect to project into the courtyard. Yet on foot it becomes clear how much the MdV is truly built into its 19th century host, complicating the narrative of a monumental modern icon. (It should be noted that the upstairs neighbors, whose refusal to vacate introduced the peculiar constructional challenge of the MdV, some years ago renovated their facade to widen the windows and jettison a mansard roof, slightly lessening the starkness of the original stylistic disparity, and bowing to the modern character of the new construction they had resisted.)

Perhaps the greatest surprise in approaching the presumably luminous “House of Glass” is that, by the light of an overcast Parisian morning, the glass facade appears quite dull, even muddy— not far off, tonally, from the gray plaster of the adjacent wall. This quality changed with exposure to high sunlight, which emphasized the geometry of the circles inscribed within the glass brick lenses. These bricks have been replaced, after some cracking, with an approximation of the original sand-cast Nevada blocks produced by Saint-Gobain, which remain on the better-protected rear facade. The original glass has a slightly greener cast, thanks to its iron content, and creates a more intense dappling effect across a concave surface dimpled like a hammered metal bowl.

Flood light track on facade (author)

It is by night that the MdV famously glows. Light from within meets large floodlights attached to tracks projecting from the facade. Our tour leader, Mary Vaughn Johnson switched these lights on during the afternoon of our visit, so we could see their yellow-gold effect inside and out. Elevations of the facade foreshorten this scaffolding. In person, the projection of these tracks flanking the entry is hard to ignore, and creates the impression of approaching from behind-the-scenes of a stage set. Critics have observed not just the choreography of circulation in the MdV, but also the cinematic character of its interior.[2] It is striking, then, that even after seeing the apparatus of this home’s cinematic effects as one approaches, its immersive, dematerializing quality and intoxicating cinematic glamour are undiminished once we have set foot inside.[3]

Entry doorbells (author)

After ringing one of the doorbells to adapt the home’s programmatic function to the visitor (patient, guest or service call), all entrants pass down a narrow hall walled in glass to a secretary, who provides another sorting function. I will not attempt to describe the circulation of patients through Dr. Dalsace’s ground-floor medical practice in detail (he was a preeminent gynecologist, later nationally recognized for championing birth control), as it is better seen in plans. Yet I would like to comment on the remarkable choreography of privacy, professionalism and respect staged on this floor. A series of sliding doors, metal screens and different treatments of glass work as layers and veils to balance privacy and openness. Dr. Dalsace’s consultation room—backed by a double-height glass brick wall that telegraphs transparency and trust—has a desk with a rolling leaf on casters, so that he could maintain professional distance or lean in to hear patients’ privileged information, whispered in confidence. Seeing his patients out of the room, Dr. Dalsace was forced to bow deeply, as he ran the lock from high to low down its arc-shaped track.

The most dramatic experience of the home begins when social visitors turn a sharp left down the entry hall. An ostentatiously delicate hinge mounted on the ceiling slides a semicircular screen away, and leads to the grand, ship-ladder staircase, which faces the main facade’s double-height wall of glass. Mrs. Dalsace was said to receive visitors from the landing, silhouetted before a wall of glass, as her guests climbed the wide, railing-less stairs, which drop off vertiginously to either side— cinematic to be sure. Walking up myself, and convinced no one was looking, I had the urge to throw my arms out to either side while climbing these stairs— probing the space, and perhaps mimicking a tightrope walker, as one thinks keenly of balance.

Grand salon (Todd Eberle)

I was not able to capture the quality of light in the grand salon, though some very fine photographs do justice to the space. Analogies to a massive cinema screen are not far off, and the diffuse yet intense quality of light made me squint by midday. The effect is of natural daylight, albeit severed from the cues or distractions of nature—”a world within a world,” as Kenneth Frampton put it. The house feels clean, with light playing off every surface, and a sense of crisp clarity even affects the acoustic space. Mary Vaughn Johnson analogized the interior atmosphere by night to a casino, as it becomes difficult to note the passage of time. We took lunch in the grand salon, sitting on Mr. Rubin’s newer furniture (most of the originals are now in the collection of the Pompidou), but still resting our drinks on Chareau’s handmade brass fan table (I searched desperately for a coaster).

Mary urged us, during her excellent slideshow in the introduction, to resist coldly aestheticizing the house— seeing only line, light, shadow, and the industrial quality of the materials. This is surely the nature of most representations of the house, such as those of architectural photographer Todd Eberle.[4]

Electrical detail (Todd Eberle)

I have to confess, though, that it is difficult not to aestheticize the house in this way. The module of the glass bricks in the facade corresponds to the proportions in the furniture and even to the squares of round stud rubber flooring that resemble my childhood kitchen tiles— except these are now cracked like a rhino’s skin, with each tile progressing at a different rate of decay depending on its orginal batch of natural rubber. This geometry contributes to a sense of harmony in the house— that everything fits together in a certain way. This is what Chareau, Dalbet and Bijvoet were working out over the four-year, on-site design and construction process. The Maison de Verre reflects this precision, but never at the cost of warmth, lyricism, and even wit.

* * *

Before I conclude, I want to turn briefly to one significant reception of glass architecture in the modernist historiography that relates closely to the MdV, and with which I tried to square my own impressions while visiting the home.

During the mid-1930s, Dr. Dalsace’s home served as a salon for Paris society members, Marxist intellectuals, and Surrealist artists and poets. In April of 1934 the German literary critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin, who had fled Nazi Germany for Paris, was to give a series of five talks at the MdV on German literature and the current politics of the left. The talks were canceled on short notice when Dr. Dalsace took ill, with only fragmentary notes remaining. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume that Benjamin knew the MdV well, and that it contributed to his position on glass architecture.

Shortly after fleeing Germany in 1933, Benjamin wrote the essay “Experience and Poverty.” Here he describes the social and cultural aftermath of the Great War, in which the value of experience had been destroyed in the face of unknown horror and new technology— for which man’s accumulated experience was wholly unprepared. This kind of “resetting” of experience has a virtue, he argues, in a “new, positive concept of barbarism,” for it forces the culture and its individuals to “start from scratch; to make a new start; to make a little go a long way.”

Benjamin takes architecture as a prime example of this new start. Deeply influenced by Sigfried Giedion’s book Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in Ferroconcrete of 1928, Benjamin singles out the new “constructors,” like those at the Dessau Bauhaus, Le Corbusier, and Adolf Loos (or artists “modeling themselves on the engineering spirit” like Paul Klee) as addressing this new condition. Benjamin champions modern materials like iron and glass— crucially put to modern formal uses, and rejects the decorated, historicist, bourgeois styles of the 19th century.

In particular, he celebrates the utopian writer Paul Scheerbart as a prophet of the new potential of glass architecture. Scheerbart dedicates his 1914 work Glass Architecture to the expressionist architect Bruno Taut, who in turn dedicates his 1914 Glashaus pavilion in Cologne to Scheerbart. (Scheerbart’s prophecies, which rhyme better but are no less eccentric in German, are emblazoned on the frieze of Taut’s pavilion; e.g., “Colored glass destroys hate.”) Kenneth Frampton notes that no conscious link can be proven between Scheerbart’s work and the MdV, but he nevertheless argues that the house “curiously echoes, however unconsciously, Scheerbart’s vision,” and that it embodies “an altogether richer and more total realization of this vision than either he or his professional alter-ego Bruno Taut were to achieve.” Remarkably, between Taut’s 1914 pavilion and the MdV, begun in 1928, “no structure exists in which glass lenses were used as the primary protective skin.”[5]

For Benjamin, the use of glass suggested by Scheerbart and realized at the MdV is a kind of cultural necessity. He writes in “Experience and Poverty”:

It is no coincidence that glass is such a hard, smooth material to which nothing can be fixed…. Objects made of glass have no ‘aura.’ Glass is, in general, the enemy of secrets. It is also the enemy of possession.[6]

Benjamin takes up the chorus of one of his artist/constructivist exemplars, Bertolt Brecht, when he declares “Erase the traces!” Such traces, Benjamin explains, typify the “cozy” bourgeois interiors of the 1880s, where “there is no spot on which the owner has not left his mark.

And in a 1929 essay on surrealism Benjamin would write:

Living in a glass house [like living with the doors open] would be a revolutionary virtue par excellence … an intoxication, a moral exhibitionism, that we badly need.[7]

Detlef Mertins aptly traced Benjamin’s influences in glass architecture to the group surrounding G magazine, to which he contributed, and in whose pages, for example, Theo van Doesburg would praise modern uses of glass by Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Adolph Loos and Frederick Kiesler. In 1923 van Doesburg would describe his own program for a house for the artist Léonce Rosenberg in a letter to him as follows:

Your atelier must be like a glass cover or like an empty crystal. It must have an absolute purity, a constant light, a clear atmosphere. It much also be white. The palette must be of glass. Your pencil sharp, rectangular and hard, always free of dust and as clean as an operating scalpel. One can certainly take a better lesson from doctor’s laboratories than from painters’ ateliers. The latter are cages that sting like sick apes.[8]

The MdV of course has the qualities of both an operating room (which it includes on the ground floor), and an artist’s studio, in the light-flooded grand salon— capitalizing on both the hygienic and atmospheric properties of glass brick.

As Maria Gough has noted, Benjamin’s reading of Scheerbart (influenced by figures like van Doesburg, who along with many Dadaists of the day, deeply revered Scheerbart) is much more interested in his constructive characteristics than his fanciful expressionistic ones (usually associated with Taut).[9] I would add that this is by no means a misreading of Scheerbart, whose 111 chapters on glass are as concerned with its phenomenal and spiritual effects as its functional properties and constructional requirements. The MdV thus embodies a vital, neglected side of Scheerbart. While he calls for colored glass, the thick translucent bricks of the MdV facade are still more for the atmospheric effect of diffuse light or “phenomenal transparency” that Scheerbart seems interested in than for any kind of literal transparency.[10] Similarly, Scheerbart’s focus on hygiene (he devotes a chapter to exterminating insects) was a central concern for Dr. Dalsace, in whose examination room microbes should leave no “traces” (to borrow Brecht’s term). Indeed, every surface of the examination roof is covered with glass, metal or tile— all non-porous, easily cleaned materials.

The poignancy of Gough’s article, entitled “Paris, Capital of the Soviet Avant-Garde,” is to highlight Benjamin’s attempt to salvage a constructivist creative model in his new refuge of Paris that had just fallen to the right in Germany and to Party aesthetic policy in the Soviet Union. This is what he calls for in his April 1934 Paris speech-turned-essay, “The Author as Producer,” and perhaps what he might have suggested in the salon at the MdV, just six years before France would fall, and he would take his own life attempting to flee at the border to Spain.

To conclude by returning to Benjamin’s observation that “Glass is… the enemy of secrets and possession,” it is indeed true that the MdV remains impervious to some kinds of traces. For one thing, it is a difficult place for art collectors like Dr. Dalsace and Mr. Rubin alike to hang two-dimensional works. In this sense perhaps, it is an enemy of possession.

Nevertheless, a great paradox of the MdV is that it is in fact full of secrets— in many cases precisely about where to keep possessions (it is, after all, difficult to truly live without traces). One thinks of the full-height lacquered closets that appear as a wall along the second floor gallery; the plush lined drawers for silver, artfully concealed in the dining room; the separate, walled-off service staircase; and the small swinging door built into wall of the lady’s boudoir that allows a cup of tea to “appear” in her room without the service staff’s visible intervention. These last two are only as modern as the development of the corridor to separate and hide service functions in some of France’s great 18th century hôtels particuliers.

The family’s life, too, is rendered mostly opaque to the outside world. Despite all the glass, the powerful floodlights provide privacy, such that only shadowy signs of life can be discerned from the outside. The “moral exhibitionism,” then, is not one of life, per se, but of lifestyle. To be sure, the Communist-Jewish Jean Dalsace was not an introvert: he made no secret of his left-wing affiliations, as a founding member of the legally-constituted French communist party (PCF), and he was outspoken on the causes of pacifism and birth control, then banned in France (opening a birth-control clinic in a Paris suburb cost him his job as laboratory head at a major hospital). Still, privacy was crucial to the Dalsaces. I could not help but wonder, too, if some high-level discussions within the Soviet-funded and directed PCF might not have occurred in the MdV as the political climate in Europe began to shift in the mid-1930s, though this is idle speculation. Nevertheless, there is a tension, not necessarily irreconcilable, I think, between the MdV as a house of secrets and as a place of moral exhibitionism.

The MdV is a deeply contradictory house. It features modern materials assembled in the tradition of old-world craftsmanship, negotiating a way between the standardization of the German Werkbund and Le Corbusier, and the retrograde crafts tradition on display at the 1925 Paris Exposition (where the term “Art Deco” was born, and at which Chareau’s furniture appeared).

And the MdV is also a house of secrets— such that a gaggle of architects and architectural historians could spend a day in the house conjecturing and debating about some of its more mysterious details, and our extremely knowledgeable guides Andrew Ayers and Ariela Katz could discover new facets of the home for the first time. After eighty years, the MdV remains fertile ground for new research.  And this—both its openness and coyness—is precisely the Maison de Verre’s charm. Thank you to the SAH, our able guides, and Mr. Rubin, for letting us in on the secret.

For the morning session, the curators assembled an array of artifacts from the GRI’s diverse architecture and design collections.  Highlights included drawings from the École Polytechnique (1806), George Saunders’s drawings for the Stag Brewery in London (1807), architectural drawings for the Gare Saint-Charles railroad station in Marseille (1848), original trademark designs by Bauhaus graphic artist Carl Ernst Hinkefuss (1912-56), Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann’s interior design drawings (1924-33), Bernard Rudofsky’s watercolors of Santorini (1929), John and Donald Parkinson’s design and construction drawings for Union Station in Los Angeles (1934-39), and architect Karl Schneider’s product designs for Sears (1938-45).

The afternoon session displayed drawings and models from the archives of Modern architects including Yona Friedman, Ray Kappe, Pierre Koenig, John Lautner, and Frank Israel, as well as prints from the archive of architectural photographer Julius Shulman.  The curators also presented Daniel Libeskind’s sketchbook for the Jewish Museum in Berlin (1988-92), and selections from Aldo Rossi’s notebooks on architecture (1986).  Following these sessions in the Special Collections Reading Room, participants were invited to a tour and reception at the spectacular 1967 Ray Kappe House in the Rustic Canyon neighborhood of West Los Angeles.

The GRI’s recent initiative to acquire mid-century Modern archives signals a significant refocusing of The Getty’s resources.  In the area of California Modernism, for example, only the Architecture and Design Collection at the University of California, Santa Barbara, now rivals The Getty’s holdings.  Thankfully, most of the GRI’s recent architecture acquisitions are not “best of” archives that showcase exquisite renderings and promotional images (although those are also represented), but rather “most useful” collections that are intended to facilitate research into the idiosyncratic design processes of Modern architects.  Sketchbooks, journals, and study models are therefore framed as crucial components of the collections, many of which open unprecedented research opportunities for architecture and design scholars.

Jon Yoder

Assistant Professor

Syracuse Architecture

—-

The study day began at 1:00 PM with a tour of the exhibition “The Structure of Light: Richard Kelly and the Illumination of Modern Architecture,” in which Neumann summarized the history of lighting in architecture through a series of case studies.  Neumann began our tour by walking us through early examples of projects in which interiors were flooded with unrestrained light and the tops of skyscrapers beamed.  Then he presented a selection of Kelly’s 300 projects to illustrate how the refined use of light created unique environments and altered the forms of buildings.  Last, the tour of the exhibition concluded with Neumann walking us through a series of recently completed projects, in which the employment of light resulted in textured and/or interactive facades.  After making our way through the exhibition, we understood the conditions in which Kelly formed his career and subsequently impacted architectural design.

Around 3:00 PM we took a break to enjoy coffee and the bird’s eye views of New Haven from the roof of the YSOA.

By 3:30 we inspected the placement of lights and pipes throughout the distinctive, triangulated ceiling of the Yale Art Gallery’s lobby.  We learned the lighting system designed by Kelly incorporated lights, fabricated by Edison Price, that were tucked out of site in the floating tetrahedral ceiling.  However, since the original lighting design did not fill the gallery spaces or light the art as hoped, the system was replaced.  The current lighting scheme uses drop-down lights floating along tracks that are threaded through the ceiling hollows.

At 4:15 we walked into the Yale Center of British Art.  As soon as we entered the lobby, I was stunned by the clarity of the diffused natural light that emanated from the rectangular grid of skylights.  Due to these natural light fixtures, the light remained even and vibrant (but never too strong) as we walked from the foyer into the galleries filled with exquisite paintings.  Kelly, in collaboration with Kahn, succeeded in using as much natural light as possible to fill the space without ever distracting the viewer from the collections with hotspots and shadows.

At 6:30 we stepped onto Philip Johnson’s forty-seven acre residence in New Canaan.  Upon our arrival it was light outside.  As we processed through the landscape along the circular driveway, I was astonished by the size of the property and the diversity of architectural styles.  I never saw photographs of Johnson’s deconstruction meeting house, post-modern gate, library without even a path leading to it, chain-link tribute to Frank Gehry, or art and sculpture galleries.  As the sun set, my attention shifted from Johnson’s experiments in style to his Glass House.  The house literally transformed from being a single, open space partitioned from nature through the use of reflective glass to a series of small spaces designated by low pools of light.  What is more, the glass becomes truly transparent, to the point you can see through the building without the interference of reflections, only at night (as a matter of fact, I had to circle the house numerous times before I could find a single location in which I could catch my reflection).

I failed to mention, we were sipping wine and toasting to Kelly as we were experiencing the glass house and its lighting…  as if it was not enough to be there after the sun set.

Around 9:30 we arrived at the Four Seasons’ bar located within the Seagram Building in New York City.  Neumann was especially enthusiastic as he described Kelly’s contribution to the design of the lobby’s lighting and materials, as well as the atmospheric effects produced within the magical restaurant.  And of course we had to experience the bar firsthand, which is where the tour ended with many of the participants sipping cocktails in Kelly’s light.

—–

Having the privilege of participating in the study day provided me with an opportunity to both understand how other scholars are approaching questions concerning lighting systems as well as to acquire specific knowledge about the history of lighting in the United States.  Moreover, since ephemeral lighting effects are no doubt best understood through direct experience. Visiting the buildings on the tour enabled me to make direct observations about responsive lighting systems in action, to better understand their placement, the amount and type of light they produce, their effects on the use of space, the aesthetic of the lighting systems, and the light’s role in the construction of the gestalt architectural image.

We begin our final day with a trip out to Santa Fe, a corporate area that is neither pedestrian nor photographer friendly! It is quite different from the Mexico City that I am familiar with. The buildings are massive and it is clear that it is a newer development based on the predominance of contemporary structures: Teodoro González de Leon and J. Francisco Serrano designed the Torres Arcos Bosques II (2008), which is amusingly called ‘los pantalones’; Agustin Hernandez’s radical Corporativo Calakmul (1994) looks like a gigantic washing machine; side by side buildings, Aurelio Nuño’s IBM Building (1995-97) and Gustavo Echelmann and Gonzalo Gomez Palacios, Edificio Bimbo (1991-93) offer contemporary takes on the block tower.

Teodoro González de Leon and J. Francisco Serrano, Torres Arcos Bosques II (2008)

Agustin Hernandez, Corporativo Calakmul (1994)

Landscape, Agustin Hernandez, Corporativo Calakmul (1994)

Aurelio Nuño, IBM Building (1995-97)

Gustavo Echelmann and Gonzalo Gomez Palacios, Edificio Bimbo (1991-93)

Highway leaving Santa Fe

We are fortunate enough to tour a private home designed by Luis Barragán in los Jardines del Pedregal. Casa Prieto López (1950) is painted a vivid rust colour, less for one pink garage wall and the spaces inside the house are composed of the now familiar arrangement of geometric volumes. The entire interior, down to the furniture, paintings and even decorative bowls is designed or carefully selected and arranged by the architect, another incidence of Barragán’s controlling nature.

Exterior street space, Luis Barragán, Casa Prieto López (1950)

Front Facade, Luis Barragán, Casa Prieto López (1950)

Backyard of upper level, Luis Barragán, Casa Prieto López (1950)

Gardens, Luis Barragán, Casa Prieto López (1950)

Backyard of lower level, Luis Barragán, Casa Prieto López (1950)

Window Detail, Luis Barragán, Casa Prieto López (1950)

Window Detail, Luis Barragán, Casa Prieto López (1950)

Barragán, a devout Catholic, built the Capuchin Convent at Tlalpan (1953-60) as a donation to the nuns. The chapel space, which we were unable to photograph, is one of the most striking of Barragán’s interiors: the angular double height room is painted in vivid pink and golden hues of light from two large stained glass windows paint the walls. Three large Matias Goeritz paintings decorate the altar space.

Luis Barragán, Capuchin Convent at Tlalpan (1953-60)

Interior Courtyard, Luis Barragán, Capuchin Convent at Tlalpan (1953-60)

Interior Courtyard, Luis Barragán, Capuchin Convent at Tlalpan (1953-60)

Juan O’Gorman’s Rivera/Kahlo Studio and House (1931-32) is primarily composed of two buildings, a larger red and white building and a smaller blue building, which are attached by a rooftop bridge. The larger building is understood to be Diego Rivera’s and the smaller building, Frida Kahlo’s suite, recalls the artist’s childhood home, La Casa Azul, however it is likely that the larger structure served as studio and gallery with the smaller one reserved for domestic use. Visibly influenced by Le Corbusier’s ideas, O’Gorman’s Rivera/Kahlo Studio and House features glazed walls, spiral staircases and is partially raised on pilotis. However, local touches, such as the vivid exterior colouring and a cactus fence make the studio/house a uniquely Mexican modernist building.

Juan O`Gorman, Rivera/Kahlo Studio and House (1931-32)

Juan O`Gorman, Rivera/Kahlo Studio and House (1931-32)

Juan O`Gorman, Rivera/Kahlo Studio and House (1931-32)

Rooftop Patio, Juan O`Gorman, Rivera/Kahlo Studio and House (1931-32)

Rooftop Patio, Juan O`Gorman, Rivera/Kahlo Studio and House (1931-32)

Rooftop Patio, Juan O`Gorman, Rivera/Kahlo Studio and House (1931-32)

Interior Studio/Gallery Space, Juan O`Gorman, Rivera/Kahlo Studio and House (1931-32)

I would like to offer a few words to express my sincere gratitude for being awarded this amazing fellowship. SAH offers an incredible opportunity for graduate students to pursue on-site research and the financial support from general members for this fellowship is an incredibly generous act. As a PhD student studying Mexican architecture this study tour has been invaluable to my own work and has certainly offered me more in depth knowledge about the city and its many neighbourhoods. A huge thank you goes to Kathryn O’Rourke for planning the tour and preparing the extensive course notes, this has only made my interest in Mexican architecture grow. Thanks also go to SAH representative Abigail Van Slyck and tour coordinator Sinead Walshe for keeping our tour organized and keeping our group together!

Finally, I would like to thank the tour members: Lee Altmayer, John Arbuckle, Judith Auchincloss, Ronald Beyer, Ken Breisch, Lambert Giessinger, Kim Hoagland, Julie Jones, Nancy Kent, Karen Kingsley, Gail Littlefield, Richard Longstreth, Naomi Miller, Maurice Nieland, Sue Nieland, Dietrich Neumann, Doris Power, Gretchen Redden, William Stern, Marilyn Symmes, D’juro Villaran-Rokovich, Joyce Walker, Carol Willis and Mark Willis. I enjoyed meeting and getting to know each of you and learning about your own fascinating research and work! You made this trip memorable and I look forward to meeting up again soon.

Today we cover a lot of ground – travelling to far points in the city to see some of the hard to reach sites. We started out by stopping off at the Towers of Satellite City designed by Matias Goeritz and Luis Barragán for Mario Pani’s Cuidad Satélite, a suburb built outside of the city’s centre.

Matias Goeritz and Luis Barragán, Towers of Satellite City (1957-58)

Mexico City’s Bacardi Plant houses some attarctive modernist structures. The Bacardi Administration Building is Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s sole structure in Mexico. The building is composed of a largely glass box on top of a smaller one supported by two cruciform columns and four piloti on each end. The interior has no partitions and features two stairwells leading up to the upper balconied floor. Félix Candela’s bottling plant employs the architect’s characteristic shell  structure in the plant’s three hyperbolic groin vaults.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Bacardi Administration Building (1958-61)

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Bacardi Administration Building (1958-61)

Interior, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Bacardi Administration Building (1958-61)

Félix Candela, Bacardi Bottling Plant (1958-61)

Interior, Félix Candela, Bacardi Bottling Plant (1958-61)

Interior, Félix Candela, Bacardi Bottling Plant (1958-61)

Interior, Félix Candela, Bacardi Bottling Plant (1958-61)

Interior, Félix Candela, Bacardi Bottling Plant (1958-61)

We then visit various Barragán structures that offer excellent examples of the architect’s landscape design in the Los Clubes neighbourhood, which is a Barragán development from 1961-72. A fountain at the entrance to the development, which is turned off when we visit as it is the rainy season, is done in bright pink and rust coloured sculptural slabs. The San Cristóbal Stables is designed in a very similar style: thick pink concrete walls house the various structures and a similar fountain extends over a shallow pool.

Luis Barragán, Los Clubes Development Fountain (1961-72)

Luis Barragán, Los Clubes Development Fountain (1961-72)

Luis Barragán, San Cristóbal Stables (1967-68)

Luis Barragán, San Cristóbal Stables (1967-68)

Luis Barragán, San Cristóbal Stables (1967-68)

Matias Goeritz’s El Eco (1952-53) is an experimental museum of interesting proportions that exemplifies his idea of “Emotional Architecture” that we learn is actually a reaction against the prevalence of muralism and International Style modernism in Mexico City.  The walls of this exhibition space slope on very slight angles and floor boards sometimes follow the angles of hallway spaces, physically receding into space as thought the hallway were much longer, in order to offer a more spiritual experience to the visitor.

Matias Goeritz, El Eco (1952-53)

Interior, Matias Goeritz, El Eco (1952-53)

Interior, Matias Goeritz, El Eco (1952-53)

Interior, Matias Goeritz, El Eco (1952-53)

We finally stop off at the Electrician’s Syndicate Building to see an impressive David Alfaro Siqueiros mural, Portrait of the Bourgeoisie (1939), which fills an entire stairwell. The mural was executed by the artist and a large team of painters – unfortunately his collectivist ideas did not fully succeed as the mural is widely recognized as his own work.

Detail, David Alfaro Siqueiros and others, Portrait of the Bourgeoisie (1939)

Detail, David Alfaro Siqueiros and others, Portrait of the Bourgeoisie (1939)

Mario Pani, Enrique del Moral and Salvador Ortega Flores, Torre de la Rectoría (1952)

For the fifth day of the tour the sites we visited were among my favourites of the trip. We walked through two school sites, the Universidad Nacional Autónomo de México (UNAM) campus and then Centro Nacional de los Artes.

Grounds at UNAM

The UNAM campus is an exceptional site for both individual buildings and total plan – I am immediately reminded of the ordered grid at Teotihuacán yet the campus seems to simultaneously follow a whimsical order. Carlos Lazo led a team of architects, building the campus between 1950 and 1954, using a plan designed by Mario Pani and Enrique del Moral. Although the campus’s buildings were designed by a range of individual architects, the buildings largely reference the language of International Style modernism and the many murals do an excellent job of uniting the buildings as a whole. The Torre de la Rectoría (1952) designed by Mario Pani, Enrique del Moral and Salvador Ortega Flores features three murals by David Alfaro Siqueiros and presents alternating bands of glass and coloured steel, which are repeated in many of the surrounding buildings.

Mario Pani, Enrique del Moral and Salvador Ortega Flores, Torre de la Rectoría (1952), mural by Siqueiros

Mario Pani, Enrique del Moral and Salvador Ortega Flores, Torre de la Rectoría (1952)

David Alfaro Siqueiros, El Pueblo a la Universidad, la Universidad al Pueblo (1952) on the Torre de la Rectoría

Siqueiros, Las fechas de las historia de Mexico (1952-1956)

Juan O’Gorman’s Central Library (1952) is completely covered with a highly detailed tile mural, with motifs from Mexican history to astronomy, designed by the architect himself. The entrance face resembles the pre-conquest god Tlaloc that is known for the characteristic googly eyes.

Tour members in front of Juan O'Gorman's Central Library (Photo: Abigail Van Slyck)

Juan O'Gorman, Central Library (1952)

Juan O'Gorman, Central Library UNAM (1952)

Juan O'Gorman, Central Library UNAM (1952)

Félix Candela and Jorge Gonzales Reyna’s Pabellón de Rayos Cósmicos (1951) seems almost diminutive amongst the towering International Style buildings that surround it. The single story building has a red shell roof that is a hyperbolic vault and it stands off the ground on sympathetically curved concrete legs.

Félix Candela and Jorge Gonzales Reyna, Pabellón de Rayos Cósmicos (1951)

Félix Candela and Jorge Gonzales Reyna, Pabellón de Rayos Cósmicos (1951)

The facade of Teodoro González de León’s Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (2008) is heavily glazed and inclined at 45 degrees. The lobby is a double height space that is naturally lit by large panes of glass at the sides and above on the ceiling.

Teodoro González de León, Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (2008)

Interior, Teodoro González de León, Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (2008)

The Centro Nacional de los Artes, which was built to revitalize arts education in Mexico City, was planned and largely designed by Ricardo Legorreta, including all of the outdoor spaces. His bright orange buildings dominated the campus along with one striking cylindrical purple tower.  The complex as whole resembles a central spine that houses interesting contemporary buildings along its narrow path. The bright orange structures contrast nicely with the geometrical grey concrete facade of Teodoro González de León’s Escuela Superior de Música (1994).

Ricardo Legoretta, Centro Nacional de los Artes (1994)

Ricardo Legoretta, Centro Nacional de los Artes (1994)

Ricardo Legoretta, Centro Nacional de los Artes (1994)

Teodoro González de León, Escuela Superior de Música (1994)

Luis Vicente Flores’s Escuela Nacional de Danza Clásica y Contemporánea (1994) merges seamlessly into Legoretta’s landscape. The structure is composed of a mixture of shapes that use concrete and steel frame structures to support the principally glass walls. The effect is almost entirely transparent building.

Luis Vicente Flores, Escuela Nacional de Danza Clásica y Contemporánea (1994)

TEN Arquitectos’s Escuela Nacional de Arte Teatral (1993) has a large shell form covering the interior spaces – both closed off areas and open air terraces of various volumes – that creates a pleasantly calm acoustic space.

TEN Arquitectos, Escuela Nacional de Arte Teatral (1993)

Teotihuacán

Our fourth day offers us some of the most exciting sites of the trip – as O’Rourke put it, “This day is definitely about scale!” Our first site of the day is the ancient city of Teotihuacán, which was at its pinnacle around 400-550 CE with around 125,000 people – making it one of the largest cities in the world. Spared by the Spanish as a non-threatening site, the ruins have survived quite well and offer amazing insight into the urban planning and scale of this ancient city.

Teotihuacán

Teotihuacán

Teotihuacán

Teotihuacán

The two largest structures, the pyramid of the sun and the pyramid of the moon, are placed along a long north-south street that contains many recessed spaces, like shallow inverted pyramids to walk through. It is amazing to walk along this street and as we approach the sun pyramid it becomes clear just how tall this thing is (my vertigo and fear of heights is setting in but I have some morale to help me do it – thanks John!). The views from above are spectacular and offer a different take on the scale of this site, in particular the harmonious grid arrangement of the city. The Pyramid of the Moon, though shorter, involves a much steeper climb. The pay-off is, again, well worth it! A view straight down the Avenue of the Dead reveals the advanced architectural and urban planning of those who built the city.

View from Pyramid of the Sun

View from Pyramid of the Sun

View from Pyramid of the Sun

View from Pyramid of the Moon, Avenue of the Dead in center

View from Pyramid of the Moon

Stairs of the Pyramid of the Moon

Lunch in a grotto nearby Teotihuacán!

After lunch, we stop by the Villa de Guadalupe to see three significant religious structures (colonial and modern) and the most important site of pilgrimage in the Americas. José Durán and Pedro de Arrieta’s Basilica Vieja (1709) and Pedro Ramírez Vázquez,  José Luis Benlluire and Gabriel Chávez’s new basilica (1976) stand adjacent to each other on a corner of the Plaza de las Americas. Inside the new basilica the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe sits above the altar.

Plaza de las Americas

Interior, Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, José Luis Benlluire and Gabriel Chávez's new Basilica (1976)

Our last stop of the day was Mario Pani’s Tlatelolco housing complex. I am very interested in this site for my research and had been looking forward to walking through the massive complex to get a sense of the scale, however we got rained out shortly after we arrived! I will definitely be back in the new year and will post additional photos to SAHARA.

Mario Pani's Tlatelolco Housing Complex (1962-64)

Pani proposed a plan that would displace the existing populations and rebuild a very different space in which the ratio of built space to open, free space would be inversed. Massive multifamiliares would house all of the necessary services within the buildings and, in the company of 1000 rather than the previous 500 inhabitants per hectare, there would actually be a substantial increase to living space due to Pani’s building upwards. Pani’s Conjunto Urbano Nonoalco-Tlatelolco, for 100,000 inhabitants, spanned an immense block of land sympathetic to the existing layout of the city, but separated into three macro-blocks that looked radically different from the adjacent neighbourhoods. The housing project has no roads, apart from the three major streets crossing the width of the mega-block and a few short paths into parking lots; viewed from above, the complex is isolated visually from its surroundings by its rich green colouring and lack of structural density.

Mario Pani's Tlatelolco Housing Complex (1962-64)

The Nonoalco-Tlatelolco project, built over 198 acres with 104 acres of open, green space, contains 11,916 apartments of various sizes across 101 buildings ranging from two to twenty-four stories. Buildings of varying height stand in an orthogonal grid and each structure contains an assortment of unit types. A few landmarks in the complex play a role in the public’s recognition of the site. The large Plaza de las Tres Culturas is situated in the east end, Jardin de la Paz is in the middle and the pyramid shaped Banobras Torre is seated in the west end of the mega-block. The area surrounding the syncretic plaza site preserves both pre-Hispanic and colonial structures and gestures towards Mexico’s three major historical periods.

Aztec ruins and colonial church surrounding the Plaza de las Tres Culturas

Pani's Tlatelolco complex

The complex is now most famous as the site of the October 2nd, 1968 student massacre. The complex and its large plaza were well-known public sites, perhaps one of the reasons the student movement chose the location. Yet, the resulting use of this colossal housing complex on the night of the student movement protest offers insight into the eventual failings of the modernist housing block.

Carlos Obregón Santacilla, Secretaria de Salud (1925)

We begin our third day by visiting the Carlos Obregón Santacilla’s Secretaria de Salud (1925), the Ministry of Health, an early example of Mexican modernist architecture that borrows from Modern Classicism and Art Deco forms. The reforms to public healthcare after the Revolution, which brought better services to all citizens including the poor and indigenous populations, are expressed in the building: the facade and interior stained glass windows (windows designed by Diego Rivera) reveal the new inclusivity of national health care and fuse modernist architecture with Mexican imagery.

The building is organized into sections around a large courtyard, a large rounded v-shaped building runs along the site’s border, and one rectangular building sits at the open end of the larger structure. One remarkable aspect of the Secretaria de Salud is the brilliant copper-clad bridges running along the arms of the largest building, as is the abundant use of native volcanic rock in the pavilions and lush gardens in the centre courtyard.

Carlos Obregón Santacilla, Secretaria de Salud (1925)

Interior courtyard, Secretaria de Salud (1925)

Open air corridors, Secretaria de Salud (1925)

Rivera painted the ceiling frescos in the building’s stately conference room, which O’Rourke points out, were disliked by Obregón Santacilla who felt they were badly proportioned.

Diego Rivera's murals in the boardroom at the Secretaria de Salud

Dog park in Hipódromo

Visiting the Hipódromo neighbourhood, designed by José Luis Cuevas in 1925-27, allowed us to see many of Mexico City’s early modernist homes, including many examples of the city’s Art Deco architecture, as well as some more contemporary buildings. Just down the street from an interesting pink Art Deco apartment building, we approach one of Luis Barragán’s earliest International Style homes, which is actually a pair of white townhouses though this is not readily visible from the street. A contemporary apartment building by Taller 13 Arquitectos employs various sizes of rectangular glass panes, clear and lime green, which mirrors the scattered foliage in front.

Edificio Rosa (1935)

Luis Barragán, Duplex (1936)

Taller 13 Arquitectos, Apartment Building (2002-06)

We view two more Hipódromo apartment buildings that borrow heavily from Art Deco buildings. We are able to enter Francisco J. Serrano’s Edificio Basurto (1942-45) but cannot take photographs of the amazing inner atrium lined with smooth white balconies, reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright’s vertical spirals to most but I also found it resembled Antonio Gaudí’s interior arches at Casa Milà (1912) in Barcelona.

Ernesto Ignacio Buenestro, Edificio San Martin (1931)

Francisco J. Serrano, Edificio Basurto (1942-45)

Interior, Antonio Gaudí, Casa Milà (1912)

Javier Sánchez, Amsterdam 309 (2006)

Javier Sánchez, Amsterdam 322 (1999)

Javier Sanchez’s Hotel Condesa DF (2005) offers an example of a renovation inside a historic building. The exterior, an apartment building from 1928, is very different from the contemporary interior. The all white triangular inner atrium employs panels that can be opened and closed to create difference appearances.

Javier Sánchez (with India Mahdavi), Hotel Condesa DF (2005)

Interior, Javier Sánchez (with India Mahdavi), Hotel Condesa DF (2005)

The Museo Nacional de la Antropología (1964), one of several museums in Chapultepec Park, displays artefacts from pre-conquest peoples yet also offers significant Mexican architecture. Pedro Ramírez Vázquez led an impressive team of architects and engineers to design this monolithic space. An umbrella-like fountain stands in the central courtyard and an important Rufino Tamayo’s Duality (1964) mural sits in the main entrance.

Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, Museo Nacional de la Antropología (1964)

Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, Museo Nacional de la Antropología (1964)

Rufino Tamayo’s Duality (1964)

Our final stop of the day is Casa Luis Barragán, an early move away from the International Style into a more personal style, where sadly (or perhaps happily, as my memories from walking though this house are quite vivid) we are unable to take photographs. The house focuses inward, away from the street, and each space opens up into a complex visual and spatial experience. The architect’s controlling nature is definitely felt as we move from room to room, small details like where light hits the wall and footstep notches in the railing-less stairs have been carefully measured and executed perfectly to enhance the ideal geometric proportions of each space. Windows extend beyond the exterior facade so that, from inside, the walls appear thick and heavy. The house is stunning and is a must-see building in Mexico City.

Luis Barragán, Casa Luis Barragán (1947)

Members of tour in garden/studio space across from Casa Barragán (Photo: Abigail Van Slyck)

We begin our second day early, boarding the tour bus and driving down Reforma for a full day of walking around the historic centre of the city. We begin in the Alameda, an area that has been largely rebuilt since it was greatly damaged in the 1985 earthquake and thus offering an interesting mix of new and old buildings. We begin to see some recurring motifs in Mexican architecture: the serpent, the jaguar and, most notably, an eagle clutching a serpent that has landed on a cactus (mythology claims that the sight of this trinity was a sign to settle and the once nomadic Aztecs chose to build their capital, Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City’s historic centre, on this site).

We first stop at Ricardo Legorreta’s Juarez Complex. Legorreta’s red and beige towers house the Superior Court of Justice of the Federal District and the Foreign Affairs Secretariat respectively. Walking into one of the complex’s more interesting interior courtyards, Plaza Juarez, I am surprised to see a large shallow pool filled with rust-coloured pyramids. The fountain, designed by artist Vincente Rojo, was part of a major revitalization project for this part of the city after the Earthquake and reveals an ongoing interest in staying connected with the city’s historical past.

Vincent Rojo, fountain for Plaza Juarez (2003)

Ricardo Legorreta, Juarez Complex (2003)

As we approach Manuel de la Colina and Augusto H. Alvarez’s Torre Latinoamericana (1956), I am immediately reminded of Manhattan’s skyscrapers. The glazing and form of this structure set it apart from surrounding buildings; though only 44 stories, it is much taller than any other structure in Mexico City’s historic centre and it was, for a period, the tallest building in Latin America. Engineers Leonardo and Adolfo Zeevaert planned for the structure to stand on steel beams in a foundation forty-four feet below ground – a necessary precaution. The building stood up to the 1985 earthquake while surrounding structures were destroyed.

Manuel de la Colina and Augusto H. Alvarez, Torre Latinoamericana (1956)

Though there is a lower enclosed viewing area, the tower’s outdoor observation deck sits on the top floor of the building and offers an impressive 360-degree view of the city. The aerial view reveals many red rooftops and offers insight into the scale of many the city’s popular landmarks, such as the large Plaza de la Constitución, more commonly known as the Zócalo, and the massive Tlatelolco housing project.

View from Torre Latinoamericana, Mario Pani's Tlatelolco housing complex begins with pyramidal tower in the distance and ends outside of the image

View from Torre Latinoamericana, Zócalo in center

View from Torre Latinoamericana

Walking through the city centre, it becomes clear as to why Mexico City was known as the “city of palaces.”  We pass by numerous heavily decorated facades of private residences, commercial buildings or converted gallery spaces, which reveal the eclectic nature of palatial architecture during the first quarter of the 20^th century in Mexico City. The palatial structures seem crowded in the busy streets as previously empty areas have now been built up.

Francisco Guerrero y Torres, Casa del Marqués de Jaral Barrio, or Palacio de Iturbide (1779)

The view entering the Zócalo is partly marred by a festival that has overtaken the immense space with booths, stages and unsightly blow-up sculptures for children. Nonetheless, the scale of the site is felt as we look around at the landmarks flanking the plaza: the National Palace, the old Ayuntameinto (Town Hall) building, and the massive Metropolitan Cathedral – the largest in the Americas. The Zócalo is also a popular site for political protests given the location and proximity to important civic structures.

Claudio Arciniega, The Metropolitan Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption (began in 1573, with many significant alterations over the centuries)

Organ inside the The Metropolitan Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption

Interior of the The Metropolitan Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption

We enter the National Palace to see an important fresco by Diego Rivera, The History of Mexico (1929-1935). Covering a massive staircase leading to the palaces upper levels, the fresco is impossible to miss, nor is the political message, which depicts the Rivera’s vision of the past, present and future of Mexico City from a revolutionary and nationalistic point of view. Rivera depicts the champions of his city’s history: Aztec warriors in Jaguar costumes fight iron-clad Spanish invaders; modern workers hold a copy of Marx’s Capital.

Inner Courtyard, Palacio Nacional

Detail of Diego Rivera's History of Mexico (1929-35)

Detail of Diego Rivera's History of Mexico (1929-35)

The Palacio de Minería (1797-1813) was designed by Manuel Tolsa for the Royal Mining Office and engineering school and is an early indication of a move towards French-inspired architecture. An international classicism is evident in the austere interior with exact proportions and a masterful us of light and space and this spoke of the city’s growing wealth and permanence.

Manuel Tolsa, The Palacio de Minería (1797-1813)

Interior, Manuel Tolsa, The Palacio de Minería (1797-1813)

Interior, Manuel Tolsa, The Palacio de Minería (1797-1813)

Interior, Manuel Tolsa, The Palacio de Minería (1797-1813)

The Postal Palace is a stunning structure, like many other palatial structures in the historic centre, but with an interesting mix of architectural styles from Islamic forms to Tudor gothic, which I learn is a rare instance of the plasteresque revival, a highly decorated Spanish architecture of the 16^th century drawing on numerous influences. Despite the fantastic exterior, I was unprepared for the building’s interior: it felt as though I had entered a living palace, light reflects off of golden walls and marble staircases lead up to open hallways covered by a gigantic domed skylight. This building, once intended to wow visitors and announce the city’s prosperity still does so very successfully.

Adamo Boari, Postal Palace (1902-07)

detail, Adamo Boari, Postal Palace (1902-07)

Interior, Postal Palace

Interior, Postal Palace

In 1919, pharmacy and restaurant chain Sanborn’s acquired the famous Casa de los Azulejos. We stop into this building covered in painted blue tiles for a drink and we are amazed that the detail on the exterior is continued inside. The first staircase houses a mural by José Clemente Orozco, Omniscience (1925), and from above we are able to look down into the central dining room. Overwhelming amounts of decoration coat the walls, floors and ceilings while plants, hanging lamps, fountains, and light beaming in from stained-glass windows fill any remaining spatial voids.

Casa de los Azulejos (Sanborn's)

Orozco's Omniscience (1925), interior of Sanborn's

Interior, Sanborn's

To finish this extensive walking tour, O’Rourke leads us to the Palacio Bellas Artes. The exterior, designed by Adamo Boari and begun in 1905, was not completed until 1932-34 under Federico Mariscal due to the country’s Revolution. President Porfirio Diaz (in office 1884 – 1911) believed that his country’s architectural progress required alignments with European standards of the time and this had a visible impact on early twentieth century Mexican architecture; Western European, most often Parisian, architects were employed to design a ‘civilised’ Mexico using neoclassical architecture. The exterior of the Palacio Bellas Artes reveals a Porfirian tendency towards the French style popular in the part of the early 20^th century, however the art nouveau exterior still incorporates Mexican motifs. The interior, designed by Mariscal, is quite different. Dark pink, white and black marble are used to create the art deco space that houses some of the most important murals of Mexico’s top three: Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and José Clemente Orozco.

Adamo Boari/Antonio Muñoz García/Federico Mariscal, Palacio Bellas Artes (1905-1934)

Detail of serpent and jaguar, Palacio Bellas Artes

Federico Mariscal, Interior of the Palacio Bellas Artes (1932-1934)

Federico Mariscal, Interior of the Palacio Bellas Artes (1932-1934)

David Alfaro Siqueiros, New Democracy (1945) in Palacio Bellas Artes

Detail, Orozco, Catharsis (1934) in Palacio Bellas Artes

Ricardo Legorreta, Camino Real Polanco (1968)

I will begin my recap of our fantastic week in Mexico City by introducing myself: I am a PhD student at The Courtauld Institute of Art in London, UK, studying with Dr. Julian Stallabrass and my thesis topic is currently titled The People v the State: Housing Architecture in Mexico City from Modernism to Contemporary Practices. In short, I am looking at modernist social housing projects in Mexico City in comparison with contemporary projects, while taking into consideration the massive amounts of squatter settlements and self-built homes in the city. When I first heard about SAH’s study tour in Mexico City, I was excited about the prospect of an intensive week-long tour of the city led by an expert in the field and, looking back at the amount of ground we covered and the people I met along the way, I realize how truly lucky I was to have won this amazing fellowship.

Kathryn O’Rourke’s Mexico City tour, as promised, focused on modern and contemporary architecture, with a few detours along the way towards older buildings and sympathetic arts, significantly Mexican muralism, which played a vital role in the development of Mexican modernist architecture. The tour also examined the changing face of the city, characterized by massive growth and urban development, and the rich social and political history of the country’s capital. The dualistic nature of Mexican modernism was addressed by contrasting buildings designed to facilitate societal transformation with those tending to eschew that role. We visited well-known sites as well as structures that were new to me, which was quite exciting, and sites that would have been very difficult to get into alone. The tour offered an excellent first-hand introduction to Mexican modern and contemporary architecture for the novice and enthusiast alike.

Flying into Mexico City is both frightening and awe-inspiring: where does an airport fit into this endless cityscape?! Arriving at Ricardo Legorreta’s Polanco hotel for the Camino Real Hotel chain, I am stuck by the hotel’s brilliant gridded pink gate, yellow façade and the churning pool that greets us. I had hoped the hotel was only the first instance of many dramatic buildings to come over the week and, as you will see, I was hardly disappointed. This use of vibrant colour in Mexican architecture as well as striking geometric compositions would be a regular sight along our tour, most notably in the numerous Luis Barragán structures that we were able to walk through.

Ricardo Legorreta, Camino Real Polanco (1968)

After meeting in the shockingly blue lobby bar of our hotel (the following photo was taken later at night), our group set out for a walking tour of the Polanco neighbourhood, an upscale residential area west of the city center. Leaving the hotel, we head west on Campos Eliseos and pass by Chapultepec Park, a centuries-old massive green space that has long been a landmark in the city.

Ricardo Legorreta, Interior of Camino Real Polanco (1968)

Chapultepec Park

The first two buildings we look at are designed by Cesar Pelli: two 31-story condominium skyscrapers, or the Twin Towers of Polanco, and the Coca-Cola’s 13-story North Latin American Headquarters. All three curvilinear buildings feature bands of windows; the towers’ windows alternate with orange terrazzo panels that are decorated with small bands of Mexican red tiles and the Coca-Cola building uses Brazilian green granite.

Cesar Pelli, twin tower condominium skyscrapers (1995-96)

Cesar Pelli, detail of condominium skyscraper (1995-96)

Cesar Pelli's Coca-Cola's North Latin American Headquarters (1995-96)

Walking along the more commercial Presidente Masaryk Avenue, we see contemporary buildings such as TEN Arquitectos’s Hotel Habita. The luxury hotel is clad in sheets of frosted glass typical of contemporary design of the past decade, which seems to mask the building’s use.

TEN Arquitectos, Hotel Habita (2000)

We then walk by various California Colonial Style homes built in the 1930s, which have, O’Rourke points out, earned a heartfelt place in the city’s architectural history despite their gauche nouveau-riche origins. These homes, based on those seen in Hollywood movies of the time, employ extensive ornamentation based on 18^th century baroque architecture.

California Colonial Style House in Polanco

California Colonial Style House in Polanco

Detail of California Colonial Style House in Polanco

Indicative of the city’s rich architectural history, Polanco’s eclectic mix of styles also includes various Art Deco buildings. Characteristic rounded corners and streamlined design are visible in various cafés and also in entering the Pasaje Polanco courtyard, a residential and commercial complex that combines Art Deco and colonial-revival styles.

Art Deco Apartment Building in Polanco

Francisco Serrano, Pasaje Polanco (1940)

Approaching Leonardo Noriega’s Church of San Augustín (c. 1949-1958), most tour members are taken aback at the “oddest church in Mexico.” References to Byzantine, gothic and baroque architecture make the church difficult to place historically.

Leonardo Noriega, Church of San Augustín (c. 1949-1958)

Leonardo Noriega, Interior of the Church of San Augustín (c. 1949-1958)

Juan Sordo Madaleno’s nearby church dedicated to St. Ignatius Loyola (1961-62) is a small and starkly triangular-shaped building that grows surprisingly larger as you enter the glowing interior space enhanced by the enormous stained glass window seen on the building’s facade.

Juan Sordo Madaleno, Church of St. Ignatius Loyola (1961-62)

Juan Sordo Madaleno, Interior of Church of St. Ignatius Loyola (1961-62)

Juan Sordo Madaleno, Interior of Church of St. Ignatius Loyola (1961-62)

Directly across the street is a building by Sordo Madaleno’s son, Javier, of Sordo Madaleno Architects. The Palacio de Hierro department store (1997) directly references Sordo Madaleno’s church.

Javier Sordo Madaleno, Palacio de Hierro department store (1997)

As a great end to our first day, we enjoyed dinner together at Izote de Patricia Quintana, a contemporary Mexican/Southwestern fusion restaurant that was, for me, one of the best meals of the trip.