"Architecture is the least venal witness to history."
Octavio Paz
This is an exhibition called "Mexican Architecture 3,000 years", designed to be shown in 2014 in four eastern European countries.
As an introduction into the subject, there is a brief of our national history, to establish the conditions in which 10 contemporary designers interpret our conception of space, influenced in some cases by the architecture of our original Pre Columbian cultures and in others by the design approach in the Spaniard culture.
During thousands of years, different migrations arrived to America from
Asia; those groups developed different cultures across the territory, so by the
year 1,000 BC the Olmecs created their settlements along the coast of what is
now the Gulf of Mexico, latter on, the Mayans established in the Yucatan
peninsula; the Teotihuacans built their cities in the top of the mountains; the
Toltecs arrived by the beginning of our era and whenever the Mexicas came in
1325, there were already a great variety of cultures living in different
corners of what is now Mexico.
In spite of the diversity of cultures and the different times in which
they were developed, all of them had similar architectural and urban
characteristics: the most important part of every city was the ceremonial
center. This place was artistically
integrated with paintings and sculptures covering the surface of the floors and
walls, combining different representations of their many Gods.
In front of the plaza generally it was located an observatory devoted to
follow the trail of their Gods in the sky.
In special religious dates, this spectacular open space was occupied by more
than 20,000 people dancing for hours at the sound of mystical music, while the
incense was burn in special deposits, providing the dancers a cathartic
condition. Then in certain moment in the
top of the pyramid the great emperor (tlatoalli) would make his appearance
leaving no doubts to the masses of his relations with their gods. That
integration of all expressions of art, like music, painting, carving,
sculpture, and outfit, all playing around the architecture, is one of the most
important characteristic of our heritage.
Close to the ceremonial center, there were low quadrangular structures
built, fully decorated, designed with a central patio for administration and
residential uses, and to accomplish the space there were a huge market to trade
almost everything produced from the north of what is now the USA to the north
of what is now Colombia. Alongside there were two types of schools one for the
leaders and another one for the common people; the rest of the city was for
housing. In spite of the constant wars between each other, it is rare to find
military structures for defense.
By the beginning of the XIV century, a small group of mexicas coming
from the north, arrived to the top of the mountains two thousand meters above
the sea level, and following the voice of their gods, they decided to establish
in the middle of a lake, in spite there were some other settlements already living
there. Anyhow in only 200 years the mexicas became leaders of an enormous
empire, imposing their will in a territory of four million square meters.
In the middle of the lake the mexicas found an eagle swallowing a
serpent, representing the fight between the lords of heaven and earth, the
darkness against light, and the myth of the circle of life, dead and
resurrection. This symbol was recovered when the country became
independent and is now the shield of our nation.
To have an ample view of the city of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, we must imaging an urban settlement surrounded
by water, with a platform in the middle for the ceremonial center, that was communicated
with the rest of the city by boats crossing in narrow channels, in the limits
of the island, there were four large roads with leveling bridges for external
mobility that lead to the other towns established in the shore land.
Sala Mexica en el Museo Nacional de Antropología. Mural de Luis Covarrubias. Photo: jorgalbrto
In 1521 the capital of the mexica empire was captured by the weapons and unknown diseases carried by the Spaniard soldiers, and Mexico became part of the Spaniard Empire over the next 300 years. The city of Mexico Tenochtitlan was demolished totally, the stones of its structures was used to build the new buildings and the channels were covered with land, to allow the construction of narrow streets that were occupied by dozens of gigantic catholic convents. In this period, the original 20 million original population became slave, and their city of big open spaces and fully colored, became a monochromatic monastic type.
During this 300 years period, the Spaniards imposed their culture and
their architecture, but the original societies emerged constantly in many
different ways, in religious terms, the Spaniard blonde virgin (de los
Remedios) was changed for the brown-skin virgin of Guadalupe; the impossibility
of making the Indians worships their gods into closed spaces, made it necessary
to create big open plazas in front of the temples to let the people pray to the
new and old gods. Meantime, the grey stone facades of their buildings little by
little were covered with colorful mosaics and paint, like the temple of
Tonantzintla. All of this happened, in parallel with other cultural
changes, up to the moment when an independent Mexico had to be born.
The XIX century was dramatic in our history, the new country was invaded
militarily, twice by the Spaniards who did not accept the division of their
Empire, twice by the USA resulting in the loss of half of our territory and
even the revolutionary France decided to send its army –twice- to our country.
The last intervention was done by the English, Spaniard and the French armies,
trying to impose an Austrian Emperor. In top of this external
military interventions, this first century of the new born Mexico (XIX), had
also a history with a series of civil wars that amazingly did not ended up with
the disappearance of our country. First it was the fight between the
republicans and the supporters of the monarchy; then the centralist against the
federalist; also the clergy against the civil government; the result of all
these wars was a civil federal country with an anticlerical status, that cut
their relations with the Vatican for the next 100 years.
During this period, in architectural terms the neoclassical style
arrived from Europe, but the hidden pre-Columbian indian culture appeared once
more, making the population aware of its origins, rescuing archeological sites,
reediting a very bad kind of neo Mayan or neo Aztec styles and creating
official programs for recovering our cultural background. This was the first
ideological interest of the government, to look for the creation of an identity
of a country that hardly was trying to exist.
At the beginning of the XX century, ended the 30-year government of Porfirio
Diaz, in that time, he was able to unify the country building a 20,000 km
railroad system, telegraph and telephone net, and some of the most important
buildings of the country, to accomplish that, it was necessary to attract
foreign capital, which came along with architectural trends such as Art
Nouveau, which in Mexico became naturalized adopting elements of our pre
Columbian heritage.
In 1910 the government of Diaz ended when the most important social
revolution started, changing the basis of the society. But at the same time
(1930), a monochromatic Art Deco style arrived from Europe that the Mexican
architects transformed into a polychromatic combination of organic forms with
representations of Pre Hispanic symbols. The old Gods did not accept to die, and they
received a space into the walls, ornamental details (Palace of Beautiful
Arts) and others.
Sometime later, from
the beginning of the third decade, the country started a period of growth,
making it possible to change everything, thousands of schools were built, more
hospitals that ever before, great complexes of low cost housing, thousands of
kilometers of roads, and impressive infrastructures projects were developed.
Palace Fine Arts. Night view. Photo:
In architectural terms, functionalism arrived from Europe, imposing
particularly in the health buildings designs like the Health Farm Popotla
designed by Jose Villagran Garcia; however, he always was interested in the
search of nationalism. Also there were other voices responding to this
idea of identity as Enrique del Moral or Luis Barragan, who rejected imported
aesthetics, exalting local values and Alberto T. Arai intervened by saying that
future Mexican architecture, must be imbibe in our Pre Hispanic values.
Probably the best
example of an integrated architecture in 1950 was the University of Mexico,
designed in a vast territory covered with lava in which big open spaces
confronted massive buildings, large stairways were designed to move the space
from one level to the other, all representing arts like mural painting,
sculpture, graving stone walls and even music were combined with buildings, to
produce an outstanding combination of plastic integration, that remind us that
our heritage is still alive and it can be seen in the color of our skin, in the
way we combine in our music laughing with crying, the sense of life and dead,
in our noisy and easy social behavior, and of course in what it is the baroque
characteristics of the Mexican personality.
In the sixties a social crisis coincidentally appeared worldwide; it was
the beginning of the fall of the institutionalized political structure in
Mexico, and an economical crisis that let new political forces to share decisions,
and started a process of globalization that changed the balance of power. In architectural terms, the government
policies were no longer the guides of design, the different types of foreign
capital required a new formal language and the internal forces asked for other
interpretation of their interest, like the cultural center called Poliforum
Siqueiros.
This scenario during
the last three decades of the XX century, made possible that anyone could offer
solutions to architectural space, so together with industrial buildings,
appeared something called postmodernist, others with Muslim influence, reinterpretation
of cloister, Greek neoclassic, some others influenced by pre Columbian or
Hispanic roots, and others. The alternatives were multiple; the old discussion
between regionalism versus internationalism became useless, since there were
new peremptory demands of new architectural solutions. At the same time, there
were other debates between the impersonal architecture of the exclusive members
of the "Star System", and one that looked for answers to local
problems of a specific economy, culture and environment.
In the past decades, new aspects of design came to the discussion, like
the condition of sustainability, the necessities to responding to the problem
of global warming, the energy savings concepts, the safety values, the
recognition of new organizations that intended to find solutions to new
problems, etc. In this disconcerting panorama, the international design awards
are delivered to the very famous international architects who do not care to
justify the "design concept", are not interested in assuming the
values of urban "context", and forget what is called local identity;
freedom of design is a total ingredient to be taken into account today.
This scenario should not be considered in any way a chaos, or the death of the
theory of architecture, maybe it is the beginning of a new way of understanding
architecture.
That is why in this catalogue of the exhibit of Mexican architecture, it
is intended to show a variety of design proposals that coexist in our country, that
is why, the decision was taken to invite only ten architects that represent
different ways of design. And because of
his very personal organic conception of the space, we start the presentation with
Javier Senosiain, who used his large experience in creating a
"conceptual project" based on a serpent taken from our pre Columbian
roots, developing irregular concrete structures that seem to flow into the air
covered with multicolor mosaics; other colleague is Alejandro Rebolledo
whose production has been largely in health architecture (with more than 100
designs), reaching well balanced volumes in which combines texture, light and
color, resulting in joyful spaces that look for health improvement for the
patients; Oscar Bulnes has a very important and influential work in the
north of the country, designing several institutional buildings, open theaters,
medical towers and a hanging bridge, together with a public labor as a
secretary of Public Works in the State of Nuevo Leon; in the other extreme of
the country, in the peninsula of Yucatan, Grupo Arquidecture has
developed very versatile solutions, that go from the design of housing and corporative
buildings, to structures like the Mayan Museum, which takes the visitor 1,000
years back in the past, into the marvelous world of the Mayas; Jaime Latapí,
has also a great experience basically in national planning of health services
to the population, but is also the creator of the tallest Christ Cross in the
world, located overlooking the city of Tapachula in the south of the country;
other important health and governmental buildings is Luis Antonio Zapiain,
who has develop important advances in the process of improving architectural
solutions for the process of patient’s treatment; Francisco Rueda is another colleague who find the way combine his
professional private work with public administration services for the city, in
this exhibit it is shown some designs of social architecture as well as other projects;
Fernando Giovanini is more
interested in industrial structures, but in some cases goes back as many
architects do, into the traditional architecture and I ended with the work of Juan Manuel Romo, who has develop a
large professional activity with an intense social sense, basically in low cost
housing and other projects with very limited budget.
Due to my own experience, I decided to include some of my work, choosing
from my 70 ended project built in different countries; one example is a hotel
designed in a typical mining city town called Taxco, where design must fit into
the specific norms of so called colonial architecture, in this same line I
included an editorial building, combining traditional with contemporary
building materials, and also I included a house in the top of a hill that seems
to float over the forest.
Naturally, this work does not represent everything that exist in Mexico,
since there are about 120,000 architects in the country, and the professors of
most of the 300 schools of architecture, leaves freedom to the students to look
for an own open panorama that let them interpret and develop their vision of
architectural space.
