INTRODUCTION

"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.

Tonantzintla, catholic temple in Puebla, Mexico. Photo: E.Langagne.

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: Jptellezgiron

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.

Central Library. University City. UNAM. Photo: E.Langagne

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.

Poliforum Siqueiros Cultural Center.

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.

Eduardo Langagne

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