{"id":24858,"date":"2014-07-19T20:31:35","date_gmt":"2014-07-19T18:31:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.area-arch.it\/architettura-messicana-contemporanea-diversita-e-identita-2\/"},"modified":"2016-03-11T18:38:51","modified_gmt":"2016-03-11T17:38:51","slug":"architettura-messicana-contemporanea-diversita-e-identita","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.area-arch.it\/en\/architettura-messicana-contemporanea-diversita-e-identita\/","title":{"rendered":"Contemporary Mexican architecture: diversity and identity"},"content":{"rendered":"

The richness of contemporary Mexican architecture derives from its diversity. Diversity as value, not as a poutpourri of characterless proposals, but as interaction between generations, styles and affinities. While the emergent generation (Chile) or the continuity with classical modernism over the generations (Brazil) should be given prominence in other Latin American countries, Mexico vaunts a coexistence of architectures which interact with the pre-Colombian, colonial and modern past, or with other moments in history which have contributed to the formation of its general character. Architects of consecrated fame as Teodoro Gonz\u00e1lez de Leon, who has continued to produce exceptional works ever since his experiences in Le Corbusier\u2019s studio in the Forties, or Ricardo Legorreta, who is about to build one of the tallest buildings in the capital \u2013 the new headquarters of BBVA Bancomer \u2013 together with Richard Rogers, share the stage with Michel Rojkind\u2019s delicate origami-buildings or Fernando Romero\u2019s thermonuclear mushrooms, paradigms of the new global generation, along with Enrique Norten\u2019s commercial high tech or Alberto Kalach\u2019s technical structures.
\nWorks as the Reforma 222 complex by Teodoro Gonz\u00e1lez de Leon, where apartments, offices and a shopping mall coexist, simultaneously opening to and revitalizing the Paseo de la Reforma; the new Camino Real Hotel in Monterrey by Legorreta+Legorreta; the Centro de las Artes in Zamora by Francisco Serrano, Susana Garcia Fuertes and Juan Pablo Serrano; the Hotel Habita MTY in Monterrey by Agustin Landa or the Americas building by TEN Arquitectos in Guadalajara bear witness to the creative and productive vigour of the great names of national architecture in every part of the country. The University Museum of Contemporary Art by Teodoro Gonzalez de Leon, the new venue of the Cultural Centre of the University City, UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) may be considered the most important work of the last two years. An embracing cylinder unites a number of cubes in white concrete, lit from above, arranged along a north-south axis and two perpendicular streets. The axis serves as backbone of the compositive mandala of the project, while the new square provides access to the museum and to the Netzahualtcoyotl concert hall. Rufino Tamayo\u2019s sculpture, La Espiga, formerly lost in a parking lot, now enjoys a prominent position in the aggregate. The southern fa\u00e7ade projects on the square; the seventy metres long surface of tinted glass is inclined at 45\u00b0, revealing the square to those inside and at the same time reducing the incidence of the sunlight.
\nTwo internal streets and four courts lead to the halls, whose dimensions are based on a twelve-meter module, with heights of six, nine and twelve metres. The skylights, regulated by a genial double projection on inclined surfaces, may be shaded, and most of the large volumes may be partitioned into compartments. It is not a mere promenade among showrooms, but a succession of interchangeable containers. The cylinder-shaped shell is cut with precision, evoking a volcanic landscape: black lava and smooth white concrete. Among the recent works, the large number of school buildings realized by UNAM deserve particular mention; many of them built as a result of the initiatives of Felipe Leal and the Special Projects Coordination, both in the capital and in other states. We may mention the Veterinarian Faculty of Tequisquiapan in Queretaro, by Isaac Broid; the Multidisciplinary Research Unit of Fes in Acatlan Mexico State by Axel Ara\u00f1\u00f3; the library and newspaper and periodical library of the Faculty of Medicine at the University City designed by Nu\u00f1o, MacGregor, De Buen; the Museum of Scientific Divulgation of the Luis Enrique Erro Planetary by Victor Alcerreca; the Dentistry Faculty in Leon by Miguel Angel Romero, the academic and cultural unit of UNAM at Morelia, by Felipe Leal, or the new wing of the School of Nursing and Obstetrics of Mexico City, designed by the author.
\nIn addition to this scenario there are the private initiatives as the art school of Leon by Augusto Quijano; the new Faculty of the University of the Mexico Valley in Monterrey, by Alexander Lenoir; the new campus of CEDIM, also in Monterrey, by Arquitectura 911sc (Jose Castillo and Saidee Springall) with Fernanda Canales; the Nestl\u00e9 Chocolate Museum in Toluca by Michel Rojkind and the Art School of Oaxaca by Mauricio Rocha. The latter two projects are radically different and a good example of the current diversification.
\nThe Nestl\u00e9 chocolate factory near Toluca features a covered itinerary which allows the visitors to observe the production process. Michel Rojkind has designed Mexico\u2019s first Chocolate Museum in Mexico (the term \u201cchocolate\u201d comes from ancient Nahuatl: chocoa\/cocoa + atl\/water), giving the factory a new image with its new three-hundred meters long fa\u00e7ade along the motorway. The concept is based on a form that is folded like an origami bird or an alebrije (traditional animal figures painted in bright colours). Its capricious red folds are inspired by a study on what the space was supposed to express. The resulting spectacular building is solid like the faceted surfaces enfolding it, from the main entrance where the route through the factory begins to the museum shop. The experience is mainly sensorial, full of surprises and interruptions.
\nThe School of Plastic Arts in Oaxaca, designed by Mauricio Rocha, was founded on the initiative of painter Francisco Toledo in cooperation with the Benito Juares Autonomous University. Large existing facilities have been integrated in the project, comprising the area used for pre-Hispanic soccer during weekends, and the adjacent building, which is used as library, which will become the new culture centre of the university. The absence of a general plan aimed at integrating these elements, and the enormous quantity of soil resulting from the works conducted on campus, have favoured the creation of a series of slopes arranged as gardens that shield the art school, isolating it from the surroundings.
\nThe school features two building types: constructions in stone and other, insulated structures in compacted earth. The former are located below the slopes, and form a series of terraces housing the administrative areas, the mediatheque and the classrooms. The latter comprise the buildings placed at a distance from the slopes, all of which face north except the gallery and the lecture theatre (north-south); they are built in compacted earth, a building method which guarantees an excellent microclimate in climates as that of Oaxaca, as well as a good acoustic insulation. A sequence of courts arranged along the chequerboard plan of the complex alternates built and empty spaces, favouring a crossed ventilation of the laboratories.
\nAnother smaller but no less important work is the new wing of the El Eco Museum in Mexico City, designed by Fernando Romero and Juan Pablo Maza. The result of a competition organized by UNAM, in which twelve Mexican architects under 40 participated, the new wing for the facilities of the Museo Experimental, designed by Mathias Goeritz in 1952, is discreet yet peculiar; it comprises a court which doubles the original one, and opens to the street.
\nThe work echoes that of Goeritz, exploring the potentials of non-orthogonal geometries while respecting the original guidelines of the competition, i.e. to house complementary facilities as storage areas, workshops, offices and bathrooms. However, experiences as these museums and art schools are exceptions, in a context where apartment buildings continue to dominate the stage of the best national production. Without any influence on the subject of popular housing projects (a theme developed by large companies), architects have focused their typological and formal proposals on medium-sized collective dwellings, mainly in the central parts of the metropolitan areas, and especially in the capital.
\nWhile the relationship with the surroundings sometimes plays an important role, the predominant design factors are above all determined by a structural expressionism and the regulations on permeability. As opposed to residential complexes elsewhere in the world, in Mexico City the strict anti-seismic requirements determine the character of the structural elements to the point of making them become the most important elements of the fa\u00e7ades, and even of the interiors. In their turn, the regulations on permeability (rather than the depth which is allowed in buildings, normal in many other countries) have provided solutions in which areas for public circulation become permeable. The result favours a visual penetration within the building from the street, the creation of narrow courts and the revival of the Nineteenth-century category of the vecindades (neighbourhoods).
\nOn the other hand the one-family house remains the design laboratory par excellence, as neither structure nor programme come to influence the result, making a sumptuous expression of the spatiality possible: interiors flooded by light, an ambiguous relationship between interior and exterior and expressive materials are some characteristic traits of most houses. We may mention the hedonistic generosity of the houses designed by Lopez Baz y Calleja, the spatial research of Alberto Kalach, the solid relationship between form and function in the TDA house by Cadaval and Sol\u00e0-Morales in Puerto Escondido, the delicate equilibrium between luxury and essentiality of the Negra House in Valle de Bravo, by Bernardo G\u00f3mez-Pimienta, or the Kasuga House of El Cielo Arquitectos. The latter examples oppose a certain subtlety to the prevailing tectonic quality of the Mexican context.
\nThe diversity and plurality of recent Mexican architecture, which clearly emerges from this short review, cannot conceal a lack of public initiatives and projects for the public space. However, the projects described here bear witness to a quite complex scenario where one may observe common inspirations and a variety of responses characteristic of the current practice, revealing a large number of outstanding architectures united by a strategy aimed at building a concrete reality with local instruments.<\/p>\n