A very particular quinceañera
Bright and dressed in Mexican rose, Casa Estudio Luis Barragán celebrates the 15th year of its declaration as a World Heritage Site. For the occasion, a photographic exhibition was opened in the National Museum of Architecture that the public can visit for free. Let's get to know, at the pace of waltzes, this iconic work of Modern Architecture in Mexico.
Marshall Berman, an American philosopher, posed that Modernity was a volatile, changing term, and did not exactly mean yearnings for progress. Rather, it could be understood as a continuous state of change, a two-way look, towards the past and the present that implies a different relationship with another important concept, tradition. These ideas are reflected in the Casa Barragán, a reference for Modern Architecture in our country and representative in turn, of the current called Regionalism. "For the contemporary architecture of Mexico, Luis Barragán (1902-1988) is one of the most significant emblems of the renewal and strut of the tradition of the twentieth century" said Carlos Monsiváis.
The obsession with color and light—the common thread in Barragán's work—, the massive and protective presence of walls, mysterious gardens and works of art, give monumentality to the intimate space, and make it a unique home.
For this reason and much more, this "colorful refuge in the midst of urban disaster" was declared a World Heritage Site in 2004 in the city of Suzhou, China, under criteria 1 and 2: for representing a masterpiece of human creative genius; and for exhibiting an important exchange of human values, embodied, in this case, in an architectural work.
A very important value that Unesco recognized was precisely the connection between traditional Mexican architecture that the architect observed and lived as a young man, with the ideals of the Modern Movement that prevailed in the 1920s. The house represents a "biographical" space in which Barragán was able to express all the concepts of its emotional architecture.
Built in 1948 in Tacubaya, it represents one of the most important contemporary architectural works in the international context and the only individual building in Latin America that has achieved such a distinction. However, there are already proposals to extend the declaration to other properties designed by the Mexican architect, such as Las Torres de Satélite in Mexico City and the cristo and González Luna houses of Guadalajara.
The declaration enhanced the prestige and care of the property and its recognition at the international level and is a good example of a committed management that also promotes programs such as Estancia FEMSA, a cultural and artistic platform that, through a series of exhibitions, interventions, performance, academic activities, educational and publications, dialogue with the historical context offered by the house.
The photographic exhibition, which was organized as a celebration, will last two weeks and consists of 29 photographs, construction plans, videos and personal images of Luis Barragán. The public will be able to visit it for free in the National Museum of Architecture, which is located on the third floor of the Palace of Fine Arts, and in doing so will know not only an iconic property, but the architectural example of a true modernity.
By laureate Martínez Figueroa