Think,

build, dwell
A reflection on Luis Barragán

Humberto Ricalde

Humberto Ricalde, architect and university teacher, makes in these pages an

elaborate reflection on how the assimilation of the theories of the great
European architects of the century XX and the understanding of the construction
tradition of our people resulted in that rich synthesis that is Luis Barragán. This
text is accompanied by a series of photographs of the teacher's house, which
constitutes a clear example of a "singing house".
© Humberto Ricalde

Photo of Luis Barragán in his studio

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 ABOUT LUIS BARRAGÁN

Undoubtedly, our rational thinking has long L IN THE FOOTPRINT OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE
become accustomed to analyzing the
essence of the built object in too restricted a
way. It is an accepted fact that among the sources that the young
engineer Barragán turned to at the time of his transition to
Martin Heidegger one
architecture is modern architecture with which he made direct
contact on his first trip to Europe (1924-1925) after receiving his
This reflection on the work of Luis Barragán proposes to the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the University of Guadalajara.
accompany his thinking and go beyond his recommendation to Almost two years journey through a Europe that was the
"recreate and renew nostalgia by making it contemporary", 2 rather container of the breeding ground of Modernity, previously
emphasizing his request that "if you want to study my architecture seasoned by the figurative avant-gardes before the First World
you should go to the sources, to which I went, so that they do not War. One can recreate the temperature and boiling point of this
copy the result but so that they make their own analysis and broth by reading texts like The sphere and the labyrinth from
synthesis." 3 Tafuri or The idea of ​architecture de Fusco and contrast this
climate with the subsequent statements, in my opinion
When analyzing his work, he also proposes going after an intentionally opted for by the already master Barragán who,
intricate track that is full of subjective meanders, poetic pitfalls, and putting aside this vibrant atmosphere of the first modernity of the
invaded by the mythical dimension that Don Luis himself century XX, It is confessed uniquely and strongly impacted by the
contributed to increase with his personality and his statements mythical Alhambra (so multi-measured by all its exalters
about his work. regarding its mature work) or by North Africa, Islamic peoples
We will therefore try to follow the mark that the waters of modern and European vernacular architecture. So, how can we not
architecture left on our character (in the meaning of this label with wonder if in these almost two years the propaganda and
which, more or less, we coincided until before the postmodern era), advertising force of a Le Corbusier, a Gropius at the head of the
and traditional architecture. In other words, the influences that he Bauhaus, the polemicists Van Doesburg and Oud and the
collected and assimilated at the international level and his synthesis - desacralizer Loos with his theory of Raumplan (spatial linkage
as he himself says - of the sources from which he drank in our interior through living areas collected in double-height volumes
country. In doing so, I propose not to repeat the “poetic analogies and interconnected by directional stairs; present since the
elaborated with abstract and elaborate language” 4 with which he has beginning of the century
been praised; but neither does he apply in this analysis a restricted
rational thought like that criticized by Heidegger.

XX in the work of Adolf Loos), 5 they did not leave their first mark on the
cult and informed budding architect.
one Martin Heidegger, Mensch und Raum. Neve Darmstädter Verlagsanstalt, Darmstadt, The course of his first European tour is a still unpublished
1951, translation by Weibezahan A. research topic because in 1925 the Pavilion of the Esprit
2 Aníbal Figueroa, The art of seeing with innocence, Temporary notebooks 13, UAM, Mexico,

Nouveau by Le Corbusier was cau

1989, p. 82.
3 Ibid, p. 124.

4 Antonio Toca, "Modern Architecture in Mexico", Excellency,

Mexico, May 7, 1989. 5 Rossi, Adolf Loos, Electa, Milan, 1976.

© Humberto Ricalde ©

Humberto Ricalde ©

Humberto Ricalde ©

Alberto Moreno

Facade Study window Study patio Terrace

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 © Humberto Ricalde

study
© Alberto Moreno

study

There was a stir at the Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Paris, as in 1922, both in Vienna. Did our character go through Paris, through
were the Houses of Pessac, and the Kiefhoek district of Oud Strasbourg, through Vienna? If not, she did it in specialized
stood in Rotterdam as well as Van Doesburg's “Aubette” bookstores where "she acquired a large number of art and
cabaretcinema in Strasbourg. Gropius opened a house in architecture books on Africa and the Islamic peoples",. 6 Were you in
Dessau very close to the new Bauhaus building and Adolf Loos contact with the
had long ago built his manifests for unadorned architecture with
the Casa Steiner in 1910 or the Casa Rufer
6 Figueroa, op. cit., p. 124.

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 ABOUT LUIS BARRAGÁN

© Alberto Moreno
View of the study towards the room

projects and buildings mentioned and with many others? What the fundamental works of modern architecture ” 8 And so, in
bibliography accompanied the young Barragán on his return in Curtis's words: "A cursory examination of Barragan's works -
1925? And really, what mark did the modern movement have? upon his second return? - reveals several obvious influences of
How strong was the conviction of the importance of our vernacular modern masters." 9 What are these obvious influences? Let's
architecture? How to explain its return to Guadalajara to build with take a look at the corner building at the Tiber roundabout: flat
a clear influence of the “lexicon of colonial, popular and rural, walls treated as plates added to the composition of the facades
which fuses with baffling and wonderful neocolonial exoticisms, but (Rietvelt), concrete forged overhangs (Le Corbusier but also the
also neosirians ”? 7 first Neutra), continuous and corner windows (Frank Lloyd
Wright but also Mies van der Rohe in Weissenhoff), pergolas
Here, before going any further, I would like to clarify the and girders held in the roof tops, structure exposed in the
meaning of the questions asked: they are made to let the basement; fractional articulation of the building between
multiple and contradictory sources flow, poetically frozen by him basement, cantilevers and broken panels to take the urban turn
and by his apologists; sources in which the new architect of the gazebo. In short, a way of composing by aggregation of
Barragán undoubtedly watered. They are also made from the elements that contrasts strongly with the corporeal, massive,
hypothesis that the declarations, intentionally chosen by the dense and serene composition of his decanted interpretations of
architect, already with a defined trajectory, try to give coherence the colonial-popular lexicon in his first formative period in
to that trajectory, to his first formative period and thus to arm his Guadalajara.
image as creator of a spatial expression with roots broad in
vernacular architectures, both American and European.

And if we go from the superficial examination of the

But let us leave this first formative period to analyze it later expression on the façade to the internal-spatial examination, what
among the traces of traditional architecture and return to its composition do its living spaces present? Why these
footsteps - for there were two - for the modern architecture of the corridors-hallways that linearly run a good part of the
1930s. At the beginning of this decade (1931) Luis Barragán departments? (Perhaps Hilberseimer and his "Existez minimum"
returns to Europe via New York and experiences "the impact of were also present).

8 William Curtis, "Timeless Labyrinths" magazine Return,

7 Xavier Guzmán, “Barragán el Otro”, magazine Return, no. 147, Mexico, February no. 147, Mexico, February 1989, p. 59.
1989, p. 62. 9 Ibid.

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 © Humberto Ricalde ©
Humberto Ricalde

Receiver Lobby

Where, for the second half of the thirties, had the sequential Finnish tectonic as permeates in the language of our national character

surprise of the spaces (access, room, study, patio, porch to the the acrimony of the Mexican landscape suggested in the multiple planes

garden) of the González Luna house in Guadalajara? It could be of the mountainous area and the plain, as well as in the orchard and the

argued that this is due to the change, not abrupt, since there are five pond; Suffice it to think here of the Borda gardens or the mountain

years of European experiences, from provincial architecture to landscapes of Bajío.

metropolitan architecture; but then it would be necessary to

remember the imagination with which Aalto, brought up by William And to the coincidence of attitude with Alvar Aalto regarding
Curtis in his essay, recreates in those years the urban typology of the landscape we could add, to continue with "the various obvious
the apartment-terrace and later, in Berlin, of the apartment-atrium. influences", eleven Ernest May's use of deep toned color in the
And since we alluded to Aalto, Curtis notes in passing an popular houses for the city of Frankfurt (1928) and in his twin

approximation between the attitude of the master of Guadalajara and houses in Weissenhoff (1927). Not to mention the use of color in

the master of Jyvaskylä with respect to the modern movement and Neoplasticist works and the echoes of this movement and his

regionalism, attitude manifested in Aalto in the reinterpretation of the theory of plastic integration of color, in the composition of the

careliana farm in Villa Mairea, for example; argument on which it is colorful planes of the master's mature work. 12

necessary to deepen and to which I would add the Aaltian concept of

"intense picturesque relationship" 10 with the Finnish landscape in the
stylized forms of lake, island, coastline, forest, which permeate the If we were to accept this catalog of influences, which are otherwise

urban-architectural language logical in a young architect —Barragán was then thirty years old, in his

second phase of professional practice.

eleven Curtis, op. cit., p. 59.

12 Ricalde and López, Notes for the history and criticism of Mexican architecture, Notebooks
10 Dimitri Porphirios, Sources of modern eclectisismus, Academy Edition, St. Martin of Architecture, Fine Arts, Mexico, 1982, pp. 22-23.

Press, London, 1983.

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© Humberto Ricalde

© Alberto Moreno
Stay Stay

fessional—, we would only have to ask ourselves how he filters, their two buildings together in the Melchor Ocampo roundabout, where he

assimilates and integrates this trace - so marked in his works of the affirms with Cetto that the way of composing not

Cuauhtémoc colony - of the modern movement into the language with it is by aggregation of elements, as it is in its immediate neighbor,
which we will find himself expressing himself in the second half of the but the plastic expression of the building is born from the
1940s. expressionist poetics of a large dense volume that serenely takes,
Here another hypothesis arises to try to answer this on its face towards the gazebo, the slightly concave imprint that it
last question: its project relationship with some imprints on it
representatives, not orthodox, of the modern movement, - Poelzig in his composition workshop asked his disciples for models
who had been trained in Europe and had arrived in Mexico in fresh clay to be able to model them in the composition process - and

at the end of the 1930s and early 1930s. forty. Take Max if we analyze the openings of the façade as well as the spatial

Cetto and Matías Goeritz as an example. transparency of its double height, we will see that these elements are

excavated in that volume poetically pre-existing. The same would

Max Cetto brought to Mexico the direct experience of the happen if we analyze the plants centered on their living spaces and

German architectural culture of the twenties and thirties in which he where the functionalist corridors of the neighboring building have

was trained and worked professionally. It is worth underlining his disappeared, for not abounding in the plastic insert of the volume on its

unorthodox position given his training in the expressionist vanguard ground floor and the management of access so diverse also to that of its

under the guidance of Poelzig and his work in Frankfurt alongside neighbor.

May, that is, in two contending currents of functionalist doctrine

coined in the group of "cultural politics" from Gropius. Arguably, this This collaboration continued in the Pedregal houses, where the
diverse vision of the modern movement helped the young and desire to express the tectonic volume that is so familiar to us when
sensitive architect Barragan to critically consider his modern talking about the mature architecture of Barragán is still palpable,
language of the late 1930s. To substantiate this statement let us who implicitly recognizes this contribution when answering the
compare question of Elena Urrutia in an interview : "There are some

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 © Alberto Moreno

Dinning room
© Alberto Moreno

View of the room from the patio

home there (the Pedregal de San Ángel) that suits all your It would be a reconsideration of tradition, so dear to expressionists,
demands for harmony? ” - "Max Cetto's house, one of the in the search for a contemporary Mexican expression. But let's
first to be built ...". 13 move on to the other character: Matías Goeritz. Much has been
Another critical aspect of Cetto's thought, which could discussed about Goeritz's personality, so it suffices to underline, in
modify Barragán's approach at that time. his artistic career, the root in the same expressive search of the
German avant-garde of the beginning of the century,
13 Elena Urrutia, "Luis Barragán", One plus one, Mexico, June 26, 1980. complemented by his concern for the analysis of

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 ABOUT LUIS BARRAGÁN

© Alberto Moreno
“Afternoon stay”

© Humberto Ricalde

"The music corner"

the primitive essence of art in Mediterranean cultures professional with Matías; as is the case of the integration of the
(Altamira, Morocco). 14 extensive wall in his work, since it repeated multiple times how
In this case it could also be affirmed that the reconsideration and his spatial vision was transformed before the Moroccan walls and

inclusion of several of the characteristic linguistic terms of Barragán is later before the stone walls of the pre-Hispanic cities. fifteen

supported in their relationship

14 Humberto Ricalde, "Interview with Matías Goeritz", in Trace,

Mexico, January-February, 1984.

fifteen Ibid.

MAGAZINE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MEXICO | 39

 We should also consider the use of color in its deep
sculptural density and the search
of the minimal essence in its expression ...
It would also be necessary to consider the use of color in its a sort of condensation or decantation of the essential linguistic
deep sculptural density and the search for the minimum essence in elements of the modern movement so that, already in its pure state
its expression, let us think that the Echo Museum was at the time a (let's say it like this), it can be articulated with the results of a process
built testimony of this interaction of approaches between Barragán similar to the one that is gradually subjecting traditional architecture.
and Goeritz, without forgetting that in its Emotional Architecture More than talking like Curtis about a process of abstraction, 18 it would
Manifesto ( 1953) Matías coined the phrase: “an architecture be worth thinking about the steps of a filtered patient as a resource to
whose main function is emotion”. 16 Multiple and more subtle links arrive at a double matrix concentrate (modern and traditional) full of
could be established through anecdotes told by Goeritz, such as allusions, memories, experiences, environments, atmospheres, etc.;
that of the rejected sculpture (1949) for the Casino de to which the analyzes of his work uncritically allude.
Guadalajara, which consisted of two large pieces of wood nailed to
the entrance and that in Barragán's version we return to see
appear in 1964 at the Fountain of Lovers in the "Los Clubes" Let us note here that this process for the achievement of
subdivision. its plastic language presents periods of involution even after
having integrated this language in Casa Barragán (1947), as
can clearly be seen in Casa Egestrom (1967) or Casa Gilardi
In order not to be verbose, let us here follow up on the multiple (1976) . The thought process that this diversity of moments
footprint of modern architecture in Luis Barragán, not without noting presents in the work of our character must be underlined -
that many other contacts and steps along his path still remain to be since it speaks to us of a living work and thought -, worked
considered and that these should be studied to avoid the schematism hard for the achievement of its architectural proposals and as
with which, in general, his work is analyzed. such must be transmitted to who , to understand and learn, he
faces the work that is the result of such a process.
Let us ask ourselves at this point of reflection how the
synthesis occurs, so internal and personal as its exegetes
coincide, of the influences of the modern movement already
analyzed, with the footprint of traditional architecture that
we will go on to propose in the following paragraphs. The L IN THE FOOTPRINT OF TRADITIONAL ARCHITECTURE
first thing we must consider is the wide arc of time
(1927-1947) in which this synthesis takes place, and not Just as it is generically accepted that Luis Barragán went to the
without strong contradictions in the integration of its plastic source of modern architecture in his formative journey, it is also
language, which responds to various experiences and accepted, but ideally, that traditional architecture was an
professional contacts. Let us also note that in this process inexhaustible source of inspiration in his work; Between these
of synthesis, something that we could describe as two poles, the analysis of his work has ended up locked, by
“psychological functionality” is used, in terms similar to default or by excess, in anecdotal ramblings about his spaces
those pointed out by Aalto when he declared his position in or his words.
relation to functionalism: 17 This approach to modern
architecture allows Barragán to introduce a diverse When approaching the excesses as to its roots in traditional
“psychological character” in his spaces (joyous, meditative, architecture, it should be remembered, first of all, that the
ceremonial, intimate, etc.) and with this character many formative stage of Barragán coincides with the most intense
references to traditional behavior and uses enter the space. moment of the nationalist search in the arts of Mexico; In this
urban and vernacular architectural; He also makes use, in sense, a good number of contemporary architects tried, with
this long rethink in his work the modes of modern various fortunes, to integrate traditional elements into the
architecture, of a language of modern Mexican architecture. Therefore, Barragán
is not alone in this assessment based on a modern vision of
tradition; it would suffice to mention Enrique del Moral, Ignacio
Díaz Morales,

16 Federico Morais, Matías Goeritz, UNAM, Mexico, 1982.

17 Alvar Aalto, Synopsis, Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel, 1970, p. 16. 18 Curtis, op. cit., p. 61.

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 ABOUT LUIS BARRAGÁN

Rafael Urzúa, Alberto Arai, Max Cetto himself and a little interpretation of the language of the same: what we call
later Juan O'Gorman, to corroborate this trend. "psychological functionalism" and the "condensation of essential
linguistic elements", I think that this pair of instruments also act
Now, what course did Barragán follow in his search for support in when he begins, in the late thirties and early forties, his work a
traditional architecture? There is a first period, to which we already reconsideration of the traditional form in its architecture, and to
mentioned above, in which its architecture makes literal appointments these two instruments of thought a third should be added: its
of what has been described as colonial architecture. It is difficult to conceptualization of historical and contemporary time in
affirm that in this first period there is a consistent search for a architectural work and urban space.
language that reinterprets traditional or popular spaces. A
comparative study between their houses of that time and the average Barragán, through the inclusion of traditional decanted
of the architecture made by engineers and builders in the same architectural elements, bridges different cultural times and
period would perhaps corroborate this affirmation to us at first thereby subverts - as Tafuri has said about the avant-garde
controversial view. On the other hand, the valuation of this first - the linear order of historical time projected only towards
formative period of the architect is only now beginning to be due, the future and its consequent progress implicit in the
especially to the opening of codes that the critical trend of the end of proposals of the modernity of the century XX.
the century entails and to the interest with which these works are
seen today; We could point out that there are formal manipulations of With this, the cultural time of traditional architecture enters into
much more plastic force in them than in the aforementioned average, dialectical tension with the pragmatic and utilitarian time of
as well as the search for sequences and spatial surprises already modern architecture and establishes a resistance, from the
mentioned, such as the Casa González Luna; but in turn it would be cultural tradition, to change for change. It is this possibility of
necessary to consider the abandonment of this language in the putting time in tension in urban and architectural spaces that
thirties and the variability of its proposals in its second period, from makes us perceive in his works a fluid continuity between modern
1936. construction procedures and traditional materials, or between
contemporary functionality and nature, light, color, etc., leaving
the feeling of timelessness that Louis Kahn points out in his
phrase: "Luis Barragán's architecture is timeless, it could have
At the end of the reflections on the footprint of modern been built a hundred years ago or a hundred years from now".
architecture, we pointed out two instruments of thought that
Barragán uses for reinterpretation.
© Humberto Ricalde ©

Humberto Ricalde

Study patio View from the patio

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 Let us ask ourselves at this point of reflection how the
synthesis occurs, so internal and personal as their
exegetes agree, of the influences
of the modern movement [...] with its mark
of traditional architecture ...
Then the reflection on the footprint of traditional go of "invariants" to achieve their architectural and urban spaces
architecture in Luis Barragán could be based on the tripod so characteristic? I think with what has been said so far we could
of concepts proposed above and continue the analysis of establish that:
its sources and language to deduce other supporting
elements in future reflections. This in turn would allow us It adds to the terms of its spatial language a reflection where
to overcome the limited horizon in which his spatial and time, psyche and historical essence are hinged and articulated.
formal proposals have been confined, since the catalog of
"invariants" —providing this contradictory term by Bruno
Zevi—, with which his work has been characterized, would It is a triple interactive approach that allows the ancient
appear before us no longer as a series of formal-spatial interrelationship of atmospheres between gardens, patios, terraces
archetypes but as what they really are: dynamic terms of a and shady interiors to be brought to contemporary work in dynamic
living, multi-semantic work, of an architecture with multiple and surprising sequences, thus responding to Wright's or Mies'
footprints, supports, starting and arrival points, with concern to articulate architecture and landscape, and which has
multiple codes always in formal and temporary tension made Bruno Zevi write: "Luis Barragán has done with the landscape
between them; 19 space what Mies van der Rohe did with the architectural space". twenty-one

The dynamic articulation of this formal catalog of

"invariants" manages to create a ductile space that flows
from the interior to the exterior and vice versa, and that
Because it must be accepted that what Barragán concentrates, passes through contained but open transition zones, which
in his process of patient filtering of both modern and traditional look upwards, towards the high skies as in the old rooms.
influences, is a small and very personal number of terms, which I abandoned, in the city or the country, in which time and
have controversially called “invariant” above, since that has ended disuse have taken their roofs and the vegetation appears
up being for his followers they only repeat them formally; as he through its empty spaces; rooms where time seems to pass
ended up doing himself when he stopped decanting his language slowly, expanding in its timeless corners. Dilating in the
from the original sources and starting his own ritual repetition with double meaning of the term: expanding, increasing its
various fortunes depending on who, at any moment, he was dimension, expanding historically and expanding in the very
collaborating professionally with; since the Casa Gálvez is not the Mexican and popular sense of the word: delaying, delaying
same as the Casa Gilardi or the mannerist Coppola. And a ...
comparative study between them would give a lie to what Emilio
Ambasz wrote in 1976: "Like Borges, Barragán is the author of an
inexhaustibly reformulated archetypal account", twenty although when And if we talk about dwelling, let us return, finally, to Heidegger,
Ambasz wrote this the Casa Gilardi was in process and his last who said:
works still not carried out.
Authentic buildings coin by dwelling in their essence and making that
essence inhabit ... Only when we can think about inhabiting, can we
build ... Thinking and building are indispensable for dwelling. 22

To try a conclusion, let us ask ourselves once more: what

is Luis Barragán adding to his catalog?

19 Ricalde and López, op. cit., p. 160.

twenty Emilio Ambasz, The architecture of Luis Barragán, MAM, New York, 1976. twenty-one Bruno Zevi, "Luis Barragán", L'Expresso, Rome, 1986.

22 Heidegger, op. cit.

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