I believe in an ’emotional architecture.’ It is very important for humankind that architecture should move us by its beauty; if there are many equally valid technical solutions to a problem, the one which offers us a message of beauty and emotion – that one is architecture.
Guadalajara and Mazamitla
Luis Barragán spent his childhood between Guadalajara and Mazamitla, where he encountered indigenous art and a rich artisanal culture that dates back to pre-Hispanic times. During the colonial era, Guadalajara was built in Spanish and Neoclassical styles and thrived as one of the principal stops to Mexico City.
Guadalajara Cathedral (1618) – Spanish Renaissance style
Hospicio Cabañas (1810) – Neoclassical style
Colonia Americana neighborhood
In the nearby towns of Tlaquepaque and Tonalá, where artisan trade once comprised 40% of the economy, many traditional arts and crafts have endured. They remain the country’s largest producers of handmade ceramics and pottery.
Barragán was born in 1902 into a family of wealthy landowners. This changed during the Mexican Revolution as some of their properties were expropriated. His father, however, retained the ranch in Mazamitla, where Barragán spent his weekends and summers riding horses. Nestled 2,200 meters in the Sierra del Tigre Mountains, Mazamitla is surrounded by thick forests and cascading waterfalls.
Water runs through a system of channeled logs that reached great stone fountains. The logs, covered with moss, dripped water all over town. This gave the atmosphere of a beautiful fairy tale.
The landscape is breathtaking. When it rains, a thick fog hangs over the canyons. When the sun sets, the sky becomes a vivid rainbow. Red roofs, cantilevered eaves and garden balconies spoke of a vernacular architecture Barragán would later embrace.
Sierra del Tigre Mountains
Centro de Mazamitla
Iglesia de Mazamitla (1957)
Granada and Les Colombières
In 1923, Barragán graduated with a degree in engineering and traveled to Europe the following year. In Granada, he discovered the palace in Alhambra, a Medieval-era Islamic stronghold where every wall, column, courtyard and elevation was built on a geometric sequence of proportional quadrangles – an intricate Moorish detail Barragán seeked to recreate in his forms and courtyards.
Arabian gardens are dreams in and of themselves. I felt serene, quiet and solitary in the beautiful Court of the Myrtles of that ancient place. It contained what every successful garden should contain: nothing less than the entire universe.
In Paris, he discovered Ferdinand Bac, a writer and landscape architect whose books Les Colombières and Jardis Enchantés feature his garden designs. In the drawings, Barragán found traces of Spanish Mediterranean architecture that reminded him of the haciendas in the countryside of Jalisco.
Vredeman de Vries – Perspective (1607)
Ferdinand Bac – Les Colombières (1924)
Sketch by Barragán (1931)
Esquela Tapatía de Arquitectura
When he returned to Guadalajara in 1926, Barragán sought to create an architectural style in a post-colonial, post-revolutionary Mexico. Combining the Moorish aesthetics and Mediterranean landscape he had discovered with the vibrant artisanal culture of his own hometown, he pioneered a modern movement known as the Esquela Tapatía de Arquitectura. Tapatío means “native of Guadalajara,” and while it was not a physical school, Esquela Tapatía brought together fellow architects – Rafael Urzúa and Pedro Castellanos among them – who transformed Guadalajara’s regional style.
Pedro Castellanos, Casa Quiñones (1930)
Rafael Urzúa, Casa Farah (1936) – now a café
Casa Urzúa (modifications)
While their designs featured modern elements, geometric forms and Moorish entryways, they were steeped in local traditions and customs. Inspired by the brightly-painted houses of villages around Guadalajara, the composition of colors became essential in their architecture. Barragán also turned to Tapatío painters Chucho Reyes and José Clemente Orozco for inspiration. He would test paint on cardboard panels as visual aids for proportion and space and spend days studying and contrasting colors before settling on a palette. Locally sourced materials and lush, ample courtyards further extolled their regional style.
Casa Iteso Clavigero (1928)
Initially built for Efraín González Luna, a teacher and politician who helped form Partido Acción Nacional (the conservative National Action Party), Casa Iteso Clavigero is hailed as one of Barragán’s early masterpieces. The arabesque façade features arched domes, and while he opted for a yellow suited to Guadalajara, he injects the distinctive white and blue of the Mediterranean.
Barragán used local adobe, roof tiles, lime paints, mosaic and ceramic floors, and perón bricks, which are characteristic of Guadalajara and known for their hardness. These materials set the course for the Esquela Tapatía style.
Casa Iteso Clavigero (north entrance)
Casa Iteso Clavigero (outdoor stairway)
Casa Iteso Clavigero (Mediterranean door)
The first floor was made for living quarters, and the upstairs enclosed a library and chapel. Barragán was a devout Catholic and credited religion for the most beautiful and inspiring architecture in the world. The long vertical lancet-style windows by the stairway take after those found in Gothic cathedrals. They allow for a precise calculation of light to enter. Other windows feature colorful glass and intricate designs, contributing to the play of light and shadows you’ll notice everywhere.
Casa Iteso Clavigero (lancet windows)
Casa Iteso Clavigero (wood shutters)
Casa Iteso Clavigero (south side)
The house is set between two gardens, one on the north side, which connects it to the main street, and one on the south side, a lush, intricate courtyard with a high patio and fountain. A third garden on the rooftop connects terraces off the second floor. Wooden beams and columns give a cascade of shadows that move with the sun. The curves on the roof tiles and the solid planes of walls cast a myriad of other shadows, and you can see as far as the Colonia Americana neighborhood.
Casa Iteso Clavigero (terrace entrance)
Casa Iteso Clavigero (wooden beams)
Casa Iteso Clavigero (rooftop views)
González Luna remained here until his death in 1964. It has since been taken over by the Institute of Technology and Higher Studies (ITESO) and named in honor of Francis Xavier Clavigero, a Jesuit priest and scholar who wrote La Historia Antigua de México, a detailed account of pre-Columbian civilizations in Mesoamerica. Casa Iteso Clavigero also serves as a cultural center, and the south garden is used to host visitors and events.
Casa Iteso Clavigero (courtyard)
Casa Iteso Clavigero (fountain)
Casa Iteso Clavigero (south entrance)
Casa Cristo (1929)
In 1927, Barragán received a commission from Gustavo Cristo, head of the Guadalajara City Council. It was for a new home in the upscale neighborhood of Colonia Americana.
Casa Cristo would herald Barragán’s use of more cosmopolitan outdoor designs. Here, his penchant for lush gardens was constrained by rapid residential development. At the entrance, Moorish arches, elongated and elliptical, and red mosaic tiles on a white façade evoke the Spanish Mediterranean.
Casa Cristo (entrance)
Casa Cristo (entrance)
Casa Cristo (window)
The site currently serves the Jalisco State School of Architecture and has been refurnished for its students. The double-height hall is crowned with lunette windows made of local hand-blown glass. The red and white are striking, a contrast of color and brightness. A staircase leads to a suite of rooms, including a library, which are again interconnected via a rooftop terrace.
Casa Cristo (hall)
Casa Cristo (stairs)
Casa Cristo (library)
In the back are three walled courtyards with arched openings. They are configured as a succession of open-air rooms that mimic the sequence of the interior spaces. Barragán believed a garden was part of the house, not outside of it. Individual trees and greenery are spread out with a fountain in one corner. The perimeter is enclosed. The arches this time are covered with wood and metal grates – the true outer shell of the home.
Casa Cristo (window)
Casa Cristo (courtyard)
Casa Cristo (back door)
Edificio de Artistas (1940)
In 1931, Barragán set off on another voyage to Europe. In Paris, he met Le Corbusier and toured three of his buildings – Villa Sovoye, Villa Stein and Armée de Salut. The emerging modernism inspired Barragán, and upon returning, he decided to move to Mexico City.
The growing metropolis was an ideal testing ground for his ideas. New neighborhoods, including what would become Colonia Roma and Colonia San Rafael, provided him with numerous commissions. Between 1935 and 1940, he designed over twenty apartments, villas and townhouses. Unfortunately, many of the buildings were not preserved or did not survive.
We live in times where the value of money has become of primary concern. Architecture, especially that which concerns itself with the natural environment, exists in a precarious position. I say this with tremendous grief.
One exception is the Edificio de Artistas, a complex of four artist studios that was recently restored.
Edificio de Artistas
Edificio de Artistas (staircase)
Edificio de Artistas (studio)
Casa Estudio Luis Barragán (1948)
After purchasing land just outside the historic town of Tacubaya, he moved into a house he had initially built for another client. He used it as a studio, almost a laboratory, really, constantly experimenting and making modifications. The area has grown into a modest working-class neighborhood, and the house’s façade – austere and unassuming – is not unmissable. Only a blast of yellow sets it apart. Even the window above the door was renovated to be higher and smaller.
Casa Estudio Barragán (entrance)
Casa Estudio Barragán (workshop)
Casa Estudio Barragán (window to street)
But as soon as you enter, you immediately feel removed from the outside world. Bright yellow walls enclose a narrow hallway. A small ramp leads to a vestibule of solid planes with a pink door on one side. The floor and staircase are covered with the same volcanic stone the Aztecs used to build their platforms. A clerestory window bathes the stone with a strip of moving sunlight. The space is, in essence, both ancient and modern.
Casa Estudio Barragán (vestibule)
Casa Estudio Barragán (living room window)
Casa Estudio Barragán (Josef Albers painting in his study)
The living room, study and library are adorned with high wooden beamed ceilings that look infinite at first glance. You soon notice it’s because the walls separating them are only half the height. This allows natural light from the windows to fill the entire space. Loose demarcation lines help orchestrate movement as if Barragán himself is guiding you through.
Religious artifacts, sculptures and paintings are everywhere, including Josef Albers’, whose color theories Barragán had studied. The bookcase is full and eclectic. He read everything from history to modern art, from poetry to anthropology. The famous cantilever staircase, which leads to a loft, looks elegant and delicate and weightless.
Casa Estudio Barragán (cantilever staircase)
Casa Estudio Barragán (to loft)
Casa Estudio Barragán (library)
The dining room window looks out to the garden, and Barragán used to move the table outside whenever weather permitted. The connecting workshop has a sloping ceiling and a high window of ascending planes so that only the tops of trees are visible. Behind the workshop is the “Patio of the Pots,” a fountain overhung with vegetation and surrounded by ancient Aztec vessels. The back garden was designed and left to grow wild by Barragán and occupies a vast area.
Casa Estudio Barragán (workshop)
Casa Estudio Barragán (Patio of the Pots)
Casa Estudio Barragán (Jardín 17)
Past the upstairs dressing room is an almost hidden entrance to the rooftop terrace. It is as stunning – abstract and modern and distinctive – with walls of color and monolithic columns; one is used as a reservoir for water. The high walls frame the sky. Inspired by the colonial-era open-air churches designed to attract and acquire converts, this is where Barragán would come to seek solitude and spirituality.
Casa Estudio Barragán (dressing room)
Casa Estudio Barragán (towers and reservoir)
Casa Estudio Barragán (rooftop terrace)
Only in intimate communion with solitude may man find himself. Solitude is good company, and my architecture is not for those who fear or shun it.
Casa Gilardi (1977)
Casa Gilardi was the last house Barragán designed. He had already retired but accepted the commission when he saw the jacaranda tree on the property. He had one condition – that the client allow him to try out all his ideas for this project. First and foremost, they would keep the jacaranda tree and build the house around it. The client only had two requirements – a space for entertaining guests and an indoor pool so that he could swim every day.
From preliminary sketches, outlines and alterations, including the client’s handwritten notes, to the final structural drawings, Barragán paid arduous attention to every detail. Even after construction had started, he modified the selection of colors to accommodate how they reacted to natural light and shadows.
Architecture is a refuge, an emotional place in my heart.
Casa Gilardi was made famous by photographer Armando Salas Portugal. And the corridor is even more beautiful and surreal than I had imagined. Sunlight enters through vertical slits and floods the space in gold. Barragán chose much of the decoration and furniture himself, including the globes and the wooden console you see here.
Casa Gilardi (façade)
Casa Gilardi (atrium)
Casa Gilardi (corridor)
At the other end is the pool Gilardi swam in, right in front of the dining room where he hosted parties. The water extends the entire width of the space. Blue and red surfaces frame a hidden skylight. As natural light changes intensity and shadows change position throughout the day, so do the colors. Barragán would visit between 11 and 12 noon every day just to watch the light in this room.
Casa Gilardi (pool)
Casa Gilardi (dining room)
Casa Gilardi (jacaranda tree)
To withdraw the division between indoor and outdoor, the sliding doors can be retracted and the dining room tiles continue to the courtyard floor. Here, Barragán painted the walls white and violet to match the flowers of the jacaranda tree he loved and chose the Aztec jars and volcanic stones gracing the ground.
Because Giraldi left explicit instructions that the house be left exactly as Barragán would have wanted, it is the best preserved of his buildings. It is even faithfully repainted every few years to retain its original colors and luster.
The Pritzker Prize (1980)
In 1976, at the suggestion of the young Mexican architect Raúl Ferrera, MoMA held a retrospective of Barragán’s works. It was the first time his architecture was exposed to an international audience. It stirred such interest that he was awarded the Pritzker Prize four years later. The jury citation reads –
We are honoring Luis Barragán for his commitment to architecture as a sublime act of the poetic imagination. A stoical acceptance of solitude as man’s fate permeates his work. His solitude is cosmic, with Mexico as the temporal abode he lovingly accepts. It is to the greater glory of this earthly house that he has created gardens where man can make peace with himself, and a chapel where his passions and desire may be forgiven and his faith proclaimed. The garden is the myth of the Beginning and the chapel that of the End. For Barragán, architecture is the form man gives to his life between both extremes.
Parroquia El Calvario (1955), Guadalajara
Cuadra San Cristóbal (1968), nw of Mexico City
