The Technicolor Corners of Barragán’s Mexico City

Words Vidula KotianDate 27 January 2021

“The ideal space must contain elements of magic, serenity, sorcery and mystery.”
Luis Barragán

Dubbed the artist among architects, Luis Barragán is one of the most famous architects of the 20th century. Revered for his geometric, brightly colored buildings, the Pritzker Prize-winner is known for blending vernacular hacienda elements with modernist influences from Europe and America. After studying engineering, he then traveled around Europe admiring buildings and attending design fairs. After returning to Mexico, he got his first architectural commission and practiced in Guadalajara for almost a decade. In 1936, he moved to Mexico City, where he designed his most iconic works. Here, we take you on an architectural pilgrimage of five of his masterpieces.

Casa Barragán

The architect Louis Kahn called Barragán “completely remarkable” and praised the home that he designed for himself in Mexico City as “not merely a house but House itself.” A 12-minute drive from Torres de Satélite, Casa Barragán was built in 1948 and included in 2004 by UNESCO in its World Heritage list—the only individual property in Latin America to have achieved such a distinct honor.

Located in the working-class neighborhood of Tacubaya, this building-turned-museum showcases all of Barragán’s trademarks: an emphasis on color, light, shadow, form, and texture. The unimposing façade facing the street humbly blends in with its neighbors, giving no hints to the personality of it’s interior. The most prominent aspects of the design of Casa Barragán are the use of flat planes and light, both natural and artificial. The skylights and windows allow for visual tracking of light throughout the day; the floods of natural light and views of nature are the key purposes of the windows.

Opening up into the garden, the back of the house creates a visible and physical relationship between the lower level and the backyard. Barragán often called himself a landscape architect because he believed that architects should make “houses into gardens, and gardens into houses.” He made blueprints premised on surprise and an almost perverse protraction of pleasure. Low, dark corridors open into blindingly bright rooms with church-high ceilings. Floor plans only gradually make themselves evident to the visitor. He called it “architectural striptease.”

Barragán had a fascination with animals, particularly horses, so many relics of popular culture and symbols are found throughout the house. Crosses can also be found in multiple rooms, which, coupled with the bold colors he used, create a mythical and spiritual architecture. He found many of his furnishings at craft markets and antique shops, all true to the cultural identity of Mexico. This cultural flare is also apparent in the bold pink, yellow, and lilac colors chosen by the architect. The minimalist style underlines the significance of detail, every aspect of the house has its purpose and the architect’s intentions are made starkly clear.

Keith Eggener, an architectural historian who made a pilgrimage to Barragán’s house soon after he died in 1988, recalled his impressions: “Even when it was run-down, it was a ravishing house,” he said. “I remember having this feeling of really wanting to spend the night there—not just to sleep in the house but to sleep with the house.”

“The Art of Seeing. It is essential to an architect to know how to see: I mean, to see in such a way that the vision is not overpowered by rational analysis.”
Luis Barragán

Casa Ortega

In 1940, Barragán bought a 4,000-square-meter plot of land in the Tacubaya neighborhood of Mexico City and divided it into four parts. In three of these lots, he designed an extensive garden with multiple stacked terraces that compensate for the unevenness of the terrain. The remaining lot was divided in two for the construction of Casa Ortega and eventually, Casa Barragán. Built in 1943, Casa Ortega was the first residence designed by the architect, and a prelude to what would one day be his home studio.

This former residence is defined by an opulent, almost wild garden that evokes ancient orchards where vegetation has a life of its own. According to photographic documents and descriptions made by Barragán, the garden originally contained larger lawn extensions, which he typically allowed to grow more freely. It is an oasis in the middle of the urban desert that Mexico City has become. This oasis is essentially monochromatic; save for the white or orange jasmines and narcissus. It is composed of several shades of intense green, a color never used in Barragán’s palette.

Casa Gilardi

Casa Gilardi was Barragán’s final residential project, constructed in 1976 when the architect was 80 years old. This relatively small, pink home was built around a large Jacaranda tree that is today the focus of the central terrace. Colors and light play a central role, both acting as fundamental elements of the space’s architecture. Barragán once told a journalist that as a schoolboy, while out riding, he would notice “the play of shadows on the walls, how the afternoon sun gradually got weaker—although it was still light—and how the look of things changed, angles got smaller and straight lines stood out even more.” 

Like at many of his projects, such as his own house and studio, bold hues plays an important role at Casa Gilardi, inspired in this case by paintings of Mexican artist "Chucho" Reyes Ferreira with whom he collaborated on the Torres de Satélite. While the patio is a vibrant lilac, the dramatic yellow corridor prepares visitors for a very important space: the dining room and striking indoor pool, known for playing with light and color in a remarkable way. The house is still furnished with pieces chosen by Barragán, from antiques to designs created specifically for the spaces.

Casa Prieto-López

Our last stop is Casa Prieto-López, which was designed in the late 1940s and is widely recognised as one of his most iconic residential projects. Painted vividly in a pastel color palette, with small doors and windows in ratio to the walls, this house emits an aura of peace. Built on the volcanic rock expansion of Pedregal, the house wasn’t designed by Barragán at his desk, but directly on site, with life-size models, touching the elements with his own hands. The stone, light, air—all of these pieces of the puzzle were sewn together within the project, adapting his drawings to the mutating conditions of the landscapes. Only in this way could he fully understand the nature and architecture of the home he had envisioned.

From the outside, the structure is linear, sober, square, following in line with the Modernist canon. A green pool reflects the modeled volumes dressed in limestone—a base often used by Barragán to stucco walls through a pre-hispanic technique of days long past. Other local elements such as volcanic stone, natural pigments, ceramics from Oaxaca, and native wood known locally as sabino or ahuehuete, lend a typical Mexican warmth to the austere purity of the structure. The same goes for color, which inside spans between beige, celeste, pink, and soft grays, bringing things together along with golden accents found in the wood of the parquet and custom-made furnishings.

The house was restored by the current owner—businessman and art collector César Cervantes and renamed Casa Pedregal. Cervantes worked with Barragán’s student and co-founder of local studio Parque Humano, Jorge Covarrubias, giving life to a meticulous restoration more akin to a modern archaeological enterprise than a residential home.