Kirjahaku

This publication is based on an illustrated talk presented by architect and historian Fernanda Canales in June 2024 at the Vitra Design Museum as part of the Barragán Lecture series. It focuses on the Mexican architect Luis Barragán (1902–1988), whose work occupies a permanent place in the canon of twentieth-century architecture and continues to fascinate architectural scholars, connoisseurs, and enthusiasts. In her lecture, Fernanda Canales deftly interwove Barragán’s biography with his major built works, which are characterised by a skilful approach to spatial and chromatic atmospheres and environments. Following the traces found in his extensive private library, his travels, the exhibitions he saw, and his personal and professional friendships, she took the audience on a multifaceted journey through space and time, providing a concentrated overview of Barragán’s creative work from the late 1920s to the 1980s.

This book deals with the multiplicity of architectures that have taken place in Mexico during the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. In accordance with the idea of the effective history of the French philosopher Michel Foucault, in which knowledge, like history, does not cover absolute truths but fragments, a reading of the different themes that make up the architectural production is presented. Based on this approach, an understanding is sought beyond the built forms and close to the ideas that generate them. In an attempt to make paradigms move and reinvent themselves, history is seen as a place to work, with an emphasis on the relationship of architecture, theory, art, design and urbanism. The two volumes are chronologically divided in six different time periods to reflect the work of 160 architects throughout different architectural movements.