JORGE H. JIMÉNEZ One of the cultural manifestations that best expresses the relationship between society, architecture and the city are the large urban areas built with a homogeneous architectural style. The historical downtown area of Mexico City expresses a particular vision of community, order and hierchical structure with its urban and architectural uniformity. The spanish urban grid constituted an area segregated from the rest of the indigeneous city and its reticular grid had a peculiar distinctive defensive distribution. In Mexico, the Spaniards used two urban elements of this type. On the one hand, the fortresslike churches and on the other, the grid with a distinctive central area (plaza). By locating the public power buildings in the center of town, they not only showed their position but also obliged any possible invader to fight house by house before reaching the public buildings: thus, the City itself was a fortress. This kind of urban distribution ended with Mexican Independence from Spain (1810), making way for a new style that was flourishing by the end of the Nineteenth Century. During the last three decades, modern urban development was based on land development and suburb type neighbourhoods called Colonias or colonies allowing the liberal and positivist City fostered by Porfirio Díaz, the Mexican dictator. The City grew based on isolated or island type colonies which allowed for freedom of choice and free enterprise. Families became the core of society. Independant family houses with a common architectural style showed the will to bring equals together and to clearly differentiate the spanish heritage from the indegeneous one. This type of City with its markedly french style architecture ended with the the Mexican Revolution of 1910. The social and urban development that followed the Revolution were characterised by the development of new colonies that in a way replicated the Spanish urban grid with a central park-like plaza that had lost its hierachical meaning, and a modern version of the spanish colonial style constructions named in Mexico Colonial Californiano by it resemblance of the Californian Spanish Colonial style. |
For Mexico this architectural style signified the search for a style of its own, that represented tradition and modernization at the same time. A historilcal based style that could represent the new times and social structure, the acceptance of the influence of the United States in national culture and the incorporation of local values by way of them being accepted by another country. |
THE FIRST CONTACTS During the first years of the Twenthieth Century, Bertram Godhue and Sylvester Baxter, who wrote the book titled Spanish Colonial Architecture in Mexico, visited our Country with the purpose of seeing colonial architecture. Baxter mentioned in his book that both he and Godhue had the good fortune to meet the young English architect Charles S. Hall and see his project for the new City Hall in Puebla (NT: State Capital of the same name, about 200 kilometers from Mexico City.) According to Baxter, Hall showed both his good taste and his sense of propriaty by seeking inspiration the Spanish models. The importance of this and other contacts with colonial and new colonial architecture in Mexico greatly influenced the work of these architects in the United States as Irving J. Gill and Mead whose work extendes throughout California and, later influenced in turn Mexican architecture. |
THE URBAN AND ARCHITECTURAL RENEWAL With the fall fo the Porfirian regime, many builders and architects thought it was time to follow the path of Modern architecture. However, not only did french style buildings continue to appear but the Revolution strenghthened the idea of the home as the basis of a miniature family-state which seeked a new aesthetics with roots in the past not only reacting against decades of liberalism but also seeking order and stability. |
SPANISH COLONIAL AND THE LAND DEVELOPERS Californian Spanish colonial style was initially used during the 1920´s by the developers of Lomas de Chapultepec (originally named Chapultepec Heights) the first suburb development of Mexico City. The associates, originally from the US, including the manager, Samuel W. Rider, an experienced developer, decided to put up a sign at the entrance of the development as a symbol: a model quarry stone building cut in the colonial style that has characterized mexican architecture. |
MODERN ARCHITECTURE The land developer José G. de la Lama promoted in his mentioned developments not only the Spanish Colonia style but also the last french style houses. In closer downtown De La Lama´s developments like the Insurgentes-Jalisco , the Chiapas and the Condesa sections of the Colonia Roma, he and his son built french style houses, copying those erected in the area at the end of the Porfiriato era (early 1900´s). This attitude gave strenght to the idea that although liked modern architecture, they were held in place by the demands of his clients and the need to mantain a unified style that would establish an urban identity in the colonias (land developments) as he himself implied in an interview: I am committed towards making my development which is in the most beautiful and promising part the La Condesa became one of the most modern of México. I really wish to continue the tradition of our chic colonias such as the Colonia Roma or more exactly like the Colonia Juárez. In the 1930´s Jose G. De La Lama expressed his desire to promote Modern architecture in a speech at the Rotary Club, but Funcionalist or Art-Déco architecture, with little or no decorative elements was not attractive to the societey that emerged from the Mexican Revolution. That´s the reason why the modern ideas of De la Lama did not inmediately reach his first land developments, partly because the sale of the lots was followed by a long process of construction that lasted several decades. Thus the social segment he had in mind came in contact with new images more adapted to their idea of modern comfort and style. The Colonia Hipódromo Condesa was the first development that allowed De la Lama to approach in reality what he had expressed in words during his speech at the Rotary Club. The work of important mexican architects like Serrano and Barragán in this Colonia represented the dawn of Modern architecture in Mexico nonwithstanding its Art-Déco phase before abandoning decoration and facing new elements of beauty and comfort in structures that in themselves are decorative, as De la Lama has always wanted. He died on the first day of the second half of the Century. |