Luis Barragán: a ‘Quiet’ Architectural Revolution

By Rada Georgieva

Emotive architecture – this is how the oeuvre of Mexican architect Luis Barragán (1902-1988) is often described. His works epitomize the syncretic tendency of Latin American modernisms to integrate local and traditional forms with European and North American artistic influences. Barragan’s attitude towards spatial distribution is sometimes discussed as a ‘’quiet revolution’’ due to his intention to create a serene and meditative environment, where architectural forms are fully integrated into the surrounding landscape and even generated by it. His use of vivid colours, dramatic lighting, as well as the tension between his minimalistic open and closed spaces stimulate the viewer’s sensory experience. Hence, Barragán imbued his buildings with certain emotive qualities, which countered the strict formality of rationalist currents in modernist architecture. 

Luis Barragán, Casa Prieto-Lopez, 1950. Copyright Barragan Foundation / 2016, DACS

Luis Barragán, Casa Prieto-Lopez, 1950. Copyright Barragan Foundation / 2016, DACS

Barragán’s Casa Prieto-Lopez, 1950 which he built for a prominent Mexican lawyer, is a tour-de-force of architectural ingenuity and it is paradigmatic of a harmonious synthesis of regional and foreign influences. The house is inspired by Mediterranean building traditions, which is manifested clearly in the building’s intimate link to the natural environment, as well as in its structural strength and adaptation to climate typology. This is interwoven with the legacy of Mexican vernacular architecture, and the abstract European neoplasticity of De Stijl. Thus, Casa Prieto-Lopez constitutes a response to the Mexican necessity at the time to reshape tradition through the lens of modernism, as part of an artistic attempt to define national identity.

Although Barragán’s works are often discussed in terms of Le Corbusier’s functionalism, or the minimalism of Mies van der Rohe, the ideology behind his buildings has much more in common with the anti-rationalist propositions of Frank Lloyd Wright. These had a much larger impact in Latin America than one might think. Notions such as the organic integration of constructed work with the surrounding landscape, movement and fluidity of form, plasticity, and links to tradition are all Wrightean principles are easily observable not only in Casa Pietro-Lopez but in all of Barragán’s oeuvre.

Casa Prieto-Lopez was built on the upper part of a plot delineated by a rough natural landscape, in a lava field in Mexico city. Barragán used a system of multiple levels, volumes and transitions, which followed the unevenness of the ground. One particular feature is the walled courtyard, which served as a transitional space between exterior and interior. Barragan’s interpretation of it was inspired by Moorish architecture and particularly the Alhambra, where the courtyard is an intermediary space of intimacy and contemplation. In casa Pietro Lopez, he designed two courtyards on the two different platforms, which constitute the house. One was on street level and one on a lower level, serving as a filter between inside and outside. On the exterior of the house, another series of platforms covered with grass descends the slope eventually vanishing into the exuberant landscape of Mexico’s famous Gardens of the Pedregal. Hence, the organic, fluctuating lines of the natural environment counterbalance the strict perpendicular lines, and cubic forms of the house.

Besides, Barragán placed the common living areas parallel to the street, while the more private ones – perpendicular to it, thus achieving a spatial separation very typical of his projects. This is especially visible in Casa Barragán, 1947 which he designed for himself, and which is often considered as an embodiment of his syncretic principles. The house is organized on three levels – the bottom floor consists of more social spaces, the middle one of private rooms, while the top level is reserved for service rooms, thus maintaining a separation between the servants and the owner and his visitors. This traditional division between upper and working classes is emphasized, resulting in a distribution of space which is colonial, yet articulated in a modernist language.

Barragán’s treatment of spatial relationships is in line with the new conceptions of architecture’s role, developed in the early twentieth century, which emphasized the incorporation of movement into the architectural proposition. Barragán achieved this not only through his method of erecting multi-levelled constructions but also through the lack of defined thresholds, which conveyed a sense of continuity and created a sense of openness. Ambiguous elements such as half stairs, low walls, and the incorporation of light as a stimulator of sensual experience contributed greatly to comprehending the house as a fluid entity made up of sequences. 

The massive cubic and functionalist volumes of Barragán’s works are interpreted through the play of light and shadow, typical of vernacular Mexican architecture. His understanding of the ways in which light and colour can contribute to the sense of serenity for which he strived in every work he conceived, was inspired by the paintings of Mexican muralist painter Jose Clemente Orozco. His work displays dramatic tonalities and in Barragan’s words ‘’shadow where there should be light’’. Furthermore, Barragán’s vividly coloured walls recall traditional techniques of mixing natural pigments and plaster, while the large sale of his interiors alludes to that of Mexican rural architecture – the Hacienda. The use of regional materials, such as volcanic tiles to pave the courtyards and wooden beams to support the high ceilings do not contradict Barragan’s modernist building techniques but constitute a material symbiosis of simplicity, which enhances the baroque exuberance of the landscape. His picture windows, filtering in the light, also serve as transitional elements and aids for decompression of the inside/outside dichotomy, framing the infinite exterior space.

Luis Barragán, Chapel and Convent of the Capuchinas Sacramentarias (1952-1955) Source: https://mgerwing.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/chapel-of-the-capuchinas.jpg

Luis Barragán, Chapel and Convent of the Capuchinas Sacramentarias (1952-1955) Source: https://mgerwing.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/chapel-of-the-capuchinas.jpg

Barragán’s compositions of filled and empty volumes and orthogonal forms, combined with large expanses of colour, dramatized by the light is nowhere more striking than in the Franciscan chapel he designed in Tlalpan (1952-1955). Here again, Barragán orchestrated an ambience of serenity and mysticism through encapsulating natural elements such as the sound of running water in the courtyard, and the warm light filtered through an elaborate lattice into the main chapel. The minimalist environment is imbued with a quiet spirituality through the sensory experience of light – Barragán sustained that architects had forgotten the need for half-light as a vehicle towards serenity, and the sound of running water as allowing for ‘’the placid murmur of silence’’. To avoid direct glare from the sunlight he employed additional pieces such as awnings, covers and deeply shaded areas. Thus, the consideration and treatment of both tangible and intangible attributes was essential to imbuing Barragán’s minimalist, yet massive spaces with a certain dramaticism, unlike anything encountered in European architecture at the time. 

Luis Barragán’s hybrid architecture hence embodies both a sense of rootedness in its local context and a universal significance. The syncretism inherent to Latin American modernisms’ resistance to being designated as peripheral artistic currents derivative of Western innovations is taken to new extremes in Barragán’s work, achieving a visual and special harmony that blends into its surroundings. By framing the national through the international language of modernism Barragán chose the characteristics which he considered crucial for his ultimate goal: an emotive constructed environment, forming a profoundly human microcosm. 

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Hernandez, Felipe. ‘Spaces of Hybridization’. In Lejeune, Jean-Francois Cruelty and Utopia: cities and landscapes of Latin America. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2015

Kahera, Akel Ismail. "GARDENS OF THE RIGHTEOUS: Sacred Space in Judaism, Christianity and Islam." CrossCurrents 52, no. 3 (2002): 328-41. Accessed April 26, 2021. 

Renteria, Isabela de and Claudia Rueda Velazquez, ‘Transitional spaces in the architecture of Luis Barragán and José Antonio Coderch: Casa Prieto López and Casa Ugalde’. In Architectural Research Quarterly. Vol. 22, Issue 3. September 2018. Accessed April 26, 2021.

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