sulemananaya

Two and a half hours west of Mexico City, the rustic, minimalist weekend home of Enrique Olvera—whose acclaimed Mexico City restaurant, Pujol, spawned a small empire of eateries across Mexico, New York, and Los Angeles—sits in an awe-inducing nature reserve named after its dramatic boulders, or peñitas, as locals endearingly call them. Here, amid emerald forests and mist-covered lakes, a number of architecturally notable dwellings exist in rare communion with the majestic environment. It happened to be Mother’s Day when I visited the soft-spoken chef’s property, which is dotted with avocado, cherry, and maple trees, and—thanks to a system that recycles rainwater—hydrologically self-sufficient. Spread over various microclimates created by the sloping topography, there are macadamia and peach orchards as well as weeping willows and an impressive maguey plant, while the air is filled with the sounds of frogs and birds. Accompanied by Maia, the 11-year-old white Labrador he says is the best dog he’s ever had (‘We have a similar personality: We’re both calm and pretend to be obedient’.), we walked around different rooms and corners of the terrain as Olvera—who normally prefers to say as little as possible—opened up about his magical refuge, which he designed with Javier Sánchez and Aisha Ballesteros of the architecture firm JSa between 2020 and 2021. My full interview with Enrique Olvera, brought to life in a dreamy video by @fernando_cattori , is now live on Apartamentomagazine.com. Link in bio.

Of late, Mazatlán, Mexico’s “Pearl” at the confluence of Sea of Cortez and Pacific, has revived some of its old luster. The comeback's crown jewel is a grand new aquarium, one of the most anticipated projects of new architecture in Latin America. In February, I traveled to Mazatlán to write about the @tabilbaoestudio -designed building for @archpaper . "... the aquarium’s new home defies expectations, refusing to play subtle or inviting. Instead, the monumental rationalist structure, entirely made of rose-tinted concrete, looks like a stranded 'Dune' set... mysterious, strikingly uncontemporary, and severe in its bunker-like massing. The most memorable vista is not of one of its elevations—none particularly legible—but in plan. Seen from above, the building appears as a gridded system whose intersecting walls form a series of round and rectangular chambers... To enter, visitors are expected to go up a 112-foot-long ceremonial staircase before descending more stairs into a circular courtyard, the first space whose solemnity feels welcoming. If the approach seems convoluted, it serves an elaborate narrative Bilbao likes to cite as the origin of her design: ... the idea of an abandoned building designed for an unknown purpose at an unspecified point in time. As ocean waters rose, it was submerged, only to one day reemerge filled with marine life...  It’s all a little corny and literal, and, at the same time, admirable in its imaginative panache and the architects’ determination to see the fantastical conceit through." My full review is now online. Link in bio. Photo credits: 1. S.S. Anaya 2. & 3. @juanmanuel_mcgrath 4. Iwan Baan

Last fall, I visited Alberto Kalach at his futuristic tower in Mexico City. Like everything he designs, the building is all structure -- potent, elemental, sprouting plants from every side. We talked about books; Mexico's social and natural potential; Luis Barragán and other heroes; and about the great city he calls home and studies incessantly. I travelled to Oaxaca and Yucatán to experience the dwellings Kalach has designed since the 1990s. One day, at his family's magical weekend retreat in Valle de Bravo, we cooked vegetables from the local market on a Scarpaesque grill Kalach cut out of a raw concrete wall (last image). Driving back, the metropolis appearing in the distance, his eyes twinkled as he talked about his 25-year-old proposal to recover the lakes of Tenochtitlan, the ancient Aztec capital, a project that still stirs his imagination and is in many ways the optimistic backbone of all his work. In the words of @meir_lobaton_corona, one of many practices the veteran architect has influenced: "Kalach represents a paradigm shift in Mexican architecture. He taught our generation to look for solutions in the local tradition, and to conceive buildings as pieces of naked infrastructure derived purely from the material and climatic characteristics." My story about the houses of Alberto Kalach, with beautiful images by @fabianml, is in the new issue of @tmagazine, out today with the Sunday New York Times. Link in bio. Thank you @kalach_tax, @kurtsoller, @miqadria, @andrearuizgonzalez_ and everyone else who helped make this happen. Photos 2 through 6, Tzalancab Photos 1 and 7 through 10, Casa Valle (1 - 9 by me. 10 by Fabian Martinez)

A previous post already mentioned Juan Sordo Madaleno, the least showy member of the generation of architects that transformed Mexico City in the middle of the 20th century. In 1961, he designed the church of Saint Ignatius of Loyola in Polanco. If the neighborhood has morphed from predominantly residential to hectically commercial, the Jesuit temple's prismatic volumes stand seemingly untouched by time, still visionary for the use of extreme simplicity to compose a complex, graphically potent urban landmark. Sordo Madaleno married traditional parameters of religious architecture --Latin Cross, soaring space, stained glass-- with innovative markers of his time: crisscrossing steel girders, prefabricated panels, minimalist geometry. The recently restored, vigorously abstract result --at once elegantly lo-fi, singularly suited to its spiritual vocation and achieved purely through structure-- feels as modern today as it did sixty years ago. Highly photogenic for its clean lines and two-tone optical fields, the church interior was captured most indelibly by Guillermo Zamora, author of the period photographs seen here. Archival images like these are among the highlights of an exhibition devoted to the work of the firm founded by Juan Sordo Madaleno currently on view at the Palacio de Iturbide, in Mexico City's historic center. While the office's recent projects lack the humble originality of Juan's oeuvre, they retain an interest in shaping cities with audacious, often generous gestures. That includes shopping malls, a typology pioneered by Juan Sordo Madaleno at the now-iconic Plaza Satelite in 1971.  #juansordomadaleno #polanco #cdmx #modernistarchitecture #sordomadaleno #mexicocity #mexicanarchitecture #religiousarchitecture

"A good spiral staircase always works, both functionally and as a visual statement... [Here it] functions as a sort of hinge, connecting one of two L-shaped structures." @maxvonwerz about the sensuously ample, indelibly elegant stepped ramp at Baja Club, the discreet seafront hotel he designed around a 1910 mansion in La Paz, Baja California. Read the rest of my interview with the humble, talented Mexico-City-based architect --touching on his fascination for Mexico and its architectural history, his German building heritage, and Modernism's enduring legacy-- in the latest issue of @pinupmagazine, on newsstands now.

Quite proud of this, warranting a rare non-architecture post Thank you to @demnagvasalia @radhikajones @keziahweir Link in bio #balenciaga #demnagvasalia #fashion #vanityfair

As Mexico City's population and economy expanded in the first half of the 20th century, a gang of audacious developers and architects responded to the need for office space with taller, more inventively compact designs than the capital had ever seen. Augusto H. Alvarez and Juan Sordo Madeleno represented the moment's vanguard, importing the International Style in ways singularly adept to the Mexican metropolis. While both architects individually authored better-known projects --including the Latinoamericana skyscraper (AH) and Sordo Madeleno's previously posted Torre Anahuac-- the slender slab at the intersection of Avenida Insurgentes and Chiapas, a.k.a Insurgentes 348, remains their best joint creation thanks to its distinctive silhouette and winning combination of stone, glass and steel. The building, which was conceived in the late 1940s occupying a triangular block, features 3 solid sides (though one barely wide enough to count), a dynamically modulated glass front, as well as set-back commercial space on street-level (formerly home of @ligadf). In more recent years, several standout young architecture firms operated from Insurgentes 348, among them @productora_df and @maxvonwerz, who report loving the building's elegant design but less enthusiasm for its scarily shaky performance during earthquakes. #augustohalvarez #juansordomadaleno #mexicanmodernism #coloniaroma #avenidainsurgentes #cdmx #internationalstyle #functionalism #mexicocity #modernism #mexicanarchitecture

As Casa Barragan leads the New York Times' list of the most important works of postwar architecture, published yesterday, it's pertinent to remember the less celebrated but immensely valuable masterpiece that once stood opposite the Pritzker winner's monastically refined studio-home. Enrique del Moral was a leading architect of Mexico's mid-20th-century modernization, authoring private, government and commercial commissions across the capital. Including UNAM's Rectoria tower, La Merced market as well as different types of dwellings, his works combined an embrace of the latest design theories with a keen understanding of local cultural and topographic specificities. It was at his own 1948 residence that del Moral took to its zenith his mission to incorporate a deeply considered (neither folklorist nor pastiche) expression of Mexican character traits into the novel international building style of the time. On the grounds facing Barragan's estate, del Moral conceived a house and gardens of rare mastery, integrating generously intimate spaces --laid out to maximize views, privacy and natural light-- with a dreamlike fusion of living and landscape. Through patios, lawns and terraces, open skies became an integral element of the house, while extensive use of regional materials asserted a vehement affirmation of place. Color, too, played an important role, though in less theatrical ways than across the street. The unrecognizable remains of the house --inexplicably destroyed by a well-known architect in 2003-- today belong to @l_a_b_o_r , an art gallery. Sadly, good images of the lost Casa del Moral are hard to find. All seen here are taken from Rafael Fierro's great Grandes Casas de Mexico blog. #enriquedelmoral #tacubaya #cdmx #arquitecturamodernista #docomomo #mexicocity #arquitecturamodernamexicana #modernistarchitecture

chez Tona the Great 🌱 @tonatiuhh.martinez #xochimilco #cdmx #ciudaddemexico #mexicocity

Easily the least architecturally important building posted here so far, the mouse-colored slab of Torre de Pemex --erected between 1976-1982 by Pedro Moctezuma for Mexico's state-owned oil company-- earned its incontestable iconicity dubiously, as a monument to a quasi-totalitarian regime and to the country's final days of petroleum prosperity -- a boom followed by economic ruin and the advent of neoliberalism. Close to 40 years after its completion, the heliport-crowned skyscraper, unremarkable but for its height and a corporate brand of glamour --steely blandness alleviated with a dash of sci-fi-- stands out from its urban context with Miesian rectitude and an almost redeeming golden glow at dusk. Torre de Pemex also belongs to a select international club: towers never fully loved yet indelibly imprinted into the skylines of their respective metropolises -- not unlike the Tour Montparnasse and, until their destruction, Minoru Yamasaki's Twin Towers. All photos S.S. Anaya #torredepemex #torrepemex #coloniaanahuac #arquitecturamodernamexicana #mexicocity #cdmx #ciudaddemexico #internationalstyle #skyscrapers

Old meets new in intelligent, timely ways in 2 neighborhoods that marked my childhood: @circulomexicano a.k.a. Calle Guatemala No. 20, Centro Histórico @lagunamx Colonia Doctores My story about how to add value to existing built heritage while satisfying contemporary needs, now live at @metropolismag Photos courtesy of @gabriel__monroy__ (1, 2 & 5) and @onnisluque (3 & 4)

Stained glass windows by Kitzia Hoffman at the Capilla de Nuestra Señora de la Soledad, Felix Candela and Enrique de la Mora (1955). 'El Altillo,' as the church is also known, is a hidden little-known structural and artistic gem in the south of Mexico City. More on the extraordinary building designs of de la Mora --another under-recognized talent of Mexico's heroic Modernist period in architecture-- coming soon. #enriquedelamora #felixcandela #arquitecturamodernista #cdmx #mexicanmodernism #mexicanarchitecture #coyoacan #iglesiadelaltillo