 This is the first piece on architecture for our magazine, which means I had all the architects in history to write about, but where to start? As the idea was to begin with a contemporary artist, we decided this had to be Luis Barragán, a very modern man but with a very personal touch. Just what we intend to do with our clothes.
By the way, this piece has been written for people who don’t know very much about architecture, so you will have to look for another architectural article if you want something a bit brainier. At the end you will find the bibliography we have used.
Luis Barragán was born in Guadalajara (Mexico) in 1902. He spent his childhood at the "Hacienda Corrales", his family’s country house in Jalisco. This fact will prove very important for the development of his work.
Since he was a child he showed a tremendous artistic instinct but, instead of developing it, he decided to study architecture and Civil engineering, following his parents´desire.
At the university he discussed with his friends the revolutionary architectural ideas that were coming from Europe. By that time, at the beginning of the 20th century, in the old continent old scholars such as Mies, Gropius, Le Corbusier or people from Stijt, got fed up with the rationalism and functional character, producing some proposals which tended to be very little functional solutions. Moreover, all their theories were utopian if we take into account that they wanted to make perfect buildings for the man. And man, let´s face it, is anything but perfect.
When Barragán travels to Europe to finish his studies, he has the chance of getting in touch with what was cooking over there. It is not this what marks his life but a visit to the "Alhambra" and the books of Ferdinand Bac. The Arabic world and the northern Africa villages will be a real revelation to Barragán, and will lead him to find in their architecture an harmonic atmosphere that always respects the beauty of the countryside and also will revive in him an eternal love for gardens.
Barragan’s work is very far from what was considered "modern" at the time. He will look for richness at the roots, unlike the universal rationalism. Therefore, apart from the Arabic world, the Mexican people will be a great inspiration for him. The people in its wider sense. On one side, their buildings. He will take from them the cubic shapes, the poor materials and above all, the colour, always the colour. On the other side, the people in its humanistic sense. Men and not perfect measurement machines inhabit it. Maybe Barragán, because of his search for retirement and rest in his buildings, is closer to the "imperfect" man than the brainy rationalists.
His way of working is closer to that of a painter than an architect´s. He considered the buildings could be modified while he was building them, as a painter can correct, erase or give light to his painting before finishing it. So, even when his buildings were at the tail end of the process, he allowed himself to modify them, putting in or taking out walls, widening them or reducing the light of a window. As we have said, the colour is fundamental in his works. So much that the walls were painted when the work was finished and after a thorough study of the possible chromatic variations through the day. The best thing is that after having done it, he would often find the walls were to be painted again. And moreover, he used to say that every two years his work had to be painted again.
Jokes aside, his deep aesthetic worries and above all the colour concern created magical atmospheres like the swimming pool of the Giraldi House. I haven’t visited it, but in the pictures it looks like a beautiful painting in which, besides, you can touch the water with your own hands.
Words like beauty, loneliness, religion, mysticism or magic could describe Barragán’s work. He liked to talk about mystery and defined it in a very graphic way: "I believe there is mystery when you can see the leafs of a tree behind a wall".
When Luis Barragán received the Priztker architectural award in 1980, the awarders talked about his architecture as "a sublime act of the poetic imagination". We can say that his buildings are verses written to life, to tradition and, above all, to beauty, which, because of its timeless quality, will always be "modern".
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