In this class we discuss the works of Mexican modernist Luis Barragán. We also compare his chapel for the Capuchinas Sacramentarias with Le Corbusier's Ronchamp (1954) and Peter Zumthor's Bruder Klaus Chapel (2007).

1. Luis
Barragán

2. agenda
• what happens when later architects interpret the modern
in light of their own histories, cultures, and experiences?
• how is the modernist vocabulary extended, revised and
reworked in these instances?

3. "...the words beauty, inspiration, enchantment,
magic, sorcery, charm and also serenity,
silence, intimacy and amazement have
disappeared at an alarming rate in publications
devoted to architecture. All of them have found
a loving welcome in my soul, and even if I am
far from claiming to have made them complete
justice in my work, they have never ceased to
be my beacon. "
—Luis Barragan, acceptance speech for the Pritzker Prize

4. Luis Barragán (1902-1988)
1902 Born in Guadalajara to wealthy parents. Brought up in
his family's house there and their large country estate in
Jalisco.
1919 Studied engineering in Guadalajara, then switched to
architecture.
1924 Traveled through southern Europe before settling in
Paris in 1925. Visited the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs.
1926 Worked for several years with his architect brother,
Juan José in Guadalajara.
1931 Spent three months in New York where he met Orozco.
Returned to Paris and metLe Corbusier and landscape
architect Ferdinand Bac.

5. 1935 Moved to Mexico City.
1940 Barragán planned and designed seven gardens
including one for his own house on calle Francisco Ramirez.
1945 Planned a new development in El Pedegral, a lavafield
outside Mexico City: influential in architectural circles, but
commercially unsuccessful.
1952 Returns to Guadalajara to build a house for his friend,
Dr Arriola.

6. 1954 Begins a four year project to build the Tlálpan Convent.
1957 Designed the Torres Satélite, a cluster of towers on a
traffic intersection in Mexico City.
1966 Started work on the Folke Egerstrom House and
Stables with the horse pond and fountain.
1975 After a fallow period in Mexico, a book by architect
Emilio Ambasz, restored Barragán's international reputation.
1977 Exhibition of Barragán's work at MoMA, New York.
1980 Awarded the prestigious Pritzker Prize for Architecture.
1988 Luis Barragán died in Mexico City and was buried in
Guadalajara.

7. works
• Casa Barragán (1948)
• Torres de Satélite (1958)
• Tlalpan Chapel, for the Capuchinas Sacramentarias del
Purisimo Corazon de Maria (1960)
• "Los Clubes" (Cuadra San Cristobal and Fuente de los
Amantes)
• Casa Gilardi

8. Casa Barrágan (1948)
• on two adjacent lots in a working class suburb of Mexico
City:
12-14 Calle General Francisco Ramirez
Mexico City México
• ‘a house is never finished; it is an organism in constant
evolution’
• ongoing project of creating house, studio, and gardens

9. street facade
garden facade

10. section

11. plan
first floor

12. plan,
second floor

13. plan,
third floor

14. street facade

15. entry hall

17. lobby space

18. living room with view toward the garden

22. workshop

23. dining room

28. To visit Casa Barrágan:
http://www.casaluisbarragan.org/

29. The Torres de Satélite
"Satellite Towers" (1958)
Large public urban sculpture for a new suburb under
construction in 1957, the Ciudad Satélite, northwest of
Mexico City.
The project was a collaboration between architect Luis
Barragán, painter Jesús Reyes Ferreira and sculptor Mathias
Goeritz, at the invitation of city planner Mario Pani.

30. Ciudad Satélite
• Brainchild of urban planner Mario Pani.
• Large suburban development for the working class of Mexico
City. (Over time, as land values have risen in this convenient
location, the working class has been priced out.)
• To connect this outlying suburb with the capital an expressway
was built. A marker was needed to show that you had arrived
home. Over time the collaborators developed the idea of
building vertical elements to create a sort of simulated skyline
that would be visible from a distant moving car.

31. Torres de Satélite, then

32. Torres de Satélite, now

33. The hollow triangular forms of
this large public sculpture
have been painted a variety of
different colors over time.
Barragán initially proposed that
they be painted white and red,
blue and yellow, which they are
today.

34. Tlalpan Chapel (1960)
The Chapel and Convent of the Capuchinas
Sacramentarias (Tlalpan, Mexico)
This is a chapel that Barragán created for a Capuchin
convent. They are a meditative order and wanted this quality
to be at the forefront of their experience.
Barragán designed every detail of the chapel, down to the
vestments for the officiating priest.

35. plan of the chapel showing the integration of indoor and outdoor spaces

36. street entrances

37. small entrance patio with reflecting pool

38. detail of pool and screen

39. floating entrance bench

48. How to understand art and the glory of history without
religious spirituality and without the mythical background that
leads to the very roots of the artistic phenomenon? Without
any of those we would not have the Egyptian and our own
Mexican pyramids, there would be no Gothic cathedrals or
Greek temples or the amazement that the Renaissance and
the Baroque left, not the ritual dances of the so-called
primitive peoples and the inexhaustible treasure of popular
artistic sensitivity of all nations on earth.
— Luis Barragán

49. "The Art of Seeing. It is essential to
an architect to know how to see: I
mean, to see in such a way that the
vision is not overpowered by rational
analysis."
—Luis
Barragán

50. Casa Gilardi (1975)
Mexico City

51. Casa Gilardi
narrow, elongated site directly on street

52. plan

58. Le Corbusier
Notre-Dame du Haut (1954)
Ronchamp, France

59. exterior, south facade from the southeast

60. exterior, south facade

61. exterior,
west facade

62. exterior from the northwest

65. exterior, east facade

66. exterior, outdoor chapel,
viewed from the north

67. exterior, outdoor chapel
viewed from the south

68. caretaker's house

69. pilgrim's housing

70. memorial pyramid

72. altar and pulpit viewed from
east side chapel

73. detail of crucifix

74. view of sanctuary from choir

76. south wall and pews

79. Peter ZUMTHOR, Bruder Klaus Chapel, Merchernich, Germany, 2007

82. “To me, buildings can have a beautiful silence that I associate
with attributes such as composure, self-evidence, durability,
presence, and integrity, and with warmth and sensuousness
as well; a building that is being itself, being a building, not
representing anything, just being.”