Mexican contemporary architecture: a younger generation is reinvigorating the profession and breaking out of the box

A younger generation of architects is bringing a new level of inventiveness to Mexico, responding creatively to context and social needs. Frugal or refined, high or low tech, their work shares a lack of pretension, and marks a sharp break from the ponderous monumentalism of Teodoro Gonzalez de Leon, Ricardo Legorreta and other established firms. Mexico was never as authoritarian as China, where a reactionary establishment stifled creativity for decades before allowing young, independent architects to compete for the best jobs. But the new wave of talent has brought a wealth of fresh thinking to reinvigorate the profession and break through the restraints that hobbled the successors to Luis Barragán and Félix Candela. Mexico remains a deeply conservative country with a stultifying bureaucracy and glaring inequalities of wealth, but a new class of affluent urban sophisticates has emerged - well educated, widely traveled, and international in their outlook. The forty-something architects who are beginning to achieve success have emerged from and build for that class. There’s a warm collegiality among the younger practitioners of Mexico City, a rare and welcome phenomenon in this cutthroat profession. Many were at school together, collaborate professionally, and meet socially in the Condesa and Polanco districts, where some of them live, practice, and build. Such propinquity could be enervating, but each of these architects has a distinct approach and has begun to reach out beyond the capital and the middle-class office and residential market.

Michael Webb

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