Book Description
The Barragán Guide presents architect Luis Barragán's constructed works to a larger public, providing keys to his creative evolution and his cultural context. Following the volume's itinerary through three Mexican cities--Guadalajara, Mexico City, and Monterrey--provides not only a chronological survey of Barragán's surviving work, but also an interesting experience of three urban realities that constitute the basis of his architectural practice and the context of the work of his followers. Born and raised in the provincial town of Guadalajara, Barragan performed his first experiments there before moving to the more open and fertile creative environment of the capital, where rapidly growing new neighborhoods provided a wealth of opportunities for an ambitious young architect. It was on the outskirts of Mexico City that Barragán's vision of a new way of living, at once modern and Mexican, took shape in the late 1940s, in the form of a sophisticated residential development known as Jardines del Pedregal. The project won international acclaim and Barragán moved on to create a series of masterpieces: his own house, the houses built for the Prieto Lopez and Galvez families, the monument known as Satellite Towers, and the outstanding residential developments of Las Arboledas and Los Clubes are but a few examples of his singular way of dealing with nature and architecture as two key elements of the intimate relation between inside and outside, between constructed and non-constructed environments. Essays by Ilaria Valente, Federica Zanco, Fernanda Canales. Foreword By Felipe Leal. Flexibound, 4.75 x 6.75 in., 184 pages, 36 color & 43 duotone illustrations

About the Author
Luis Barragán, born in Guadalajara in 1902, was the most prominent Mexican architect of the 20th century. Awarded the Pritzker Prize in 1980, he is recognized worldwide as one of the masters of modern architecture, and countless books, essays, and studies have been devoted to exploring his life and work. Exhibitions of his work have been held at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Museo Tamayo in Mexico and other venues in Mexico City, and at the Vitra Design Museum in Germany in a traveling exhibition that went on to Vienna, London, Valencia, Tokyo and Mexico City