Luis Barragan—The Quiet Revolution

Luis Barragán (Guadalajara 1902-Mexico City 1988), one of Mexico's leading architects, is now accepted as a great master of the Modern Movement. The poetic images of his houses and gardens, of the walls and fountains so characteristic of his work have all become icons of modern Mexican architecture. His masterpieces are famous for their innovative use of colour and for their reduced and abstract formal language. They harmoniously combine the modern and the traditional, nature and architecture giving results which, although closely linked to the context in which they were born, also assume international relevance. For the first time since Luis Barragán passed away, the wealth of drawings, documents and original photographs in his archives--now conserved at the Barragan Foundation in Switzerland--has been made available to a group of scholars of international standing and studied systematically. The essays collected in this volume are the result of intense scrutiny of the Barragán Archives and the many public and private collections in Mexico, Europe and the USA. Accompanid by outstanding visual representations, they present a fresh evaluation of Barragán's personality and his work--which managed to quietly interpret the revolutionary aspects of Modern architecture.

José Antonio Aldrete-Haas
Architect; Ph.D. in urban studies from MIT; former professor of urban design at the University of Guadalajara and coordinator of the Ph.D. program in urban studies at the National University in Mexico City; visiting associate professor of architecture at Columbia University and MIT.

Luis E. Carranza
Assistant professor of architecture at Roger Williams University, Bristol, Rhode Island; Ph.D. from Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, with dissertation on modern Mexican architecture; contributor to scholarly publications.

Marco De Michelis
Professor of architectural history at the Institute of Architecture, University of Venice, and Walter Gropius Professor at the Bauhaus University in Weimar; author of books on architectural history; contributor to architectural journals and publications; former editor of the architecture and design magazine Ottagono; Getty Research Institute scholar; former director of the Architecture Gallery of the Triennale, Milan.

Keith L. Eggener
Assistant professor of art and architectural history at the University of Missouri, Columbia; Ph.D. from Stanford University, with dissertation on Luis Barragán; former teacher at Carlton College, Northfield, Minnesota, and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas; contributor to art and architecture journals.

Kenneth Frampton
Ware Professor of architecture at Columbia University, New York; author of numerous books on architectural history and theory, with particular interest in "critical regionalism"; visiting professor and guest lecturer at major architectural schools internationally; contributor to architectural journals and publications.

Richard Ingersoll
Professor of architecture at Syracuse University in Florence and University of Ferrara, Italy; visiting professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zürich; author of numerous books and articles on architecture; founding editor of the Design Book Review; contributor to art and architecture journals and publications.

Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani
Architect; Chair Professor for the history of city planning at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zürich, and Dean of the Faulty of Architecture; former editor of Domus magazine; former director of the Deutsches Architektur Museum, Frankfurt; author of numerous books on architecture; contributor to architectural magazines and publications.

Louise Noelle
Professor at the Institute of Aesthetic Investigations of the National University in Mexico City; member of the international committee of architectural critics; author of books on modern and contemporary Mexican architecture and a monograph on Louis Barragán; former editor of the journal Arquitectura México; contributor to architectural journals and publications.

Marc Treib
Professor of architecture, University of California at Berkeley, California; practising designer and contributor to architecture and design journals; on the editorial boards of various architecture, landscape, art, and graphic design journals; author of books and articles on Le Corbusiier, modern landscape architecture, Scandinavian architecture, Spanish colonial churches, and Japanese gardens.

Emilia Terragni
Art historian; assistant to the director of the Barragán Foundation; curator of the Barragán Archives; curator of the Centro Studi Giuseppe Terragni; consultant to the Archivio Progetti of the Institute of Architecture, University of Venice.

Frederica Zanco
Ph.D. in architecture; director of the Barragán Foundation; former researcher at the Institute of Architecture, University of Venice; former member of the editorial staffs of Ottagono and Domus; contributor to architecture and design journals.