Modern Architecture in Mexico City

Despite housing many of the most vibrant and intense works of modern architecture, Latin America in general and Mexico in particular are little known in Anglo scholarly literature on the history of architecture. Kathryn O’Rourke’s Modern Architecture in Mexico City is an important step in bridging this gap. Well researched, well written, and carefully organized, the book presents a fresh perspective on Mexico City’s modern accomplishments for English-speaking readers. Starting with the entanglement of painting and photography at the dawn of modern architecture in Mexico, O’Rourke presents the idea of mestizaje as a driving force at that time, but does not problematize it enough. Discussions of mestizaje are common in the literature about Mexico (written by Anglo scholars but also by Mexicans themselves) but rarely present in the discussion of modernism in the USA or Australia where people of European descent also controls land previously occupied by indigenous societies. Similarly, in Europe itself, nobody mentions that Italians are the result of mestizaje between Romans, Greeks and Northern Europeans. More broadly, O’Rourke fails to problematize national identity. The preoccupation with national identity was an important drive in Frank Lloyd Wright’s work around the same time (e.g., Usonian houses) but never analyzed through the same lenses that dominate scholarship on Mexico.

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Identity (music) · Indigenous · Latin Americans · Political science · Scholarship · Sociology · Wright · Architecture · Diverse Historical and Scientific Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · History of Science and Medicine · Law