5 award-winning architects with buildings in Mexico

Since its inception successful 1979, the Pritzker Architecture Prize has maintained a longstanding transportation with Mexico. Created by the Hyatt Foundation, the prize honors surviving architects whose enactment exhibits talent, imaginativeness and a sustained committedness to humanity and the built environment.

Just 1 twelvemonth aft the prize was established, Mexican designer Luis Barragán was named arsenic its 2nd recipient. His acceptance speech, delivered astatine Dumbarton Oaks successful Washington, D.C., is wide regarded arsenic 1 of the astir memorable successful the past of the award. Architectural Digest described it arsenic “a emotion missive to architecture.” Jay A. Pritzker, cofounder of the prize, told the property successful 1980 that Barragán was chosen due to the fact that his architecture embodied “a sublime enactment of the poetic imagination.”

Although nary different Mexican designer has won the prize since, the state continues to big respective important works by laureates from astir the world. These projects lend to Mexico’s architectural practice and bespeak its openness to planetary collaboration. Below is simply a enactment of Pritzker Prize-winning architects who person built successful Mexico and the projects that exemplify their work.

Tadao Ando (1995)

Tadao Ando’s Roberto Garza Sada Center for Art, Architecture and Design. (CRGS)

Japanese designer Tadao Ando is renowned for his minimalist designs that equilibrium earthy light, materiality and harmony with the environment. In Mexico, helium is liable for 2 important projects:

• The Roberto Garza Sada Center astatine the University of Monterrey. Housing the university’s art, architecture and plan schools, the gathering has go an organization icon. Its signifier resembles an unfastened portal, framing the mountains of the adjacent Cumbres de Monterrey National Park. “I began the plan of the gathering by drafting a elemental fig of a box,” Ando said. “By making a chopped successful the mediate of this figure, I came up with the thought of transforming the container into a door.”

• Casa Wabi successful Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca. Serving arsenic the main office for the Casa Wabi Foundation, this coastal retreat fosters dialog betwixt modern artists and section communities. “This is simply a precise unsocial task wherever I utilized antithetic materials that allowed maine to make architecture and spaces that cannot beryllium replicated anyplace else,” Ando said.

Toyo Ito (2013 Laureate)

Mirror-like fountains are portion of Toyo Ito’s beauteous plan for the International Baroque Museum of Puebla. (Fraguando/CC 4.0)

Awarded the Pritzker Prize successful 2013, Toyo Ito is known for fusing technological innovation with integrated design. His lone task successful Mexico, the International Baroque Museum successful Puebla (MIB), is simply a fluid operation composed of curved, paper-like walls and reflective h2o features. The gathering itself is considered a enactment of modern art.

Kenzo Tange (1987)

Japanese designer Kenzo Tangue collaborated with Mexican architects Pedro Ramírez Vázquez and Manuel Rosen Morrison to make the Japanese Embassy gathering successful Mexico City. (Arquine)

Kenzo Tange, a pioneer of modernist and Metabolist architecture, designed the erstwhile determination of the Japanese Embassy successful Mexico City successful collaboration with Mexican architects Pedro Ramírez Vázquez and Manuel Rosen Morrison. Completed successful 1976, the operation reflects elements of Japanese regionalism and features salient horizontal lines and Brutalist characteristics.

Richard Meier (1984)

Cuarzo Tower by Richard Meier is simply a beauteous solid facade that integrates 2 buildings connected by a communal base. (Richard Meier & Partners)

American designer Richard Meier is champion known for his abstract achromatic forms and extended usage of glass. In Mexico City, helium designed the Cuarzo Tower, a 40-story analyzable equipped with much than 450 in-line friction dampers to mitigate earthquake impact. The operation includes bureau space, retail areas, restaurants and sports facilities, each connected by a shared base.

Luis Barragán (1980)

Fountain of the Lovers, 1 of Luis Barragan’s astir acclaimed works.. (Esparta Palma)

The lone Mexican designer to triumph the Pritzker Prize, Luis Barragán remains 1 of the astir influential figures successful modern architecture. His iconic projects see Casa Gilardi, Fountain of the Lovers, Casa Luis Barragán, Satellite Towers, Cuadra San Cristóbal and Casa Egerstrom. Barragán’s enactment is known for its vibrant color, emotive spaces and a plan connection inspired by Mexican vernacular, assemblage practice and Moroccan influences.

David Chipperfield (2023)

Museo Jumex creation depository successful Mexico City. (@FundacionJumex/Twitter)

British designer David Chipperfield designed the Museo Jumex successful Mexico City, his archetypal Latin American project. The museum’s minimalist travertine façade and monolithic signifier connection a infinitesimal of calm successful the municipality landscape. The depository promotes the production, treatment and dissemination of modern art.

Zaha Hadid (2004)

The Alai Towers, a projected improvement by British designer Zaha Hadid. (Dezeen)

The precocious Zaha Hadid, the archetypal pistillate to triumph the Pritzker Prize, developed respective visionary projects for Mexico, though nary were built. Her designs included the Bora Tower successful Mexico City, Esfera City Center successful Monterrey and Alai Towers successful Cancún. The Bora Tower, inspired by Frida Kahlo and Mexican taste motifs, was halted owed to permitting issues.

Mexico continues to prosecute with the planetary architectural assemblage done a dynamic blend of section and planetary talent. Though lone 1 Mexican designer has won the Pritzker Prize to date, the state remains fertile crushed for groundbreaking architecture. Figures specified arsenic Mario Pani, Ricardo Legorreta and a caller procreation of designers lend to Mexico’s presumption arsenic a hub for architectural innovation.

Ana Paula de la Torre is simply a Mexican writer and collaborator for assorted outlets including Milenio, Animal Político, Vice, Newsweek en Español, Televisa and Mexico News Daily.