One among Luis Barragán’s best masterpieces—an enormous pink-walled hacienda on the outskirts of Mexico Metropolis—will from August turn out to be a centre for structure and artwork. La Cuadra San Cristobal will embody a everlasting exhibition concerning the life and work of Mexico’s best-known architect, plus gallery areas, artists’ studios, a library, present store and café.
The mission is the brainchild of the Mexican architect Fernando Romero, who says Barragán (1902-88) was his largest affect as a younger pupil. “My greatest training was visiting Barragán’s work,” he says. “And now I hope this mission will imply we will share his extraordinary legacy much more extensively.”
The mission, seven years within the making, goals to marry structure and artwork in the identical means Barragán did in his lifetime. “It’s an echo of the connection he himself had with artists, together with Mathias Goeritz [with whom he designed the urban sculpture Torres de Satélite] and Dr Atl, who we name the Mexican Van Gogh,” Romero says. La Cuadra will embody an artist residency programme and momentary exhibitions.
Marina Abramović spurs launch
Mexico Metropolis Artwork Week in early February noticed La Cuadra’s inaugural inventive collaboration, with Marina Abramović, who spent two days making a movie there, her first work in Mexico because the Nineteen Nineties. An annual “artist expertise” can be an ongoing aspect of La Cuadra, and Abramović’s contribution included an intervention for invited friends and a panel dialogue.
Marina Abramović intervention at La Cuadra Picture: Fabian Martinez
Barragán, the foremost Mexican architect of the twentieth century, mixed custom and Modernism to supply buildings each of their second and timeless. Born in Guadalajara, he travelled extensively in Europe earlier than returning to Mexico Metropolis, the place he labored in new neighbourhoods together with Cuauhtémoc, Roma and Condesa earlier than shifting on to the work for which he’s greatest identified, Casa Luis Barragán, his residence for 4 a long time and now a museum and Unesco World Heritage web site. Different masterpieces embrace his Capuchin Convent Chapel in Tlalpan, in addition to La Cuadra San Cristobal, which he designed within the late Nineteen Sixties for the Egerström household, from whom the Fernando Romero Basis bought the property in 2024. The 30,000 sq. m web site consists of the primary home, gardens, a plaza, swimming pool, stables and even a pool for the horses.
Abramović’s new movie entails horses, however the equestrian aspect is just one uniting issue between the efficiency artist and the architect. “Marina’s concentrate on peace and ending violence connects her to Barragán, who like her had silence and humanity on the core of his work,” Romero says. “We couldn’t consider anybody higher than her for this mission.”
Exterior courtyard and stables at La Cuadra Picture by Yannik Wegner.Courtesy of Fundación Fernando Romero.
For Romero, that is one other main landmark mission for Mexico Metropolis. He designed the Museo Soumaya, dwelling to greater than 66,000 works together with the most important Rodin assortment exterior France, and objects starting from pre-Hispanic items to European Renaissance works to work by the Mexican muralists. The museum opened in its present location in 2011, having been inbuilt tribute to Romero’s late mother-in-law Soumaya Domit, who was the spouse of enterprise magnate Carlos Slim, the richest individual in Latin America.
Romero’s studio can also be behind tasks together with El Salvador’s deliberate Bitcoin Metropolis and Aeropuerto Internacional del Pacifico.
The primary section of the reimagined La Cuadra will open in August, consisting of a everlasting exhibition specializing in Barragán’s life and together with maquettes and drawings. Romero says he hopes La Cuadra will turn out to be “a dynamic cultural hub that encourages new prospects on the intersection of artwork and structure” and says that whereas no determine is being launched for the price of the mission, the ambition is that it’ll break even inside seven to 10 years of opening.
La Cuadra San Cristobal is because of open absolutely in October
