Las casas del Pedregal, 1947-1968

by Alfonso Pérez-Méndez

"The Fifties were a golden age for Latin American modern architecture. The buildings constructed according to the premises of the modernist movement in several countries of Latin America probably surpassed, as much in amount as in quality, the ones from contemporary experiences in the rest of the world. A good example is in México and the work that Lus Barragán carried out in the Pedregal of San Angel, a portion of ancestral volcanic landscape in which was then the outskirts of Mexico City. Here there were the several hundred modern houses of exceptional quality made by a varied group of architects in the physical context defined by Barragán. These pages revisit the Pedregal and they are concentrated in the study of the domestic architecture that arose there, proposing an historical reflection that arising from the sociological phenomenon of their commercial success. Documenting in detail 57 of the houses - with abundant material from archive, historical photographs and new informat