Luis Barragán

Luis Barragán Morfin Ramiro ( born March 9, 1902 in Guadalajara, † November 22, 1988 in Mexico City ) is known mostly as Luis Barragan, was a Mexican architect whose life's work in 1980 with the Pritzker Prize for architecture, one of the world's most prestigious architectural awards, was honored.

Life

Luis Barragán was the third of nine children at the hacienda of Corrales in Guadalajara. His parents were wealthy landowners who were expropriated in 1935 under Lázaro Cárdenas. He was educated in Catholic schools and was a lifelong devout Catholic. He studied from 1919 to 1923 at the Escuela Libre de Ingenieros in Guadalajara engineering. 1925-1927 he made ​​an extensive study tour of Europe. He was interested primarily for the Moorish architecture in southern Spain, the Mediterranean European architecture, the gardens of the painter Ferdinand Bac and the theoretical writings of Le Corbusier. He attended the International Exhibition of Arts Decoratifs held in Paris in 1925. In 1931, he traveled via Chicago and New York, where he met Frederick Kiesler, a second time to Europe. Here he became acquainted with Le Corbusier and Ferdinand Bac.

His early designs were influenced by his experiences in Europe and North America and converging rapidly to the international style. But even Japanese influences he picked up. 1935 moved Barragán from Guadalajara to Mexico City, and devoted himself, from the 1940s to the exploration and development of urban residential areas, such as the Jardines del Pedregal settlement in the south of Mexico City. Here he bought on 1944 323 ha of a lava field of the volcano Xitle and put on a new housing estate. Barragán worked with the Mexican painter Jesus Reyes Fereira who was particularly interested in the traditional Mexican architecture. The gardens with swimming pools and lawns were integrated directly into the lava flows, provided the rock with a maximum of stairs. The smooth walls of the houses were painted at the suggestion of Reyes Fereira in bold colors, which later became Barragán trademark. The houses had large patios and panoramic windows. When planting, he used preferably native plants, such as pines, mimosa, jacaranda and the cactus Senecio praecox. The walls of the houses were overgrown with climbing plants. The photographs of Armando Salas Portugal made ​​the modernist investment world famous. 1958 bought Barragán country in the future suburb Arboledas on. He designed houses and gardens, which he successfully sold after construction. There were systems in which the wealthy owner could also keep horses with stables, Roßschwemmen, potions, riding trails and pastures. Subsequently, he developed Les Clubes ( 1961-1972 ). Here, the Folke Egeström House was the best known. The pool was fed by higher broad shallow gullies, another hallmark Barragán. The house was white, the rectangular walls of the large stables in dark red, orange, magenta, and kept bright red.

Known about the professional world made ​​him a number of apartment buildings and equipment, which are characterized by a minimalist design language and the expressive use of color. Barragan joined as modern architecture with a regional artistic tradition.

Barragán always looked for the exchange with other intellectuals and artists and has worked since the beginning of his professional work closely with photographers. As an important partner accompanied and documented the Mexican photographer Armando Salas Portugal, the work of Luis Barragán decades congenial manner. Together with the emigrated from Germany artist Mathias Goeritz Barragán created the Torres Satélite ( 1957-58 ), a large urban sculpture in the middle of a main artery of Mexico City.

Importance

Barragán had great influence on the modern architectural tradition of Mexico, but also to contemporary garden design. He is considered the " master of the emotional architecture". Its gardens are characterized by his attention to the relationship between house and landscape. The main influences are Islamic gardens, especially the Moorish gardens of Spain and the International style in architecture, in particular the work of Le Courbusiers. In most of his gardens water is a defining element of design ( rectangular ponds, straight channels, which receive the subject of Islamic Chahar Bāgh and waterfalls), to (red, blue and white usually) the iconic rectangular part walls that are plastered in bright primary colors come and the design rule. The plant spectrum is dominated by Mediterranean species, but Barragán also used Australian species such as eucalyptus and numerous plants from the arid regions of the Neotropics.

Barragan's walls were taken up by modern garden designers such as Christopher Bradley - Hole again.

Awards

In 1996 Birsfelden is the Barragan Foundation resident who managed his estate.

Buildings (selection)

Gardens

• Plaza del Bebedreo de los Caballos, Los Arboledas (Mexico ), 1961.
• Well " Campbell Divertimento " built in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, posthumously

Exhibitions

• " Luis Barragan. The silent revolution ". Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein 2000.

Literature (selection )

• Jose M. Buendia Julbez, Juan Palomar, Guillermo Eguiarte, The Life and Work of Luis Barragan 1902-1988. Rizzoli 1997. ISBN 978-0-8478-2057-3
• René Burri: Luis Barragan, Phaidon, London 2000, ISBN 0-7148-9082-0. .
• Keith L. Eggener, Luis Barragan 's Gardens of El Pedregal. Princeton, Princeton Architectural Press, 2011. ISBN 978-1-56898-267-0
• Adolf K. Placzek: Macmillan Encyclopedia of Architects. Volume 1, The Free Press, London 1982, ISBN 0-02-925000-5.
• Danièle Pauly: Barragán Space and Shadow, Walls and Colour, Birkhäuser 2002, ISBN 3-7643-6678-8.
• Raul Rispa (ed.): Barragan - The Complete Works, Princeton Architectural Press 2003, ISBN 1-56898-322-0.
• Dennis Sharp: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Architects and Architecture, Quatro Publishing, New York, 1991, ISBN 0-8230-2539- X.
• Wim van den Bergh, Kim Zwarts: Luis Barragán: The Embodied Eye, Pale Pink Publishers, Maastricht 2006, ISBN 9081008919th
• Federica Zanco (ed.): Luis Barragán - The Silent Revolution, Ginko Press 2001, ISBN 88-8118-779-5 ( also published in English, Spanish and Japanese).

Movie Documentary

• Guido de Bruyn: Luis Barragan - The Quiet Revolution, documentary film.