谜样墨西哥

张利/ZHANG Li

作者单位：清华大学建筑学院/《世界建筑》

奥克塔维奥·帕斯在他恢弘的作品《孤独之迷境》中对墨西哥的民族性给予了诗意的剖析。在自豪与哀惋并存的语言中，他指出，在每一个墨西哥灵魂的深处都存在一种难以言表的神秘孤独。当然，对一个既欢庆又抵触死亡、既拥抱又拒绝集体纪念性、既自我歌颂又自我否定的民族来说，这种谜一样的孤独心性是确实存在的。

墨西哥建筑同样体现着这种谜样的心性。

墨西哥建筑是幸福与哀伤的聚合。没有哪国国民像墨西哥人在亡灵节上那样颂扬亡故。没有哪个国家像墨西哥那样既以无比明媚的色彩空间记录所沐浴的（亚）热带阳光，又在这种空间记录中植入徜徉内外的焦虑与忧伤。没有哪个城市像墨西哥城那样既以极端的纪念性尺度，又以极端的水平性延展，来诠释聚居的超大程度。墨西哥城独一无二的现实主义城市形态来自并作用于它同样独一无二的人口构成，它嘲讽任何一套被理论家建立起来的现代城市化原则——无论这些原则是乌托邦式的，还是废托邦式的，还是仅仅是实用主义式的——作为一个标志性的谜题，墨西哥城自身至今仍然等待着当代城市研究者来进行令人信服的破解。

墨西哥建筑是信仰与韧性的聚合。现代墨西哥是建立在一个由令人眼花缭乱的文明兴溃、生灵福祸所构成的历史上的，它独享着一种在其他地方罕见的现象：在一系列的宗教信仰与社会形态更迭中，虽然后面的信仰或体系不停地以戏剧性的变革迭代前面的，但它们似乎在更大的层面上进行一种不间断的对墨西哥文化基底的加深。这里面有阿兹特克人、萨巴特克人、米斯特克人，也有基督教徒；这里面有殖民者、现代主义者、资本投机者，也有社会改良者；每一人群的集体信仰都在墨西哥建筑历史上留下不可忽视的明确足迹——但从来不完全覆盖其前的，而只是形成足够强大的振动与涟漪， 从而不停地对周知于世的“墨西哥式”建筑语汇进行拓展。

墨西哥建筑是对全球性与地域性的聚合。与绝大部分发展中国家不同，墨西哥从来不简单地对来自西方国家的建筑明星和他们招牌手法的产品喝彩。当一个作品与其所在的文化基底融会贯通时，我们看到墨西哥人发自内心的拥趸——比如佩德罗·拉米雷斯-巴斯克斯的墨西哥国家人类学博物馆得到公众的广泛热爱。当一个作品令人失望地表现出傲慢和轻狂时，我们看到墨西哥人毫不犹豫的拒绝——比如近期诺曼·福斯特的墨西哥城新机场工程因其对环境的无视和可耻的造价而被新任总统洛佩斯果断叫停。更重要的是，当这个国家的建筑师长期以来已经形成了思考与实验的传统，我们还看到了来自整个墨西哥当代建筑师群体的不倦自省的见证。像瓦哈卡会展中心这样的建筑是无法用任何简化的归类或定性来描述的，它们既诚实谦恭又欢愉洋溢，既不容质疑的传统又争先恐后的现代，既在技术上成熟持守又在工法上激进创新。

墨西哥建筑曾经是，现在还是，以后也将继续是一个激动人心的、同时错综盘旋的美学实体。没有什么比路易斯·巴拉甘的话能对这一谜样的美学实体给我们更多的提示了。他在第二届普利兹克奖的获奖演说上，曾充满诗意但又略带忧郁地说道：

“所有的哲人在试图对‘美’一字的真正意义进行定义时，都将最终面临无法逾越的障碍。这正是‘美’的不可言表的神秘。而没有美，人生只是有名无实的。”

特别感谢ArchDaily 的创始人戴维·巴苏尔托，他使本期专辑成为可能。□

In his epic essay The Labyrinth of Solitude, Octavio Paz gave a poetic dissection of the Mexican identity. He argued, not without lament and pride at the same time, that there is a mysterious solitude beneath every Mexican soul. Indeed, to a people who both celebrate and repel death, a country that both embraces and evades collective monumentality, and a nation that celebrates both self-denial and self-esteem, the enigma of that solitude truly holds.

It holds for Mexican architecture as well.

Mexican architecture is a fusion of happiness and sadness.No other nation celebrates death as the Mexicans do on the Day of the Dead. No other nation embraces the (sub)tropical sunshine with such a display of voluptuous urban colour and power yet encoding the spaces in it with such lingering anxiety and powerlessness. No other city like the Mexico City interprets density with both the extremely monumental and the extremely horizontal. Its unique realistic urbanism, coming from and working for its equally unique demography, mocks all the established principles of modern urbanisation, utopian or dystopian or utilitarian, and still remains a puzzle to be deciphered by urbanists around the world.

Mexican architecture is a fusion of faith and resilience.Built upon a dazzling history of rises and falls of civilisations, of booms and catastrophes, modern Mexico enjoys a situation that is seldomly found elsewhere: the iteration of drastically different beliefs and systems working on a replay, constantly increasing the intellectual depth of the cultural backdrop of the nation.The Aztecs, Zapotecs, Mixtecs, Christians; the Colonialists,Modernists, Capitalists, Socialists; each group managed to leave a remarkable ideological footprint along the architecture story of the country, never entirely overtaking the previous one or all the previous ones, just generating enough shake and oscillation,just continuing to broaden the vocabulary of architecture that is known as "Mexican".

Mexican architecture is a fusion of the global and the local. Unlike most developing nations, the Mexican never brag about the glamour of western star architects and metoo-ish materialisations of their signature styles. We see acknowledgement and celebration when a work aligns coherently with the rich cultural substrate upon which it is made, such as the public enthusiasm for Pedro Ramírez-Vásquez's National Museum of Anthropology. We see rejection and condemnation when a work fails out of sheer arrogance and carelessness, such as President López Obrador's decisive overhaul of Norman Foster's environmentally atrocious and shamefully expensive New Airport.Moreover, we see the built testimonies of the infinite reflection of Mexican architects. Buildings like the Oaxaca Convention Centre deny every attempt of simple profiling and labelling.They are honest but joyously expressive. They are distinctively linked to tradition yet radically modern. They are technologically conventional yet tectonically endlessly imaginative.

Mexican architecture was, is, and will continue to be a thrilling enigma of convoluted beauty. No better words can give us more hint than the melancholic, yet poetic lines of Luis Barragán, presented in his acceptance speech of the second Pritzker Prize and still whispering in our ears:

"The invincible difficulty that the philosophers have in defining the meaning of this word, beauty, is unequivocal proof of its ineffable mystery. Human life, deprived of beauty, is not worthy of being called so."

Our special thanks to David Basulto, founding partner of ArchDaily, who has made this special number possible.□