墨西哥：历史与建筑

瓦妮莎·别尔马/Vanessa Vielma

黄华青 译/Translated by HUANG Huaqing

作者简介：建筑师，ArchDaily Mexico当地办公室主管/Architect, Local Office Leader, ArchDaily Mexico

1 特奥蒂瓦坎/Teotihuacaón

论及墨西哥当代建筑的发展，无疑是在讨论一个不同的历史片层、社会边界的熔炉，这个熔炉与直至今天我们所在的21 世纪初的墨西哥社会、历史及文化的各个层面及表征依然密切交织。这是一个新的挑战不断涌现的时刻，最主要的挑战便是如何定义新一代墨西哥人的身份；这是一个变迁的时刻，它与广泛的全球事件相关，同时又与我们的社会风俗及生活方式紧密相关、融为一体。

一开始有必要澄清，墨西哥的历史渊源便是各种各样的文化、民族及身份认同的联合体——远远不限于16 世纪初阿兹特克人与西班牙人交战后的历史。在这一历史性相遇之前，在墨西哥与今日美国相邻的地带——即所谓的中美洲——居住着超过100 种不同的文化，每一种都有其独特的建筑、艺术、社会、科学、军事和政治表达。例如玛雅人（公元前1500 年至300 年），拥有特色独具的建筑形式，如纪念性的高台、金字塔、神庙和石柱；又如阿兹特克人（8 世纪），他们的神庙具有宏大的纪念性，展现出对几何、对称及秩序感的高水平掌控，以此表达对神明的敬意。此外还有很多。同一时期，欧洲的伊比利亚半岛上，多种天主教、犹太教和穆斯林民族，以及西欧和中欧的若干帝国之间，正经历着社会、经济、文化和权力的重构。这是该地区历经近8 个世纪的阿拉伯统治而达到顶峰的时代；在此之前，各个民族的交锋已在伊比利亚半岛上创造了杰出的文化、艺术及建筑遗产。

所有这些文化与现实，都在今天所谓的“美洲大发现”（1492）找到了汇合点；紧接着就是西班牙人的“大征服”（1519），然后又经历了“总督辖区”的发展与整合阶段，最终在持续10 年的“独立战争”中达到顶峰。整个过程大约持续了3 个世纪，从1492-1519 年到1810-1821 年。在这一系列事件之前，该地区只目睹了一些民族和文化之间的相互统治及共存关系。而在这段整合期之后，我们方可称之为墨西哥。

与那些土著文明几乎遭遇灭绝的殖民进程（如北美洲的印第安人）有所不同，墨西哥是一个种族混合的独特案例，原因包括复杂的政治和军事联盟、宗教信仰，还包括各个文明与其自身的城市、基础设施、天然财富、贸易、科技的相遇，以及它与自然的亲密关系。这些联盟给各方都带来了好处，有的是为了获取财富，有的则是为了获取力量以对抗共同的敌人——阿兹特克帝国，后者当时统治着周边的若干个民族。在这些民族看来，新到来的欧洲人是一个消灭这个共同敌人的机会，这最终也让他们甘愿臣服于西班牙人的统治之下。

在方济各会的僧侣们试图在新大陆推广天主教信仰的过程中，他们发现最好的传教方式就是将上帝的信仰、天主教的仪式及图像与土著民族的自然信仰结合起来，这也导致了两种信仰体系的融合，至今依然具有生命力。

尽管大部分土著信仰体系中的神庙和相关构筑物都被拆除——其建筑材料被用于建造新的天主教堂和西班牙帝国统领下的政府建筑，但大部分基础设施和技术进步皆得到了利用。如今它们依然是墨西哥城中心的基础所在——包括连接各个次中心的道路网，以及为城市供应饮用水源的查普特佩克输水渠。

在西班牙人征服的每一块新领地和文化中，这一过程不断地重复——在施以新的权力结构的同时，也利用并整合地方的知识、资源和习俗。

这样的转变过程是充满冲突的，但也正是在这个阶段，“传统”诞生了——包括饮食、色彩、建筑、艺术、医学、音乐，还有很多我们今天认为是墨西哥“传统”的文化及社会表征。

墨西哥的建筑风格来自西班牙，当然也杂糅着显著的阿拉伯影响，并与当地人的材料、要素及风格相融合。这创生出一种独有的建筑表达，功能则适应于统治阶级的需求，如天主教会和总督政府。因此，第一批神庙及大型天主教堂的建造，塑造了新西班牙的巴洛克风格——繁缛的装饰是这一时期建筑风格的标志，来源于当地特殊的石材尺寸以及土著人如画的装饰母题，同时基于欧洲建筑的范式和教士的现场指挥。

墨西哥的城镇发展不断加速，很大程度上依靠着自然资源和金银矿的开发和攫取，当然还得益于这里极为有利的地缘位置，便于与美洲大陆其他地区及环太平洋地区建立移民和贸易路线。由此，这块新领地对于其他国家的吸引力不断增强，它与北边那片重要性不断提升的英帝国殖民地之间的关系也在逐步紧密。

因此，墨西哥在1821 年从西班牙帝国独立之前，业已生产出一种全新的艺术、文化、技术、社会、政治和宗教上的独特身份。

1821 年，刚刚形成并独立的墨西哥尚且处在政治权力的调解过程之中，前几十年一直深陷内战阴云。这导致了富裕阶层与贫穷阶层、乡村与城市之间的区隔。政府与教会的分离，同时诸如法国、英国和新近建立的美利坚合众国等国家不断试图影响和统治墨西哥，这带来了不断迭替的外来影响，另外也在织物、服饰、饮食、武器、艺术等方面塑造了全新的风格——尽管并不是某种明确定义的风格，但无疑受到了社会经济变迁的强烈影响。

1876 年，波费里奥·迪亚斯掌握政权，一直持续至1911 年，这一段30 余年的时期被称作“波费里奥时代”。这段时期的重要意义在于，迪亚斯决定开放国外投资，由此带来一段工业现代化以及铁路建设的时代；更关键的是，墨西哥开始接纳法国艺术、烹饪、风俗尤其是建筑风格，产生深远的影响。

To speak about the development of contemporary Mexican architecture, undoubtedly,is to speak about a melting pot of layers and edges intricately connected with every aspect and expression of Mexican society, history and culture until the first decades of the 21st century,in which we currently live. A moment in which the new challenge arises, a challenge to identify what this new Mexican identity could be, a moment of transition linked to world events at large, but also intimately linked to and blended with our customs and lifestyles.

It is important to start by clarifying that Mexico is born from the union of a wide variety of cultures, peoples and identities, beyond the history of the Aztecs vs. the Spaniards in the early sixteenth century. Before this encounter,in the territory where Mexico and part of the United States meet today, were the regions of Mesoamerica and Aridoamerica, populated by almost a hundred different cultures, each with its own architectural, artistic, social, scientific,military and political expressions. As is the case of the Mayan people (between 1500 and 300 BC) and its very characteristic architectural expressions such as ceremonial platforms, pyramids, temples,steles, as well as the Aztecs (8th century), who with the monumentality and grandeur of their temples mastered geometry, symmetry and sense of order and venerated their gods, only to name a couple.Meanwhile the European counterpart, the territory of the Iberian Peninsula was going through a period of social, economic, cultural and power restructuring between the various Catholic, Jewish and Muslim peoples as well with the kingdoms of Western and Central Europe. This is where a period of approximately eight centuries of Arab rule in this territory culminated, but not before leaving an incredible cultural, artistic and architectural legacy of the various interactions between these peoples.

All these cultures and realities, found their meeting point in what we now call "The Discovery of America" (1492), and then "The Conquest"(1519) by the Spaniards, going through their periods of evolution and integration during the"Viceroyalty" culminating in the ten years that "The War of Independence" lasted. This whole process continued for a period of approximately three centuries between 1492-1519 to 1810-1821. Before these events there were only a series of peoples and cultures trying to dominate each other and live together in the area. It is after this period of integration that we can talk about something called Mexico.

Unlike other conquest processes where the extermination of indigenous peoples was a reality as in the case of Native Americans in North America, the case of Mexico was that of a miscegenation due to a complex process of political and military alliances, religious beliefs and due to the encountering of entire civilisations with their own cities and infrastructure, natural wealth,commerce, technology and a close relationship with nature. These alliances had their conveniences from several sides, some were to obtain wealth and others to obtain power against a common enemy, as the great Aztec Empire, which had dominated the other nearby communities. By them the newly arrived Europeans were seen as an opportunity to end this enemy, which ultimately lead to them remaining under the dominion of the Spaniards.

During the process of the imposition of the Catholic faith by the Franciscan monks, it was found that the best way to do so was to integrate the beliefs in the gods of the indigenous peoples based on nature, with the Catholic rites and iconography,resulting in a syncretism between the two faiths that survives to this day.

Although many temples and structures dedicated to the deities of the indigenous peoples were destroyed in order to use their materials in the construction of the new Catholic temples and buildings for the government of the Spanish Crown,much of the infrastructure and technological progress was taken advantage of as well, and on which the centre of Mexico City is still based on,such as the network of roads that communicated between the different centres, or the road that contained the aqueduct of Chapultepec that supplied drinking water.

In each new territory and culture conquered by the Spaniards this process was repeated, an imposition of a new power structure, while taking advantage of and integrating local knowledge,resources and customs.

These transitions were conflicting, but it was during this period that traditions were born. The kitchen, the colours, the architecture, the art,the remedies, the music and many other cultural and social expressions that we today know as traditionally Mexican.

The architectural style was brought from Spain,which in turn had a great Arab influence, fusing the materials, elements and styles of local people,creating expressions of their own but with uses well defined by the main power groups such as the Catholic Church and the Viceroyalty government.And so the first temples and large cathedrals were built that gave rise to the Baroque style of New Spain, with the elaborate decoration being the hallmark of this architectural style, depending on the size of the stone and the pictorial decoration made by the natives, but based on European patterns and directed by the monks.

2 特奥蒂瓦坎/Teotihuacaón

这段影响墨西哥的法国建筑风格也被称作折衷主义建筑，因为它是多种风格的复兴，包括：欧洲诸美术学院派系、新艺术风格、装饰艺术风格、新古典主义风格、新哥特风格等等。繁复的装饰、倾斜的法式吊顶、石材、宽阔的墙面、高耸的室内、瓷片、大理石、花岗岩、铜制品、彩绘玻璃窗、雕刻菱形石、裸露或隐藏的柱式、垂直或开敞的山形墙、额枋、曲线檐口、阳台、浮雕、三角墙的泛用、宏大的门廊、带有盾牌或徽章的装饰板、柱头、室内家具和古典主义装饰、装饰的天花等等，都是该时期建筑的典型特征。

这些建筑的缔造者包括来自各个国家的建筑师，如法国、比利时、意大利、英国、美国等。该时期的代表人物包括阿达莫·博阿里（墨西哥城艺术宫的设计者）、埃米尔·伯纳德、马克西姆·罗生、希尔维奥·康特里、恩厄斯特·布鲁内尔。此外还有墨西哥本土的建筑师——其中大部分都曾在国外接受教育和训练，如曼努埃尔·奥蒂兹·蒙纳斯特里奥、贝尔纳多·卡尔德隆、伊纳西奥·马奎纳、费德里科·马里斯卡尔。最杰出的建筑师无疑是安东尼奥·里瓦斯·梅尔卡多和埃米利奥·东德。

海外投资、技术、新建筑和艺术风格的到来，帮助创造了城市中的新公司、新工坊，这又一次改变了社会结构，促进了农村到城市的移民活动。也正是在这一时期，艺术风格的表达开始发生变化；在过去几个世纪居统治地位的宗教建筑和艺术，随着政教分离而逐渐失去权力。教会的领地、财富和资产皆被收缴，在城市发展中逐步转变为公共机构和基础设施。新建的市民建筑则为那些从乡村迁徙到城市中寻找工作的新家庭提供居所。

农村生活开始转变为城市生活，手工作坊逐渐繁荣起来，很多商品可以通过更简便、快速和廉价的方式生产——如织物、鞋子、啤酒、甜品、雪茄、糖、纸、玻璃、油、爆炸物、水泥和各种化工产品。这导向了日常生活习惯、饮食、衣物和传统的变化，家庭生活在街区和小型社区中享有愈发重要的地位。

这些转变的发生并非没有后果。由于移民、政治冲突、土地所有权所导致的城市经济和社会不平等，以及大部分墨西哥农村地区的日益贫困，墨西哥在1910 年爆发革命，于1917 年终结了“波费里奥时代”。这一历史事件几乎与俄国革命和第一次世界大战同时发生。

3 瓜达卢佩大教堂（殖民时期）/Basílica de Guadalupe(colonial)

4 墨西哥城艺术宫，阿达莫·博亚里/Palacio de Bellas Artes,Adamo Boari

墨西哥的社会剧变也引发了一场以社会运动为核心的艺术革命，例如由迭戈·里维拉、大卫·阿尔法洛·西凯罗斯、何塞·克莱门特·奥罗斯科等一群壁画家所领导的艺术运动，胡安·奥戈尔曼等功能主义者倡导的新建筑风格，还有将地域建筑与现代建筑相融合的建筑风格——如广受认可的路易斯·巴拉甘的作品。

在这一轮政治调整和经济增长之中，诸如墨西哥城、瓜达拉哈拉等城市的扩张与现代化进程造就了艺术创造和现代主义建筑的高产期，法国、比利时和英国的影响十分明显，来自这些国家（还包括美国）的工业产品的影响也渗透到1920-1930 年代的城市生活之中。

在这个10 年，西班牙内战与第二次世界大战的阴云正在欧洲上空积聚；1938 年墨西哥开采石油之后，引发整个国家的经济大增长，也吸引了很多欧洲艺术家和建筑师移民至此，包括来自包豪斯学派的建筑师——1939 年，包豪斯的第二任校长汉斯·梅耶移民墨西哥，带来了全新的建筑思潮。

包豪斯的前卫理念导向功能主义建筑思潮，他们认为建筑必须适应于人及其活动——与过去一直以来的做法恰恰相反——功能和材料成本比外在的美观更受重视。墨西哥最早的功能主义住宅是由建筑师胡安·奥戈尔曼、壁画家迭戈·里维拉和弗里达·卡洛设计建造的。

哈利斯科学派是这一系列社会政治运动中一条来自乡村的路径，路易斯·巴拉甘（至今为止墨西哥唯一的普利兹克奖获得者）成功地将空间形式与墨西哥及地中海国家（西班牙、摩洛哥等）的乡土建筑传统进行融合，整合了大规模建造的形式语言、独特的材质、浓烈的色彩、丰富的光影营造，为国际上的极简主义风格带去了新的视野。哈利斯科学派的杰出代表还有费尔南多·冈萨雷斯·科塔萨尔——他采取混凝土形式及材料模拟乡土建筑的风格化塑造更为极致。

5 工作室住宅，弗里达·卡洛、迭戈·里维拉和胡安·奥戈尔曼/Casa Estudio, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Juan O'Gorman

The growth of towns and cities was accelerated,in large part due to the extraction of natural resources and gold and silver mining, as well as the beneficial geographical position of the territory for establishing migration and trade routes to the rest of the continent and the Pacific Ocean, increasing the attractiveness of this new territory for other countries, in addition to its latent relationship with the increasingly important colonies of the British Crown in the north.

Thus, Mexico, before its independence from the Spanish Crown in 1821, was already exposed and producing a new artistic, cultural, technological,social, political and religious identity.

In 1821 the newly formed and independent Mexico was still in a process of adjustments of politics and power, with internal wars in its first decades of existence. This lead to a quite marked segregation of social groups between the rich and the poor, the countryside and the city. The separation between the government and the church,as well as other countries, such as France's, the United Kingdom's and the newly formed United States of America's attempts to influence and dominate Mexico lead to an exchange of influences from one side and to other, as well as to the production of new styles in textiles, clothing, food,weapons and art, without having a defined style,but undoubtedly influenced by the strong socioeconomic changes.

In the year 1876 Porfirio Díaz came to power and remained there until 1911, that is, for more than thirty years naming the period that would be called the "Porfiriato". This period of time was crucial due to Díaz deciding to open the country to foreign investment, to a process of industrial modernisation, to the arrival of the railroad and,above all, to the adoption and profound influence of the French style of art, cooking, customs and especially architecture.

This influence of the French style in architecture is also considered as eclectic architecture because it recovers several styles: the currents of European fine art schools, art nouveau, art deco, neoclassical,neo-gothic, etc. Ornamentation, sloping Frenchstyle ceilings, stone materials, wide walls, interior heights, ceramics, marbles, granite, bronze, stainedglass windows, carved quarry, exposed or embedded columns, vertical or open gables, architraves, curved cornices, balconies, floating segments, abundance of pediments, large portals, boards with shields or symbols, capitals, interior furniture and classic decoration, decorated ceilings and ornamentation are all typical to buildings of this period.

Architects of different nationalities were in charge of the production of this architecture, be it French, Belgian, Italian, English or American. Among the highlights of the period was Adamo Boari (Palacio de Bellas Artes), Emile Bernard, Maxime Roisin,Silvio Contri and Ernest Brunel. But there were also Mexican architects, most of them had been trained abroad, such as Manuel Ortiz Monasterio, Bernardo Calderón, Ignacio Marquina and Federico Mariscal.The most prominent were undoubtedly Antonio Rivas Mercado and Emilio Dondé.

The arrival of foreign industries, technology,and new architectural and artistic styles helped the creation of companies and workshops in the cities,changing social structures again, and increasing the migration from the countryside to the city. It is during this moment that artistic expressions began to change; the architecture and religious art so dominant in the previous centuries now lost power due to the division of the government and the church. The territories, wealth and property were expropriated to turn them into public equipment and infrastructure for the growing cities. Civil architecture was making its way to receive new families that migrated from the countryside to the city in search of work.

Rural life began to transform into urban life and crafts and workshops gained strength, giving a new face to what could be produced in a simpler,faster and cheaper ways, such as fabrics, shoes,beers, sweets, cigars , sugar, paper, glass, oils, soaps,explosives, cement and various chemicals. This lead to the changing of daily habits, food, clothing and traditions, and family life gaining even more strength in neighborhoods and small communities.

This period of adjustments could not happen without consequences. Because of economic and social inequality in cities due to migration, political conflicts, land ownership, increasing poverty in the countryside in a mostly rural Mexico, triggered the Mexican revolution in 1910, marking the end of the"Porfiriato", ending in 1917, a historical moment almost coinciding with the Russian Revolution and the First World War.

This important moment of change in Mexican society helped to detonate a whole artistic creation taking the social movements as a centre, such as the one promoted by the group of muralists, Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco, among others, and the new architectural styles of the Functionalists such as Juan O'Gorman and the integrations between regional and modern architecture as the widely recognised work of Luis Barragán.

During a period of adjustments and economic growth, the expansion and modernisation of cities such as Mexico City and Guadalajara brought about a proliferation in terms of artistic production and modernist architectural styles with French, Belgian and British influences, as well as industries of these countries and from the USA, which during the 1920s and 1930s were reflected in urban life.

During this decade, the Spanish Civil War and World War II were brewing in Europe; and in 1938 the Expropriation of Petroleum occurred in Mexico,which was a moment of economic growth for the country, attracting the migration of many European artists and architects from the Bauhaus school giving way to the birth of new schools promoted by Hannes Meyer, the 2nd director of Bauhaus who arrived in Mexico in 1939.

The functionalist movement emerges from the avant-garde principles of Bauhaus, which indicated that the buildings must adapt to people and their activities rather than vice versa, as it almost always had been, affirming that the function and price of materials are valued more than beauty, and so the first functionalist house in Mexico was built by the architect and muralist Juan O'Gorman for Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.

6 吉拉迪住宅，路易斯·巴拉甘/Casa Gilardi, Luis Barragán

这一波新的文化交流，不再像500 年前那样，来自本地人与欧洲人之间的暴力冲突与统治，而是源于新涌现的文化社群与其他文化社群的相遇，他们发现了富饶的体验土壤，从而在现存建筑基础上进行创造、而非毁灭它，由此在艺术、哲学、建筑、电影、摄影、广播和电视等领域发展出全新的表达与合作形式。

技术、汽车、广播、电视、电影、新工业设计、新产业和新材料，代表了在理性主义和国际化运动影响下的新走向。这也塑造了该时期的建筑趋势，即整个墨西哥都希望搭上新经济的快车，尤其是采纳新的超级大国输出的文化浪潮。这一次，信仰体系或生活方式不再需要外力强加，整个国家只想要赶紧接纳。

随着新的生活方式的采纳，同时得到拉丁美洲石油业繁荣所激发的经济增长的支持，墨西哥和巴西成为该时期世界眼中拉丁美洲的代表。同时，墨西哥城在几年内经历了极高速的人口增长，而建筑业的速度并不能与之匹配。尽管私人的建造活动持续进行，但也很有必要开启系列化的整体开发。个人化的建筑表达变得愈发罕见，或者说是集中在一些为特定社会团体工作的建筑师身上。

现代主义，包括其理性主义原则以及国际风格的前卫思潮，随着一批建筑师传入墨西哥——这批建筑师包括特奥多罗·冈萨雷斯·德·莱昂、奥古斯丁·赫尔南德兹·纳瓦罗、阿布拉罕·萨布鲁多夫斯基·克拉维斯基、胡安·索尔多·马达雷诺、马里奥·帕尼等等。其中，马里奥·帕尼可视为这一建筑发展进程的重要参照，他最受认可的作品是一系列住宅公寓，代表作包括阿莱曼总统城市中心、诺阿尔科·特拉特洛尔科城市综合体。

大尺度建筑也在墨西哥的第一座摩天楼中得到表达——拉丁美洲大厦，由建筑师奥古斯都·H·阿瓦雷兹设计，高183m、45 层，它也成为墨西哥城最具标志性的建筑之一，凝聚着来自美国的资本主义意识形态——即为了地块价值最大化而竭力征服天空。这栋摩天楼从其建成的1956 年起，一直把持着墨西哥城的制高点，直至1972 年被世界贸易中心大厦超越——后者由吉约姆·罗塞尔·德·拉·拉玛、华金·阿瓦雷兹·奥多内兹、拉蒙·米凯拉贾雷吉设计，也是当时美国之外的世界最高楼，当然也是拉丁美洲的最高楼。

1990 年代，随着墨西哥、美国、加拿大之间签署《北美自由贸易协定》、墨西哥通讯网络的改良、因特网等技术的大规模商用，墨西哥与世界之间打开了一扇新的窗口，可以接触到更多的教育、知识、投资、市场和工作机会。同时，里卡多·列戈瑞达也以其在实验室、工厂、宾馆、博物馆中所运用的地域性后现代风格及宏伟尺度，在墨西哥建筑史上奠定了很高的地位。

第一波国际化思潮抵达墨西哥时遭到了无视，因为彼时的墨西哥正处在一段完全专注于内部生产的时代。而随着欧洲的复苏，建筑教育及行业实践达到了极高的品质，城市也在危机和机遇并存之中得到改造，艺术、建筑和设计也进入了新的轨道。

这时，墨西哥的新一代建筑师、艺术家和设计师希望能逃离国内的颓靡。从1990 年代中叶至21世纪初，他们纷纷移民欧洲、美国以寻求职业化学位，在“明星建筑师体系”中寻找工作机会，沉浸在一切可能接近新思潮的体验之中。如今，人的“入侵”和新的沃土出现在了世界的另一端。

这一代墨西哥建筑师经过几十年的训练，逐步发展出对其自身文化和传统的重新定位，同时辅以可观的全球视野和知识储备。

这在过去10 年的建筑、城市、织物、时尚、电影、烹饪、设计和艺术生产中已见端倪。墨西哥的祖辈父辈们的材料、颜色、质感、味觉、品性、神性、环境、技术和传统都得到复苏和挪用，清晰地体现在这些新作品之中；这些作品不仅贴近本土，也并未忽视当代世界的社会、技术和经济语境。

2019 年的当代墨西哥建筑师，不再仅作为一名建筑师，而是新墨西哥身份的探索者——这种身份是他们与生俱来、持续生活于其中的，建筑只是其中一种表征形式。他们这样一群人，每天都在扪心自问：“什么是今天的墨西哥？”□

7 圣·克里斯特博马厩与住宅，路易斯·巴拉甘/Cuadra San Cristoobal, Luis Barragaon（1-7摄影/Photos: ©Rodrigo Flores）

The Jalisco School was a proposal of those socio-political movements demanded by the country, Luis Barragán (the only Mexican Pritzker Prize winner so far) managed to combine the shape of space with forms of vernacular rural architecture of Mexico and Mediterranean countries (Spain-Morocco), integrating a formal language of massive volumes, marked textures, bright colours, light and shadow management in different shades,opening a view towards international minimalism.Other outstanding exponents of the Jalisco School are Fernando González Cortázar with a greater stylisation of concrete forms and materials resembling vernacular architecture.

This new cultural exchange no longer occurred due to violence and domination between indigenous and European peoples as five hundred years before,but rather because a new wave of cultural groups met another wave of cultural groups and found fertile ground to experience, working from the existing architecture without destroying it and developing new forms of expression and collaboration in art,philosophy, architecture, cinema, photography, radio and television.

Technology, the automobile, the radio, the television, cinema, new industrial design and new industries and materials marked new trends influenced by rationalism and the international movement. This marked the architectural trend in Mexico, since the country wanted to get on the new economic, and above all, cultural wave marked by the new superpowers. This time there was no imposition of a belief system or a lifestyle, this time the country wanted to adopt it.

With the adoption of this new lifestyle, growth and economic model supported by an oil boom of a vibrant Latin America, Mexico and Brazil was leading this image in the eyes of the world. But at the same time the rapid population growth of Mexico City accumulated in a few years an excessive contingent of inhabitants without the construction industry following a parallel rhythm.Although private architectural production continued to develop it was necessary to start with serial developments. Individual architectural expression become increasingly rarer or were concentrated in architects working for certain social groups.

Modernism, the principles of rationalism and the avant-garde tendencies of international schools of architecture arrived with architects such as Teodoro González de León, Agustín Hernández Navarro, Abraham Zabludovsky Kraveski, Juan Sordo Madaleno and Mario Pani among others,the latter being a great reference of these serial developments and mostly recognised for the design of multifamily housing complexes, the most iconic being Centro Urbano Presidente Alemán CUPA and the Nonoalco Tlatelolco Urban Complex.

The large-scale architecture also found representation with the first skyscraper in Mexico, Torre Latinoamericana designed by the architect Augusto H. Álvarez with a height of 183 metres and 45 floors, becoming one of the most emblematic buildings in Mexico City in the fight for the conquest of the heavens taking full advantage of the lot, a capitalist ideology from the United States. It remained the tallest building in the city from its construction in 1956 until 1972,the year in which the World Trade Centre Tower designed by Guillermo Rossell de la Lama, Joaquín Álvarez Ordóñez and Ramón Miquelajauregui was completed; which obtained the highest skyscraper record in the world outside the United States and therefore in Latin America.

For the 1990s with the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Mexico, the United States and Canada, the improvement of telecommunications networks,greater commercial access to internet connections for the majority of the population and access to technology, a new window was opened to the world that created access to new opportunities for education, knowledge, investment, markets and work. At this moment Ricardo Legorreta already stood out in the history of architecture in Mexico with his works such as laboratories, factories, hotels and museums of regional postmodern style and monumental scale.

The first sketches of a globalised world confronted Mexico in the face of a reality that it had ignored as it entered a period dictated solely by internal production. A recovered Europe, with an education and architectural production of the highest quality, with cities transformed based on crises and opportunities, now set the course in terms of art, architecture and design.

Mexican architects, artists and designers, now wanted to get out of their lethargy and in the mid- late 1990s and early 2000s, this new generations began to migrate to Europe and the US in search of postgraduate degrees, job opportunities in the "star system" and to soak up all the possible experiences that would allow them to approach these new trends. Now the invasion and the new fertile land were sought from the other side.

With those couple of decades of training of these generations of Mexican architects lead them to find a renewed revaluation of their culture, their traditions, complemented by their global knowledge.

This can be observed in the architectural, urban,textile, fashion, film, kitchen, design and artistic production of the last decade. Works where the recovery and appropriation of materials, colours,textures, flavors, nature, spirituality, environment,techniques and traditions of the Mexico of their grandparents, great grandparents, families and friends, is explicitly expressed by the authors, still easily approachable due to its proximity, all the while without neglecting the contemporary social,technological and economic context.

The contemporary Mexican architect of 2019 is no longer defined only by being an architect, but by being a seeker of that new identity of Mexico in which they were born and where they live, where architecture is only one of their forms of expression.It is somebody who every day asks themselves"What is Mexico today?"□