Mexican architects have spent more than five decades folding ancient building principles into modern construction. Curator and writer Su Wu has documented the trend in her book on mesoamerican modern architecture, and she selected five houses from it for Dezeen.
Her book, Mesoamerican Modern: Ancient Ideas in Contemporary Mexican Homes, covers projects from the 1970s to the present. The focus is residential architecture.
Wu chose the term “Mesoamerican” over “pre-Columbian” on purpose. She wanted to show that the monumentality and logic of ancient Mexican building did not stop when colonization began.
“I think these homes show instead that rather than being relegated to the past, these Mesoamerican materials, techniques, typologies, and forms are alive in the present and also perhaps inspiration or guides for the future.”
Wu also draws a line between surface and substance. Many projects in mesoamerican modern architecture borrow symbols. The book focuses on projects that take up the underlying logic of the buildings, including features such as patios that structure the plan.
“For me, the most defining characteristics of Mesoamerican architecture are the ones that reflect underlying principles, rather than the disjunction when symbols become separated from their meaning,” Wu said.
She points to recurring ideas: light and shadow used as physical material, houses aligned to natural features, and the continued presence of craft and handmade work. Each brings an expanded sense of beauty with it.
Wu’s houses treat the jungle as a partner rather than a backdrop, and Casa del Loro: Birds Roaming a Yucatecan Jungle shows how far that idea can be pushed in a single family home.
Mesoamerican modern architecture in practice
Casa Amalia by Agustín Hernández, 1973
Architect Agustín Hernández designed this house in 1973 for his sister Amalia, who founded Mexico City’s Ballet Folklórico. Wu counts it among the few 20th-century homes in the Mesoamerican Modern canon.
Hernández was also a poet. Wu says he wrote most often about the geometric and cosmic principles behind Mesoamerican architecture, and about what he called the “mathematical, almost symphonic rhythm” of its structures and cities.
The house draws on two sources. Its convex forms echo seashells, and its prominent ocular motifs refer to Mesoamerican imagery.
Casa Mobius by Ernesto Gómez Gallardo, 1974
Ernesto Gómez Gallardo built this house in 1974 for his own family. It stands in the San Jerónimo neighborhood of Mexico City and now serves as the studio and home of ceramicist Perla Valtierra. It remains one of the most unusual works of mexican architecture from its decade.
The plan loosely resembles a Möbius strip. A triangular lattice lets spaces fold into one another, and the living room cantilevers outward. Wu notes that the house rethinks both volumes and room types, and that few of its rooms are square.
The furniture is eclectic, with Japanese, Brazilian, and Mexican pieces. One chair was originally designed for the Museo Experimental El Eco in Mexico City, founded by Matthias Goeritz, a close friend and frequent collaborator of Luis Barragán.
Casa Terreno by Fernanda Canales, 2018
Canales built this house in the state of Mexico on land that cattle overgrazing had badly damaged. She reclaimed the site and laid out a series of interlocking patios.
Architect Teodoro González de León once described the patio as a defining feature of the Mesoamerican home. It is enclosed and open to the sky at once. Wu notes that the patios here have deliberately loose functions, so the house gains usable space without adding built volume.
A pyramidal foyer with an opening to the sky leads into the house. Every room looks onto a courtyard or the surrounding landscape, planted with species native to the Americas.
Casa Cometa by Taller Mauricio Rocha and Gabriela Carrillo, 2019
This house takes its spatial logic from ceremonial Mesoamerican sites. Communal rooms spread horizontally, while private rooms step down and rise vertically. The bedroom sits in a tower with a view of both sunrise and sunset over the Pacific.
Overlapping platforms and passageways form the plan. Wu says the arrangement reflects the layered planes of existence in Mesoamerican cosmology. This approach is typical of mesoamerican modern architecture, where the plan carries meaning as well as function.
A walkway passes beneath the swimming pool. The pool itself slips under a long, orthogonal platform that a descending staircase cuts through.
Casa Monte by CH Matos, 2024
Casa Monte has one bedroom and no exterior doors. From a distance it looks like a fortress rising above the tree line. Its placement on a stepped platform lifts it clear of the jungle floor.
A pool cuts across the interior. Wu reads the open, water-filled core as a statement that architecture exists first as a way of engaging with nature.
If Wu’s account of ancient craft carried into the present day interests you, Alfonso Verduzco’s ALMA Collection Reimagines Mexican Traditions offers a related look at how Mexican heritage is being reworked into contemporary design.
Matos cast the house’s hundreds of individual forms himself, in earth-tinted cement, on the beach where the building now stands. The pieces were then fitted together on site. The result treats the house as a made object as much as a shelter, and it shows how far mesoamerican modern architecture has traveled from its ancient sources.
Via dezeen.com
Frequently asked questions
Why did Su Wu choose the term Mesoamerican instead of pre-Columbian?
Su Wu chose ‘Mesoamerican’ on purpose to show that the monumentality and logic of ancient Mexican building did not stop when colonization began. She wanted to emphasize that these building traditions remained alive in later architecture.
What time period does the book Mesoamerican Modern cover?
Su Wu’s book Mesoamerican Modern: Ancient Ideas in Contemporary Mexican Homes covers projects from the 1970s to the present. Its focus is residential architecture.
What is the difference between surface symbols and underlying principles in this architecture?
Many projects borrow symbols from Mesoamerican architecture, but Su Wu’s book focuses on projects that take up the underlying logic of the buildings, such as patios that structure the plan. Wu considers the principles, not symbols separated from their meaning, to be the most defining characteristics.
Who designed Casa Amalia and why was it built?
Architect Agustín Hernández designed Casa Amalia in 1973 for his sister Amalia, who founded Mexico City’s Ballet Folklórico. Su Wu counts it among the few 20th-century homes in the Mesoamerican Modern canon.
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