Juan O’Gorman - Diego Rivera / Frida Kahlo Studios

As I have mentioned before, my house is located in the modernist (semi-) urban neighborhood of El Pedregal. While the houses in my street and around the block are mostly modernist works by the likes of Luis Barragan and Francisco Artigas, there was one structure not too far away that always caught my eye. In the nearby neighborhood of San Angel, a historical site known for it’s colonial churches and it’s stone and gravel streets, there is one “house” that looks like none other. 

The house I am talking about is Juan O’Gorman’s studio for the renowned Mexican painter Frida Kahlo and Muralist Diego Rivera.

View from the Main Avenue

Side entrance & Outdoor stair

Exterior Bridge

Located in the main avenue of the neighborhood, pedestrians and drivers alike would always look at it in wonder. It’s geometrical forms, outer bridges, oversized glass panels, outdoor terraces, industrial feel, and fence of cacti, all add up to create the most unique and distinguished building in the southern part of Mexico City. It’s presence is quite shocking. 

Inspired by the Russian Constructivists, O’Gorman’s work ties their ideals about geometry and the disruption of context with the Mexican regionalist ideals of materiality, colors, outdoor/indoor spaces. The outer facades are all painted in “Indian” red and deep blue, recalling both the tezontle (volcanic soil) traditional to Mexico City as well as the color of dried blood (symbolizing the indigenous massacre by the conquistadors). The blue was the same as the one used in Frida Kahlo’s home in the nearby neighborhood of Coyoacan. These traditional vernacular colors utilized in the exterior facades related to the architecture of the place. The exterior can be read a rational system of concrete frame and waffle slab, where walls are infilled between the frame. The glazing consisted of steel industrialized windows that formed a mosaic-like pattern. The addition of outdoor stairs, bridges and terraces further roots the house into the site, creating a circulation path that constantly interacts with the outside elements. 

Constructivist Architecture

In the inside, the architecture changed quite drastically, as yellow and parrot green were used to create a sense of warmth. The interior rooms were expressed as distinct, separate elements with mechanical and electrical systems were exposed to portray the modernist idea of the house as a machine for living. The interior was filled with Mexican traits partially because Kahlo and Riviera collected indigenous art, creating a dichotomy between a modernist house with exposed systems and industrialized materials, and the handcrafted uniqueness of the artifacts. This reflected O’Gorman’s interest in making an architecture concerned with progress, universality, technology rationalism, and abstraction, but also an architecture that utilized vernacular Mexican colors and indigenous art to create interiors.

Interior Upper Floor

This house is an example of the different architecture styles that converge in Mexico through careful integration of ideals and forms. The final product is one that not only looks for inspiration from the outside, but that manages to bring and mix Mexican motifs to create a unique style known as Mexican Functionalism. As seen in previous posts, the constant struggle to portray or create Mexican styles in architecture and to showcase the country’s identity are always affecting the architects’s final designs. Here, O’Gorman makes the case that a rich national identity and functionalist ideals can work together to create a unified whole.