Jaun O' Gorman, a sometimes architect, sometimes muralist, designed this gem for his colleague Diego Rivera in 1929. Diego's studio on the left, while Frida's is paired up on the right. The simple, strong, and highly legible architectural expression given to each eloquently describes their mutual independence while the bridge and structural module shared in common reveals their simultaneous devotion.
Diego's studio embodies the boldness and rhythmic qualities of his art. For me, the western face resembles very much the pre-Colombian sculpture he was so avid about collecting .
While Frida's is correspondingly more reserved and straightforwardly composed.
The whole complex is based on a very intimate module, which is to say that neither is very large (although the Blue House they shared in nearby Coyocan was rather generous, especially for two ardent Communists). Nevertheless, one never feels hemmed in or cramped (except in the entrance vestibule under Diego's studio, which was no doubt an intentional move meant to suggest how to use and interpret the space).
Quite the opposite of modest although at times intimate, nearby UNAM (the National Autonomous Universtiy of Mexico) is a great argument for how Modernism
can succeed if enough people approach it seriously and with optimism. Both traits are more likely to be found in students than subsidized blue collar tenets, true enough, nevertheless, a visit to UNAM takes the body through a carefully calculated total environment of form, surface, and landscape that still leaves enough open to individual interpretation to keep it stimulating, not stifling.
The paving strategy in the area adjacent to the central library and the administration tower makes ephemeral democratic expression inevitable. Here is a serious effort at tackling the ground condition so often ignored by Modernist planning. This formal court puts the lower, openended multipurpose fields to the east in counterpoint rather than limbo both to this field and the adjacent buildings. Judging by the heavy use I saw there on what I assume was just a routine Saturday afternoon during a typical semester (that is to say nothing of what happened here in 1968), I'd say the planning effort delivered.
Jaun O'Gorman contribution, 25 years older than the Rivera-Kahlo studio and with a much wider color pallette, provides a pivot which does more than creak . It sings the whole history of a people, borrowing from a medium and manner already seen at Teotihucan - simple forms, elaborate murals projecting ideas beyond themselves.
Most of the campus is populated by more humble expressions of function...
although interest in form is never really lost, nor is the library the only venue for the instructive potential of mural.
Unlike a great many Modern complexes, the relationship between objects is never unsure of itself, sometimes even being reinforced by form itself . Sometimes these are very practical , like the covered walks (it rains nearly every day in the summer), and at other times they are highly rhetorical (see below). Surely this kind of gesture does not serve well the student already late for class, but for the casual Sunday ex-pat tourist, it provides a retrospective view of architecture, campus, and , sudden and unexpected, sky.
There are random question marks here and there on the campus, enigmatic due to time, ignorance, or unfamiliarity, but then I always liked the way question marks looked on a page...
The many faces of a unpretentious machine...
Though more or less graceful, each element uses a common language to tell highly individual tales which all contribute to a rich tableau. The talent recruited for the behemouth undertaking lent itself to the not quite urbanistic reading: witness the mural on the south of the administrative tower. The artist responsible for it had only 14 years earlier tried unsuccessfully to assissnate Leon Trotsky (just 3 months before another got the job done). An aside perhaps, but a nice place certainly.
Hasta entonces amigos.
Diego's studio embodies the boldness and rhythmic qualities of his art. For me, the western face resembles very much the pre-Colombian sculpture he was so avid about collecting .
While Frida's is correspondingly more reserved and straightforwardly composed.
The whole complex is based on a very intimate module, which is to say that neither is very large (although the Blue House they shared in nearby Coyocan was rather generous, especially for two ardent Communists). Nevertheless, one never feels hemmed in or cramped (except in the entrance vestibule under Diego's studio, which was no doubt an intentional move meant to suggest how to use and interpret the space).
Quite the opposite of modest although at times intimate, nearby UNAM (the National Autonomous Universtiy of Mexico) is a great argument for how Modernism can succeed if enough people approach it seriously and with optimism. Both traits are more likely to be found in students than subsidized blue collar tenets, true enough, nevertheless, a visit to UNAM takes the body through a carefully calculated total environment of form, surface, and landscape that still leaves enough open to individual interpretation to keep it stimulating, not stifling.
The paving strategy in the area adjacent to the central library and the administration tower makes ephemeral democratic expression inevitable. Here is a serious effort at tackling the ground condition so often ignored by Modernist planning. This formal court puts the lower, openended multipurpose fields to the east in counterpoint rather than limbo both to this field and the adjacent buildings. Judging by the heavy use I saw there on what I assume was just a routine Saturday afternoon during a typical semester (that is to say nothing of what happened here in 1968), I'd say the planning effort delivered.
Jaun O'Gorman contribution, 25 years older than the Rivera-Kahlo studio and with a much wider color pallette, provides a pivot which does more than creak . It sings the whole history of a people, borrowing from a medium and manner already seen at Teotihucan - simple forms, elaborate murals projecting ideas beyond themselves. 
Most of the campus is populated by more humble expressions of function...
although interest in form is never really lost, nor is the library the only venue for the instructive potential of mural.
Unlike a great many Modern complexes, the relationship between objects is never unsure of itself, sometimes even being reinforced by form itself . Sometimes these are very practical , like the covered walks (it rains nearly every day in the summer), and at other times they are highly rhetorical (see below). Surely this kind of gesture does not serve well the student already late for class, but for the casual Sunday ex-pat tourist, it provides a retrospective view of architecture, campus, and , sudden and unexpected, sky.
There are random question marks here and there on the campus, enigmatic due to time, ignorance, or unfamiliarity, but then I always liked the way question marks looked on a page...
The many faces of a unpretentious machine...
Though more or less graceful, each element uses a common language to tell highly individual tales which all contribute to a rich tableau. The talent recruited for the behemouth undertaking lent itself to the not quite urbanistic reading: witness the mural on the south of the administrative tower. The artist responsible for it had only 14 years earlier tried unsuccessfully to assissnate Leon Trotsky (just 3 months before another got the job done). An aside perhaps, but a nice place certainly.
Hasta entonces amigos.
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