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The Houses of Guadalajara

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(English / Spanish edition)This book studies the origins and late evolution of modern Mexican architecture through a series of houses built by two generations of architects during the 1920s and 198...
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  • 29 May 2026
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(English / Spanish edition)

This book studies the origins and late evolution of modern Mexican architecture through a series of houses built by two generations of architects during the 1920s and 1980s in Guadalajara. In so doing, it proposes an alternative history of Mexican architecture—positioning Guadalajara as a counterpoint to Mexico City, and putting forward a series of works and ideas that suggest a new relationship between innovation and tradition.

This is also, inevitably, a book about Luis Barragán and the long shadow he cast over Mexican architecture. It explores his early and little-known work as part of a generation of architect–engineers known as the Escuela Tapatía (the Guadalajara School), which in the 1920s developed an abstract and stylized reinterpretation of the regional architecture of Jalisco. Even less well known is the generation of architects who began their careers in Guadalajara in the early 1980s. This group took the work of Barragán and his colleagues from the 1920s as the starting point for its own production, resulting in an “echo of an echo”—a reinterpretation through time of an increasingly distant and abstracted original.

Between tradition and abstraction: the architectural legacy of Pritzker Prize winner Luis Barragán in Mexico during the 1980s and 1990s
Featuring illustrative project profiles and critical texts
With numerous new photos and drawings

Este libro estudia los orígenes y la evolución tardía de la arquitectura moderna mexicana a través de una serie de casas construidas por dos generaciones de arquitectos durante las décadas de 1920 y 1980 en Guadalajara. De esta forma, se propone una historia alternativa de la arquitectura mexicana, situando a Guadalajara como contrapunto a la Ciudad de México y presentando diversas obras e ideas que sugieren una nueva relación entre innovación y tradición.

 Este es también, inevitablemente, un libro sobre Luis Barragán y la larga sombra que su figura proyecta sobre la arquitectura mexicana. La publicación explora su obra temprana, poco conocida, realizada como parte de una generación de arquitectos–ingenieros conocida como la Escuela Tapatía, que en la década de 1920 desarrolló una reinterpretación abstracta y estilizada de la arquitectura regional de Jalisco. Aún menos conocida es la generación de arquitectos que iniciaron su carrera en Guadalajara a principios de la década de 1980. Este grupo tomó el trabajo de Barragán y sus colegas de los años veinte como punto de partida para su propia producción, dando lugar a un «eco de un eco»: una reinterpretación a lo largo del tiempo de un original cada vez más distante y abstraído.

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Price: $52.99
Pages: 176
Publisher: Birkhäuser
Imprint: Birkhäuser
Publication Date: 29 May 2026
ISBN: 9783035629927
Format: Hardcover
BISACs: Individual architects & architectural firms, Architectural details, components and motifs, History of architecture
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Jesus Vassallo is a Spanish architect and essayist. A graduate of the Polytechnic University of Madrid (2004) and of Harvard University (2007), he is currently an associate professor at Rice University in Houston. His work interrogates the problem of realism in architecture through professional practice and academic research. He is the author of Seamless: Digital Collage and Dirty Realism in Contemporary Architecture (Park Books, 2016) and Epics in the Everyday: Architecture, Photography and the Problem of Realism (Park Books, 2019). Together with Sebastián López-Cardozo, he edited Nueva Vivienda: New Housing Paradigms in Mexico (Park Books, 2022). His articles have been published internationally in journals such as El Croquis, AA Files, 2G, Log, Harvard Design Magazine, Domus, and Arquitectura Viva. He lives and works in Houston, TX.


Jorge Alberto Muñoz graduated in 2012 from Monterrey Institute of Technology, with further studies at the University of Melbourne. He subsequently graduated with a master’s degree in Architecture, with honors, from Cornell University in New York, where he also served as adjunct professor. From 2011 to 2016, he collaborated at Luis Aldrete’s architecture studio in Guadalajara. Since 2018, he has taught at Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Campus Guadalajara, along with directing JAM arquitectura, an architecture firm that focuses on highlighting the allure of spaces through a rational quest for simplicity and an appreciation for materials and craftsmanship. In 2021, he became the founding director of ForA, a non-profit cultural center dedicated to the critical analysis of architecture. He resides in Guadalajara, Mexico.