A modernist walk through Guadalajara

Guadalajara does not usually lead the conversation on Mexican modernism, but this piece makes a good case for looking again. It traces the city’s 20th-century architecture from the Escuela Tapatía, formed by Luis Barragán, Ignacio Díaz Morales, Pedro Castellanos Lambley and Rafael Urzúa, through to the harder-edged concrete of the post-war years. What emerges is a local version of modernism shaped as much by Jalisco’s vernacular buildings as by international ideas.

Barragán’s early Guadalajara houses are a strong place to start. In Colonia Americana, projects such as Casa González Luna1 and Casa Cristo2 show him working through colonial references, Art Deco forms, colour and light before the language he became known for fully settled. The article also stops at Pedro Castellanos Lambley’s Casa Quiñones3, and at Hospicio Cabañas, now Instituto Cultural Cabañas, where José Clemente Orozco’s 57 murals sit inside a vast former orphanage and hospital complex with neoclassical courtyards.

Later chapters move into the city’s public monuments and brutalist landmarks. Mathias Goeritz’s El pájaro de fuego, Fernando González Cortázar’s La Gran Puerta, Félix Aceves Ortega’s Casa Robot, Edificio Vasarely and restored Edificio Luviano, plus Alejandro Zohn Rosenthal’s Mercado Libertad, Edificio Mulbar and Archivo del Estado de Jalisco all help sketch a richer map of the city. It is a useful read for anyone planning a design-minded visit to Guadalajara, especially if you like your city guides anchored by buildings rather than lists of restaurants.

Our summary of a story from Wallpaper*, published 5 October 2026. Read the original