The Best Dead Architect You’ve Never Heard Of

I’d never heard of Luis Barragán. Then my new daughter-in-law said, well, why not pay him a visit in Mexico City? WRITTEN & ILLUSTRATED by PETER MOORE

WHEN YOU TRAVEL TO MEXICO, you do stuff you’ve never done before. For instance, I ate roasted crickets. (Crunchy!) And I watched my son get married. (Weepy!) Because of who he married, I was instructed to book a tour of the Casa Luis Barragán, high on a hill above Mexico City.

Barragán was born in Guadalajara in 1902 and died 86 years later, after kicking architectural ass for many decades. Only, he never completed any commissions in the U.S., so we cloistered Yankees don’t know a thing about him.

Including me, until last Wednesday.

Then I stepped into his house and had my socks blown off. That’s right: I’m sockless now, and Luis Barragán is responsible.

That’s him on the left, in a bathroom selfie with me, from Casa Barragán. How often do you get to visit the bathroom of an artistic genius? Hardly ever!

And once he appeared in the mirror with me, I felt welcomed. Possibly too welcome, in fact.

When the docents turned their backs, I fully committed to the Barragán Experience. Those warning signs on the wall weren’t for me. After all, they were in Spanish, and I hardly speak a palabra of it!

And once you’ve climbed in Barragán‘s Forsythia plant, a whole new world opens up. The man was a genius of shadow and light, line and perspective, and I experienced them from every angle.

You might call my visit a total immersion.

No idea what the image below is, but I think it’s cool. And it was in his house somewhere, I’m quite certain.

While we're talking visuals, the man had a thing for pink. Whole rooms were full-on Barbie-fied.

Too bad he didn’t live long enough to see the movie.

You could say Barragán gave me a whole new perspective on art and architecture.

Cool staircase, right? I didn’t know whether I was coming or going.

I also visited the Museo National de Antropología in Mexico City, for perspective on what was going on with the Mayans and Aztecs before the Spanish arrived in February 1519, and introduced the native people to small pox.

Westerners are the worst.

In the museum I learned about the many awesome things the Mesoamericans did, including burying the dead with their faithful dogs, to guide their spirits through the underworld. OK, not so good if you’re a dog, but it’s amazing to have your literal spirit animal available in the underworld to carry your soul on his back, across the river of death and into the afterlife.

Man’s best friend? Hell yeah.

But it gets even better, because that dog is the Mexican hairless, still around today, and it goes by the name Xoloitzcuintli.

No, I don’t know how to pronounce it, but then, I’d never heard of Luis Barragán either.

I have a lot to learn, and Mexican society—past, present, future—is helping to teach me.

Thanks for all that, new daughter-in-law.

I do this work because I love it. But it means the world to me if you love it back.

I’m needy that way.

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