Houses of Mexico delves into the roots of the bold yet elegant Mexican style, illustrated with many photographs from Spain and Portugal reflecting the Moorish influence. In addition to extensive coverage of the architecture of the houses, the book shows other spatial and decorative elements, including iron gates and grilles that give an atmosphere of seclusion; stairways that seem to grow out of the walls without any support; and old paintings, combs, ceramics, and character figures used in festivals, as well as ancient pre-Columbian figurines.

The geographic, social, and economic diversity of Mexico constitute a prime example of the challenges inherent to meeting individual needs in an increasingly crowded world. The drawings and essays comprise new ways of looking at theories and buildings in order to redefine the connection between housing and the city. This research is centered in drawings of 70 housing projects, creating a common language highlighting different attempts at reinventing the house not as isolated battles but as part of a strategy for reimagining how we want to live. This book showcases the pivotal voices that have shaped major cities through housing projects and explores how policies and ideas transform into built form, and how in turn buildings shape societies.

A House Is Not Just a House argues precisely that. The book traces Tatiana Bilbao's diverse work on housing ranging from large-scale social projects to single-family luxury homes. These projects offer a way of thinking about the limits of housing: where it begins and where it ends. Regardless of type, her work advances an argument on housing that is simultaneously expansive and minimal, inseparable from the broader environment outside of it and predicated on the fundamental requirements of living. Working within the turbulent history of social housing in Mexico, Bilbao argues for participating even when circumstances are less than ideal--and from this participation she is able to propose specific strategies learned in Mexico for producing housing elsewhere. A House Is Not Just a House includes a recent lecture by Bilbao at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, as well as reflections from fellow practitioners and scholars, including Amale Andraos, Gabriela Etchegaray, Hilary Sample, and Ivonne Santoyo-Orozco.

Haciendas features traditional and modern hacienda architecture in Mexico and southwestern United States. Sumptuous photography portrays the increasing fascination with hacienda architecture today, as evidenced by the movement to renovate classic adobe homes, the abundance of new hacienda designs, and the inspiration Spanish colonial architecture provides to homeowners, designers, and architects worldwide. The estate hacienda was traditionally the family home for Spanish nobles in the newly settled Mexican territories and included farmed land, orchards, stables, livestock, and servants. These extraordinary homes, many of which are owned by descendants of the original owners, are being meticulously preserved, or carefully transformed, into popular inns and tourist attractions. Today, the style is influencing residences throughout North America.With more than 250 photographs, Linda Leigh Paul presents the best haciendas, representing past and present designs: From large country estates to small adobe hideaways, the rugged beauty, rich color palette, and natural materials of the hacienda are brought to life in a book that is as delightful as a walk through the adobe arches and cool, tiled rooms of a Spanish colonial casa.

Renowned for its picturesque charm, Mexico has lured design-world insiders to its retreats, as presented in this inspirational selection of some of the latest Mexican design trends from the Yucatán. In recent years leading international tastemakers have been drawn to the vibrant culture of the Yucatán. In Mérida—the region’s sixteenth-century capital—they have renovated many of the romantic Spanish colonial town houses into stylish retreats. In the nearby towns of Valladolid and Coba, picturesque houses surrounded by lush vegetation in sun-drenched settings have also been updated while retaining indigenous charm. Annie Kelly takes us on an insider’s tour of several stunning properties—from brightly painted town houses and contemporary villas to rustic bungalows—many with a distinctive bohemian feeling. These sophisticated residences blend artisanal craftsmanship with antiques and contemporary furnishings. They have been designed by such talents as architect Manolo Mestre, artist Jorge Pardo, L.A. modernist antiques dealers Robert Willson and David Serrano, and Nicolas Malleville of Tulum’s famed Coqui Coqui hotel, who has brought the fashion world to the Yucatán due to his chic homes and hotels there. Beautiful outdoor entertaining, garden, and pool areas enliven all these homes. This book is a stimulating resource for the design aficionado.

A social history of poverty in Mexico City, based on a study of a poorhouse designed to incarcerate and train "deserving" beggars to be productive and responsible citizens.

Mexico City became one of the centers of architectural modernism in the Americas in the first half of the twentieth century. Invigorated by insights drawn from the first published histories of Mexican colonial architecture, which suggested that Mexico possessed a distinctive architecture and culture, beginning in the 1920s a new generation of architects created profoundly visual modern buildings intended to convey Mexico's unique cultural character. By midcentury these architects and their students had rewritten the country's architectural history and transformed the capital into a metropolis where new buildings that evoked pre-conquest, colonial, and International Style architecture coexisted. Through an exploration of schools, a university campus, a government ministry, a workers' park, and houses for Diego Rivera and Luis Barragan, Kathryn O'Rourke offers a new interpretation of modern architecture in the Mexican capital, showing close links between design, evolving understandings of national architectural history, folk art, and social reform. This book demonstrates why creating a distinctively Mexican architecture captivated architects whose work was formally dissimilar, and how that concern became central to the profession.