Mexico City's Palacio de Bellas Artes
While perfect storms have been ravaging parts of America north of the Mexican border, Mexico itself — and especially Mexico City — is currently enjoying idyllic weather, a veritable Indian summer a...
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Architecture of Mexico: the hacienda
The haciendas were the landed estates of Mexico, some with territories as big as Belgium. For visitors to Mexico, they conjure up surreal images of ruined palaces; still possessing a faded grandeur, dominating a desolate landscape of cactus and agave. Before the revolution of 1910, when their lands were confiscated, the haciendas' collective power was enormous. Each one was a rural, autonomous social unit with its own history, and for each, myths accumulate over the centuries.
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Mexican Design & Style: Overview
Sun-drenched colors of burnt ochre and red ignite massive walls and bring stone-chinked surface patterns to life. Antique wooden doors punctuated with hand-forged iron clavos open to reveal cool, tiled...
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Mexican cocinas: the colonial kitchen
Mexican cocinas (kitchens) beckon with their colors, simmering aromas, humming activity and cherished implements that exude time-honored traditions.
One of the most captivating and busy rooms in the M...
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Restoring a Mexican hacienda
In the late '90s we became captivated by the richness of the Yucatan region's hacienda architecture and the history of its multilayered civilizations. Trailing through myriad Maya villages and down ove...
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Mexican Design Style: The publications
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Mexican Details
In their sixth book, authors/designers Karen Witynski and Joe P. Carr travel through Mexico an...
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Did You Know? The centenary of the birth of artist Juan O'Gorman
Juan O'Gorman was born on July 6, 1905, in Coyoacán, Mexico City. His father, Cecil Crawford O'Gorman, was a mining engineer and artist of Irish origin; his mother was Mexican. Juan was educated at th...
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Six books by Karen Witynski and Joe Carr
These six wonderful books hit a real soft spot because I'm an ardent admirer of Mexican creativity as it exhibits itself so lavishly in art, architecture, the design of everyday objects and the bold approach to color. And I particularly enjoy good photographic books, which these essentially are.
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Architecture of Mexico: the houses of Luis Barragan
Although trained as an engineer, Barragán discovered he had a closer affinity with architecture. He did not receive formal training and never officially became an architect (which did not prevent him from receiving the Pritzker Award, architecture’s "Nobel Prize," in 1980).
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