Ricardo Legorreta

 

RICARDO LEGORRETA The Mexican architect Ricardo Legor Legorreta reta talks to James Steele about the influence o f Luis Barragan, his friend and

ment or, and his his own work

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his interview took place in December 1991 when Ricardo Legorreta was in Los ngeles to inspect some work in progress and as a guest lecturer at the University o California . s : Can you describe the influence that Luis Barragin had on your work? RL: That is a difficul difficultt question. I neve r studied with him because he didn't teach at any University, but he meant a great deal deal to me. I Luiss Barra gin when he was nearly 73, and met Lui we developed more of a friendship th an a professional relationship. O n the whole that relationship revolved around daily life , his philosophy, and that sort o f thing. He was a great architect as well as a wonderful human being, and he loved life. life. He was very spiritual and religious, but also very much of this world. He loved freedom, and neve r married because he was afraid oflosing it. H e became accustomed to a certain kind oflifest oflifestyle yle which can be achieved in very few countries. He practiced architecture for himself, and only i som eon e came to him and sai said, d, Please, Luis, Luis, you can do whatever you want, please do this for me , woul d he accept. He developed that reputation in Mexico Mexico.. In the 1970s, I was invited to be on the panel for the International Council for the Museum o fModern Art in New York. I went to two meetings and realized that panel consisted o fN ew Yorkers showing New York art to th e rest o f he world. I told them this is not a

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council, but a private club, and they asked me what I had to offer. So I organized an exhibition o f Barragan's work at the museum, which helped make him £unous outside of Mexico.. From a local personality Mexico personality he became an internati onal figure. He was a philosopher, a bon vivant, and a man o f ncredible tast taste. e. He avoided confrontation.. If a problem arose, he would back tation away.. If a place disturbed hi m, he would get away up and say let's go somewhere else . We used to have tea at his house at five o'clock. O n certain days he would call me and say Ricardo, please don't come today, the light is right   . O n others, he would call me when not right I was working and say you must come to my house immediately , and I would say please Luis Lu is,, I am workin g , and he would say you must come as soon as possible, please, it's a must , and I would say are you dying? , and he would say no . So I would arrive and there would b e birds birds in the back garden, and a fire in the grate and everything would be beautiful. The influence of Luis goes deep. I learned from h im to enjoy e njoy life; life; I learned th at the spaces have a very speci special al objective, a nd that i he tea is not served right it is important; that small details should be correct. And o f course I was influenced by him because he had wonderful taste,, and a sense o f proportion and space taste space . He was an engineer by training. His father was rather rich and he manage d his father's old ranches.. One day he said ranches said that s omebody tried to kill him. I don't know whether to believe it, but he decided because of hat to go to France and to spend three years years ov er there . Then he started to work as an architect. architect . To me his main conc ern was exterior exte rior spaces. spaces. One thing that is not gener generally ally recogn ized is that he was an incredible businessman. He bought property just outside Mexico City, which was considered worthless because it was a lava field. He boug ht it for almost nothing,, b ut he sowed grass put up walls against the ing lava, made magnificent spaces and developed it into the most fashionable area. area. O f course he made a large amount of money, and then he started an office. Luiss ne ver received a degree in architecture Lui but he was a master architect and a person o f

great sensibility. He would recommend places to see that were magnificent, but not exactly in the way that we architects separate places in terms of architecture. He would just say say:: go to that place . He would recommend anythin g from a small town in Mexico to a certain place pl ace in Morocc o or a restaurant in Paris Paris.. H e was acquainted with all the most important muralists.. One such painter was Chucho muralists Reyes, who is virtually unknown, b u t who influenced us all in the use of natural colour. This man wa wass wonderful; through him I also met Tamayo and other muralists and I learned the process oflooking or rather understanding Mexico. The international style was never strong in our country country.. Luis Barragan was using it though. though . Seeing buildings o f this time, such as his own house, you would think that they were done by Le Corbusier. But h e is still extremely Mexican. Luis was very ill for th e last eight years o f his life. He was an elegant man and his physical appearance was remarkable, impeccable, so tragedy.. when he got ll it was an even worse tragedy Our conver conversations sations began a bout life and ended up, little by little, little , abou t death. death. H e was afraid o f the problems in passing away. away . H e once told me, Ricardo, we have never done a job together, and I must close close my office because I will never do another job unless I can do it with you . But we never did it. E v e n though we had several beautiful opportunities, he killed each one o f them . H e was afraid, because he had already been declared to be a genius.. But the influence is there, a n d I arn genius very proud to be copying him, as w e ll do in some way or other. If you are capable o going a single single step furth er, then you have succeeded . So there is no 'style' o f architecture created by a group. You can look at houses w h i c h are considered historical, and say that is Luis Barragin ; and then someone w ll tell you that is a hacienda that has been there for 100 years.. He captured something in the national years spirit. That to me was his main contribution, his great genius. S: Barragan successfully made the change from national to international recognition. When did that change start for you, a n d have you had any difficulties in making th a t transition?

 

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Automex Factory) Toluca) Mexico. In this important industrial unit) i hich only the first stage has been built) Legorreta tried to break out i the restrictive idea that the actory isjust aplace or work. n exterior railway and wide central axis were designed to accommodatefurther growth. Two cone-shaped buildings) which provide waterfor the plant) are located here. The project includes an engine and production area) an assembly plant) control booth) cqfeteria and parkingfor employees. The structure s mainly steel with plastic covered aluminium panels set at a 5 degree angle to provide diffuse illumination. To the ·south i he plaza is a separate office structure made ifconcrete.

gets into gets int o an interesting inte resting issue, issue, and the th e reason I like the question is because that change is not an easy one for an architect to make.. I love Mexico very much mainly make becausee it is my country. It is very natural to be becaus an architect there. I don t know when I decided to be an architect, I just did it. Mexico entered a period o f crisis at the end o f he seventi seventies. es. One party, the PRI, has been the dominant power for the last 40 years. The

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President at that time was a dictator, and got more a nd more powerful until things became unbearable. This President took Mexico into a crisis in the middle o f he oil boom. To save his political image, he nationalized banks. At that time the banks in Mexico were not only the basis o f he financial structure but also the basis o f he growth o f he country. They were promoters, the developers who put things together. I come from a family o f bankers who had not sold any shares over a period o f 50 year yearss - and I was was angry. angry. The country col lapsed. Everybody in my generation backed out. People who had mone y decided to take it to invest in Europe or the United States. By coincidence, a Mexican actor living in California, Ricardo Montalban, was in Mexico. He called me and sai said, d, Ric ard o, I love your hotel [Camino Real, Mexi co City]; would you like to do a house for me? ... I am very grateful grateful for everything th e United States has done for me, but I want to show them that Mexico is not the country o f siesta, or burros, and manana, so let's do something about it. That was the real real open ing for me. At the same time, I lectured in the United Stat States, es, partly in order to discuss Mexico, and also because it gave me the opportunity to travel in a northern country. And suddenly I found that people were very interested. I discovered that it was not because o f my architecture, but becausee I have roots and I belon g somewhere, becaus and also because o f he popularity o f he post modem move ment wh ich was starting starting at that time. Suddenly everybody believed that someone who had roots was a genius, and people got very interested in the reasons behind why I build the way I do and what inspired me. So along with the Montalban

house I was also interviewed to do a tech nology centre in California, which was my first large project in the United States. They asked me why they should place their confi

Metropolitan Cathedral) Managua) Nicaragua. n earthquake destroyed the old cathedral on the site. The new larger one was to have even greater symbolic significance due to its high visibility on a

dence in a Mex ican architect for such a large large

mountain overlooking the city. It was designed to accommodatefestivals i p to 100) people) the daily Cardinals Mass and a special sanctuary inside the cathedral. According to Legorreta) The intention was to represent the spirit and ceremony i a contemporary) active church in which the cathedral s the centre ifcommunity strength. For this reason) the plan s not i traditionalform. )) Lighting and ventilation are natural) and building materials have been kept simple.

job and they said that I would have to open an

office in Los Angeles so they could see that I was serious serious.. Th is commi ssion gave me such a feeling o f challenge that I decided to do it. Construction on that ob star starts ts soon; th e inter  vie w too k place six six years years ago. I love challenges and I decided that I was going to overcome that one. Architecture is one o f he fewactivi ties in which you don t have to come from a rich country to succeed because really, what you are selling is pure brain brainss and creativ creativee tal ent. That was my challenge. Why shouldn't Mexico, which is a country with a great archi tectural tradition be given a chance? That was the beginning o f my international activity, and suddenly we were called to work with Mcquire and Thomas. Mcquire is a great person, and an d a real visionary. (Anoth (A noth er person who has helped me a great deal is Charles Moore). Through tremendous effort, I became established here.

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Renault Factory . Located in Gomez Palada, Durango, M exico, the Renault Fadory is a huge rectangle divided into a manufacturingplantfor engines and suspension systems and a 26-hectare section set aside or uture expansion . Legorreta said i his project, The desert s magic, it absorbs you. I ound myself hinking i walls that never end, and I didn't want to siften this emotion, so I covered the site with stone and used red as the main colour. Instead i ighting the desert, we complemented it.

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Above and right: Solana Southlake and Westlake. With Legorreta Arquitectos, a team including Mitchell-Guirgola Architec Architects, ts, B arton Myers and Peter Walker developed this straightforward scheme on a 770-hectare site . The aim was to use the road crossing the property s apositive influence and to make an underpass which was integral to the design . The main objective was to recover the original prairie and to create compounds that would establish unity through the interplay i delimiting walls, scale, colour and the proportions i he fenestration i ach building. Within this context, each architect had complete freedom. Ve rtical elements were used as symbols to indicate direction and entrance, and texture has become a humanizing element in the unlimited scope i he Texas landscape, helping to Jorm more intimate spaces - a amiliar theme also qf Barragan  s work . The village centre contains two rental office buildings , a commerdal area , a 200-room hotel and a health and sports club. The first phase i he I M building, which is theJocus i he project, consists i 34,838 square metres ifc1fices , as well as a dining room and computer cent re.

Lift: Hotel Camino Real, Ixtapa, Mexico. The landscape s strong identity had an influence on the design i his hotel, which blends into the rugged mountain range i he seashore. The architect dedded to make the most i he environmenta l benifits. Rooms were terraced to adapt to the steep slope i he shore and the covered terraces that resulted were oriented orientedJor Jor the best view i he sea and the best location Jor prevailing breezes. Spedal consideration was given to the solarium, located at mid -level, which uses working aqueducts,Jountains and wateifalls. The beach was lift untouched, and are used thatched palm umbrellas Jor shade. walking along a hidden site encourages cove. The Legorreta points out, ((This hotel is truly Mexican, in spirit,form, co lour and materials. I visualized it as a symbol ifcontemporary Mexico: strong, spadous, romantic and spiritually poweiful.

 

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Conrad Hotel Cancun. This design is based on simple elongated orms that aaentuate the spirit i the terrain and the position i he building between the sea and a lagoon. Like his mentor Luis Barragan Legorreta shows a concern to retain the atmosphere imbued by the presence i water  

JS Do you sti still ll maintain an office in LA? RL I have found that design design occurs wherever

the architect is and the result o f opening another off office ice was was that I end ed up just dupli cating administrative effort. My office is organized in such a way that it offers the sup port that is needed for me to devote as much time as possible to design. We opened the LA office because o f the Technological Centre project, and maintain it as a kind o f answering service, i you want to call it that, a nd this is where the architects architects doing the work ing draw ings are. The bulk o f the work, however, is done in Mexico. JS Is Cas Casaa Shapiro your lates latestt house here? RL ye's, it is just fInished. fInished . My experience here has been very rewarding. I'm still trying to understand my country, just as you are still working at understanding yours. When somebody calls you to d o a project inside their country, you r fIrs fIrstt reaction is how do I go about understanding that situation?" And people tell you, no, we have called you because we like what you do, we don't want you to understand underst and us". So I have realized realized that I am very lucky, i n that Calif California ornia,, a nd Texas Texas,, and New Mexico, where my work has been concentrated, have historically had a close relationship with Mexico. I still say that the only thing I'm doing is recovering what is ours The climate, light and lifestyle are all similar. JS Do you work in bearing wall wall construction only? RL Bas Basica ically lly wha t I like is the wall itself One of the things that I have been dealing with is the question o f doing walls in wood. A true Mexican would consider that to be fake. I have found that what really interests me is the creation o f pace. A new challenge is the possi bility o f doing a house in Chicago. That is really real ly frightening, to t o work in anot her culture. I have been very lucky to have been working the south-west and hope I will have the [M opportunity to continue to do so. Photographs by Lourdes Legorreta. Legorreta . James Steele is an archited and s currently visiting prcfessor at the University o California Los Angeles.

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