Everywhere you look in Mexico City, you see something well thought out. Then you come home.
Top, outside a mod bar in the Condesa district; brutalist bank building with relief exterior; art nouveau building in the Roma district; doorway in the Coyoacan neighbourhood; benches in Chapultepec Park; minimalist sans serif address lettering is everywhere; the amazing tiled library at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
i soooo want to go to mexico city. i’ve never been, but heard it is so amazing…
It looks like at least some of the buildings (the Art Nouveau?) are made to take advantage of natural ventilation. I always wonder what we’re going to do with some of the hermetically sealed high rise glass boxes in the interval between outrageously priced oil and the development of sustainable energy resources.
I wonder if the old evaporative cooling systems would even make a difference of a couple of degrees in some of the oversize greenhouses they threw up in the eighties.
Every design nerd should visit Mexico City. Just for the Luis Barragan House alone, not to mention the new Kurimanzutto Gallery. Yes, Mexico City’s temperate dry climate does allow people the luxury of more design and building options, and greater freedom with materials, but you get the feeling that if they were dealing with the cold and rain, they’d come up with something better than we have.