Edward R. Burian, an architect and professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, has produced an informative survey on a subject not well known to a general audience.Although northern Mexico is alarge, well-populated region, to many Americans it still conjures images of a largely empty, dusty land of vaqueros or the setting for Pancho Villa’s daring exploits. Its situation as a place of contemporary cultural production in the Mexican national imagination is even more limited. There, cultural discourse is dominated by the capital, MexicoCity, in a manner much moreprofound than equivalent United States centers like New York and Los Angeles. Architecture of this region, which spans the states of Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, Coahuila,Chihuahua, Durango, Sonora,Sinaloa, and Baja California Norte and Sur has been almost completely excluded from systematic study in its own country. The continuedneglect makes this book, thefirst written in English or Spanishon the subject, valuable as a groundbreaking effort to draw attention to a historically under-recognized region.

Aceros Planos Office Building, Monterrey, NL (Rodolfo Barragán Schwarz, 1973–1975). (Courtesy Acanthus Press)

The book is organized state by state, starting in Tamaulipas on the Gulf Coast and ending with Baja California Norte and Sur. Each chapter begins with a brief overview of each state’s geography and history and then proceeds, city by city, to describe significant works of architecture and urban design. These descriptions
are short in the manner of anarchitectural guide. About a third of the buildings are illustrated with a mixture of new and historicphotographs. There are some extremely detailed maps of thecentral portions of the larger cities, but no architectural floor plans are included.

There is a great variation of geography and climate across the region. The easternmost section is flat and humid, with abundant rainfall and semitropical vegetation. As one progresses west, the land becomes hillier and more arid with isolated oasis-like microclimates. Toward the Pacific Coast, vegetation is again lush (a word the author likes to repeat), while just across the Gulf ofCalifornia下加利福尼亚半岛是沙漠。然而, despite these climatic variations, nearly all the buildings included in the book are made of brick, concrete, or stone and as the author frequently writes, have “wall-dominant” exterior elevations.Climatic adaptation seems to be accommodated by porches, changes in wall thickness, andfenestration patterns. (Here, plans would have helped to show more specifically how buildings physically varied from region to region.)

Iglesia la Purísima, Monterrey, NL (Enrique de la Mora y Palomar with Ing. Félix Candela; Ing. Armando Ravizé Rodríguez, builder, 1940–1946). (Courtesy Acanthus Press)

Monterrey, the major city of Nuevo León and Mexico’s third largest, seems to have the most vibrant contemporary architectural culture of all the cities in the book. Founded in 1596, it became a majorcity after World War II when its industrial capacity dramaticallyincreased. Some outstanding early projects include Enrique de la Mora y Palomar’s parabolic-vaulted Iglesia La Purísima (1940–1946), one of the first modern churches in the country, and his 1942 master plan for the newly-created Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (Monterrey “Tech”). This plan, as well as many of the early buildings, recalls those of the better-known Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México inMexico Citythat were inaugurated about 10 years later.

Monterrey architect Rodolfo Barragán Schwarz, who studied underPaul Rudolphat Yale in the early 1960s, is a notable figure. His postwar modern designs fused American and Mexican sensibilities in unusualand compelling ways. In the past two decades, local architects including Cecilia Rangeland James Mayeux, Agustín Landa Vértiz, Alexandre Lenoir, and Gilberto Rodríguez, have produced work that holds its own against that of the many Mexico City andforeign architects also designing projects in Monterrey.

(Courtesy Acanthus Press)

As a pioneering work, however, the book is rough around the edges. Its format is halfway between a traditional architecturalguide and a textbook. Although the buildings’ names arehighlighted in bold text, their addresses are not given, and only a small handful are marked on the infrequent city maps, making them difficult for visitors to locate.Also, the book, whichmeasures approximately 9-by-12-inches, is awkwardlysized for a traveler to carry conveniently. Finally, the maps of the states showing the locations of the cities appear to be cropped from a larger map and are allbutuseless for navigation. A model the author and publishers might have consulted is the outstandingBuildings of the United Statesseries, which covers an equally wide-ranging area and is very rigorously organized.

然而, these complaints become quibbles when considering the massive amount of work and dedication that the author almost single-handedly expended to gather theinformation for this book. He should be commendedfor setting up—in a very deliberateand conscious way—a larger discussion about the architecture and culture of our southern neighbor.