O’Gorman began his studies in 1922 at the Architecture School of the National University, where he studied under, among others, Guillermo Zárraga and José Luis Cuevas. During this time, he worked in the offices of his professors, Carlos Obregón Santacilia and José Villagrán García. These two architects were involved in important architectural investigations: the first was building the Centro Escolar Benito Juarez (1923–25), which explored the possibilities of reinforced-concrete construction on neo-Colonialist forms, and the second was building the Granja Sanitaria (1925), which became one of the earliest explorations into functionalism in Mexico. Also influential was the publication and arrival in Mexico of Le Corbusier’s Vers une architecture, which he read as a manifesto for a rationalist functionalism of the engineer and a call for a self-referential, autonomous architecture.

O’Gorman’s earliest works conformed to these concerns, as demonstrated by two of his early works: the House-Studio (1930) for the painter Diego Rivera and his work for the Department of Public Education in 1932. The House-Studio was a simple volume with a sawtoothed roof and exposed industrial materials. Expressive of O’Gorman’s functionalism, it attempted to solve practical necessities rather than to address aesthetic interests. These concerns would materialize in his designs for the Department of Public Education, where, under the auspices of the socialist-minded Secretary of Education Narciso Bassols, O’Gorman would build and renovate a total of 53 public schools. These school buildings were unornamented and constructed in concrete, were efficiently planned on a 3-meter grid, and used standardized and mass-produced architectural elements and fixtures. For both Bassols and O’Gorman, these schools responded to the lack of adequate teaching facilities in a direct, efficient, and economical way while providing the students an education in economy and efficiency.

During this time, O’Gorman also participated in the founding of the School of Construction Technicians (1932), which was to teach students how to produce rational buildings while avoiding aesthetic issues associated with architecture. It was the founding of this school, however, that initiated a series of debates, under the auspices of the Society of Mexican Architects, about the direction that architecture should take in Mexico. This conference, known as the “Talks about Architecture” (1933), expressed the culmination of two intellectual assertions regarding architecture in Mexico. On one hand, the “Functionalist” line was advocated by a group of young socialist-minded architects headed by O’Gorman and Juan Legarreta; on the other hand, the “Academic” line was a reactionary position waged by the professional architectural establishment. The primary intent of these debates was to clarify the role of architecture in post-revolutionary Mexico and, subsequently, the role of functionalism within that definition. In his presentation, O’Gorman attacked the architectural establishment for trying to establish its hegemony over architecture by limiting it to spiritual and aesthetic considerations that, for him, served only to reproduce their capital. Instead, he called for an architecture that was honest to its time and to its function and construction and that, because of its efficiency, allowed a greater number of buildings to be constructed and thus solve the needs of a larger population.

By 1936, however, O’Gorman had become fully disillusioned with functionalist architecture, forcing him to abandon it completely for painting, a passion from his childhood. Traditional historiography has not clarified this sudden change but rather has limited its interpretation of it either to an interest in pursuing Frank Lloyd Wright’s organic architecture or to his distaste of the business of architectural practice. O’Gorman’s writings at the time, however, point to a disillusionment due to a clear understanding of the ideological aspects that structured functionalist architectural production and its inevitable social failure. In “Capitalist Architecture and Socialist Architecture,” published in the 1935–36 issue of Edificación (the journal of the School of Construction Technicians), O’Gorman defined functionalist architecture as a means through which the bourgeoisie reproduced their power and capital while pretending to address the concerns of the population. Specifically, functionalist architecture allowed its users to conform to the new realities of standardization, industrialization, and mass production that were central to capitalist reproduction of its conditions of production and thus its power. In functionalist architecture, its own autonomy prevented it not only from reflecting bourgeois class interests (as O’Gorman had believed at the beginning of his career) but also, dialectically, from being used for political and social change.

On his brief return to architecture, O’Gorman adopted Wright’s theories on organic architecture, reflecting his interest, on the one hand, in the importance of a telluric agency and, on the other, in exploring the communicative qualities of architecture. Two buildings from this period are indicative of these concerns. O’Gorman’s House (1949) in the Pedregal region of Mexico City—an area known for its volcanic rock landscape—formally incorporated itself into the site and used its materials in its construction. On its exterior, O’Gorman decorated its walls with sculptures and mosaics made with colored rocks. This was the same method that he, along with Gustavo Saavedra and Juan Martínez Velasco, would employ for the decoration of the National Library (1952) for the National University in Mexico. The library stack (a windowless vertical mass) is separated from the reading rooms (a double-height and functionally organized horizontal mass) through its formal relations and its exterior treatment. The volume of the library stack is covered in colored mosaics that were intended to be didactic in nature, although O’Gorman later acknowledged their failure in communicating a clear message.

LUIS E. CARRANZA

Sennott R.S. Encyclopedia of twentieth century architecture, Vol.2 (G-O). Fitzroy Dearborn., 2005.  

1905 Born in Mexico City, 6 July;

1922-26 Studied at the School of Architecture, University of Mexico under José Villagrán García and Guillermo Zárraga;

1926 Degree in architecture;

1927 Apprenticed to Carlos Obregón Santacilia;

Studied painting with Antonio Ruiz, Diego Rivera, and Frida Kahlo;

1927-29 Worked in the architectural offices of José Villagrán García, Carlos Tarditi, and Carlos Contreros, Mexico City;

1929-32 Chief draftsman, office of Carlos Obregón Santacilia;

1932-34 Chief architect for the Ministry of Education, Mexico City;

1932-48 Co-founder and professor, Escuela Superior de Ingenieros y Arquitectos, Instituto Nacional Politécnico, Mexico City;

1934-48 Withdrew from architectural practice for ideological reasons;

1936 Founder, Workers' Housing Study Group, Mexico City;

1948 Returned to architectural practice;

1956 Member, National College of Architects of Mexico;

1967 Member, Bolivarian Society of Architects, Caracas;

1971 Member, Academy of Arts, Mexico City;

1982 Died by suicide, Mexico City, 18 January;

Selected Publications

El arte útil y el arte artístico, 1932

Autobiografía, antología, juicios críticos y documentación exhaustiva sobre su obra, 1973

Aja, Marisol, “Juan O'Gorman” in Apuntes para la historia y crítica de la arquitectura mexicana del siglo XX, 1900–1980, edited by Alexandrina Escudero, volume 2, Mexico City: Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1982

Born, Esther, The New Architecture in Mexico, New York: Architectural Record, 1937

Burian, Edward R., “The Architecture of Juan O'Gorman: Dichotomy and Drift” in Modernity and the Architecture of Mexico, edited by Burian, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997

Carranza, Luis E., “Paradigms of the Avant-Garde: Mexican Modern Architecture, 1920–1940” (Ph.D. dissertation), Harvard University, 1998 (see chapter titled “Against a New Architecture: Juan O'Gorman and the Disillusionment of Modernism”)

O'Gorman, Juan, Juan O'Gorman: autobiografía, antología, juicios críticos, y documentación exhaustiva sobre su obra, edited by Antonio Luna Arroyo, Mexico City: Cuadernos Populares de Pintura Mexicana Moderna, 1973

Rodríguez Prampolini, Ida, Juan O'Gorman: arquitecto y pintor, Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1982

Rodríguez Prampolini, Ida (editor), La palabra de Juan O'Gorman (selección de textos), Mexico City: Coordinación de Extensión Universitaria, Dirección General de Difusión Cultural, Unidad Editorial/UNAM, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, 1983

Smith, Clive Bamford, Builders in the Sun: Five Mexican Architects, New York: Architectural Book, 1967

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