Page 156 - Libro Max Cetto

Max Cetto: Architect and Historiographer of Mexican Modernity

Cetto collaborated with Luis Barragán from 1939 on. One early work was the studio
for four artists on Glorieta Melchor Ocampo. It should be noted that, on this project, Luis
Barragán made two buildings, one alone and one with Cetto. It is also worth mentioning
that the first has a simple facade with elongated windows on the three housing levels and
a garden terrace in the Le Corbusier style of the Stuttgart Weißenhofsiedlung (1927), while
the second –in collaboration with Cetto– despite its similar design, has a varied facade to
accommodate a staircase, which provoked the displacement of the windows. These are the
details on which Cetto intervened, as he drew the facade designs. Later on, their collabo-
ration also led to the famed model homes on Avenida de las Fuentes in Pedregal or the
Prieto-López house, although the latter case is not very well known in the murky history of
Mexican architecture. There are still many aspects of this strange collaboration that are yet
to be discovered, and which would allow us to argue that the architecture that represents
modern Mexico in the eyes of the world was forged in that symbiosis of Barragán and Cetto.

Reflection

Can the mind of an immigrant architect have any major impact on architecture in Mexico?
What’s certain is that Max Cetto was that historical materialist of whom Walter Benjamin
19
spoke, shaped by the “hothouse” of German –or rather, Central European– modernity, one
who attended the CIAMs, who knew the architecture of the “official” modern architects in
situ rather than through the pages of black-and-white magazines, who exchanged views and
reviewed projects in that Europe of the interwar period that suggested a new order before
the coming of the Nazi regime. The question should rather be: Can ideas travel, spread and
germinate to influence in silence? History criticizes, judges and condemns, truths are now
only ever partial and only historical truth has the power to reshape the universally known
20.
into what has never been heard: “Turning back to the past is not just a matter of inspect-
ing it or finding a pattern that is the same for everyone; when looking back, the object is
transformed [...] in accordance with the nature of the one observing it [...] One can’t touch
history without changing it.” 21

19 This comment by Humberto Ricalde is from one of the many talks my professor and I had on the subject.
20 See: Friedrich Nietzsche, Sobre la utilidad y los perjuicios de la historia para la vida (Barcelona: Edit. Edaf, 2000).
21 Josep Maria Rovira in: Sigfried Giedion, Escritos escogidos. Colección de arquitectura (Murcia: Colegio Oficial de
aparejadores y Arquitectos Técnicos, 1997).

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