Page 108 - Libro Max Cetto

Preface

Daniel Escotto, an Unam-trained architect and active professor at the School of Ar-
chitecture, was part of the committee that integrated and developed the dossier for the
nomination of the central campus of University City to be declared a World Heritage Site
by Unesco. Fifteen years ago, he was the first person to make me understand the need to
reprint Max Cetto’s book and I am deeply grateful for this. His essay addresses Cetto’s ar-
chitectural education and his German period.
Felipe Leal, founder of Mexico City’s Public Space Authority in 2008, coordinated the
bid for the central campus of University City to be declared an Unesco World Heritage
Site, made while his offices were located at the Cetto house. He served as Dean of the
School of Architecture from 1997 to 2005, where he was a disciple of the architect, and
agreed to write on Max Cetto as a teacher and mentor.
Not being a professional architect but an economist and translator, I have given myself
the opportunity to venture into the field of architectural historiography and, so far, this
has not been taken poorly by those in the field; I thank them for their generosity. Since
childhood, I have breathed the atmosphere of this discipline, which I feel to be the most
beautiful and complete there is, and I continue to do so through my architect son, whose
grandfather I accompanied to construction sites on multiple occasions. My father taught
us daughters to admire a facade, the way in which a work is situated in the landscape and
its respect for its natural surroundings, its function, the proper distribution and ventila-
tion of space, materials used –in sum, to value architecture. I was also his translator, not on
Modern Architecture in Mexico, but later on, of his articles published in the journals Calli and
Arquitectura. I thus knew well his rigor, the discipline of which Juan Manuel Heredia and
Felipe Leal speak in their essays. I am moved by my copies of these translated texts, which
I still hold on to, with their flattering dedications from my father to me. As a tribute, I have
translated all the texts in this dossier.
To expand on the theme of rigor and discipline, there is no doubt that the reader will
notice this from the very outset, while reading Cetto’s introductory essay. We are in the
presence of a true critic, not one who aims to remain on good terms with his Mexican
colleagues, but to contribute by encouraging reflection. He judges from the standpoint of
4
architecture, not that of his friendships with those whose work he analyzes. With some,
he did have deep ties, maintaining an agreeable social life and conversing with them on all
sorts of topics. He was interested in whatever happened in the world of science and tech-
nology, art, politics and literature and was a lover of books, music and travel.
After this aside, I consider it suitable to now offer an explanation: Life has given me
a passion for architectural historiography. This is, I suppose, because my educational back-
ground allows me to assess the importance of architectural heritage, by virtue of the fact
that it materializes the development of society; nothing tells us more about its different
periods. As for artistic heritage (that corresponding to the twentieth century), it is Mexico’s
that most draws my attention. Let me say, without pretense, that my interest goes back to
the fact that my father has often not been properly credited for his work, and so my essay
is about precisely this subject.
With the new generations in mind, I felt it would be relevant to provide a review of the
archives in which the materials by and about Max Cetto are stored. In the appendices that
follow my essay, I present a list of Cetto’s works I have prepared. It is not the same list that
the architect presented upon request to a publisher or university. The one I have created is

4 The handwritten dedication that Cetto wrote to Juan O’Gorman, when giving him a copy of his book, is dated January
24, 1961 and reads: “Dear compadre. Today I received the first copies of my modest critical essay in English and German.
I’m so happy to dedicate this book to you, don’t want to wait until the Spanish edition comes out. But, if you prefer it
in that language, we can make an exchange then. I hope you find one observation or another to your liking–it is already
known that we cannot agree on all our architectural opinions, which would anyway be very boring and even dangerous to
our friendship. Affectionately, Max.”

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