Page 121 - Libro Max Cetto

Juan Manuel Heredia

be balanced against more complex factors. More specifically, what he proposed was to
avoid superficial imitations of past architectures, an attitude that he considered a reflec-
tion of the class consciousness of the petit bourgeoisie. Cetto’s critique of this social class
revived a very similar argument he had made in Germany on the architecture of National
Socialism: in his famous “Letter from a Young Architect to Dr. Goebbels,” Cetto
criticized the traditionalism of the architects favored by the Third Reich, calling their
style “kitsch nationalism” and accusing them of promoting bourgeois ideals of private
property ownership. He also proposed that the architecture of the Neue Sachlichkeit was
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Germany’s most genuine contribution to world architecture. His argument in favor of the
Neue Sachlichkeit was not based on stylistic or functional criteria, but on the formal disci-
plines that it involved, which were more suited to modern times. In an analogous fashion,
in his book, Cetto criticized the superficially traditionalist attitudes of Mexican archi-
tects and stated that “the disease (of modernity) is too deep-seated to be tackled with
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aesthetic building regulations and popular remedies.” In this sense, he could not help
but disapprove of the growing interest of his colleagues in incorporating pre-Columbian
motifs into their work. Cetto primarily highlighted the Anahuacalli museum, by Di-
ego Rivera and his friend and compadre Juan O’Gorman, as an example of nationalism
doomed to failure. The nationalism of Mexican architecture was one of the fronts for the
critique of modern architecture in Mexico, but before addressing them, it is necessary to
reflect on his contextualization of this architecture in his book.

Cetto and Mexico’s Modern Architecture

Cetto began his analysis under another epigraph, this one from Walter Gropius, one of the
most important figures of twentieth century architecture and a close friend of his:

Abandoning the morbid hunt for ‘styles’ we have already started to develop together
certain attitudes and principles which reflect the new way of life of the twentieth-
century man. We have begun to understand that designing our physical environment
does not mean to apply a fixed set of aesthetics, but embodies rather a continuous
internal growth, a conviction which recreates truth continually in the service of
mankind. 45

By citing this passage, Cetto intended, on the one hand, to reinforce his argument
against architectural eclecticism, and on the other (by means of the reference to buildings as
a manifestation of human corporality) to reinforce his idea of complexity in the experience
of architecture. Cetto, however, distanced himself from Gropius’ notion of truth, sensing in
it a certain positivism, which he related to modern Mexican architecture. Cetto started out
by recognizing that this architecture had begun as a “revolt against the paralyzing use of tra-
46
ditional building forms,” giving credit to the theories of José Villagrán García. Based on a
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blind faith in the truth and the logical value of architecture, Villagran’s theories neverthe-

43 Max Cetto, “Brief eines Jungen Deutschen Architekten an Dr. Goebbels” (Zürich: Die Neue Stadt, May 1933), 26-28.
The letter is reprinted in Anna Teut, ed., Architektur im Dritten Reich 1933-1945 (Berlin: Ullstein, 1967), 142-146. It was
translated into Spanish by Mariana Frenk–Westheim and published in Susanne Dussel Peters, Max Cetto, 70-75. See
also my doctoral thesis, “The Work of Max Cetto: Restorations of Topography and Disciplinarity in Twentieth-Century
Modern Architecture” (University of Pennsylvania, 2008), 91-9.
44 Cetto cleverly cited Kenzo Tange’s argument that tradition “must be like a catalyst that disappears once its task is
done.”
45 Max L. Cetto, Modern Architecture in Mexico, 24. The passage is found in Walter Gropius, Scope of Total Architecture
(New York: Collier, 1962) 153.
46 Max L. Cetto, Modern Architecture in Mexico, 23.
47 Max L. Cetto, Modern Architecture in Mexico, 24-25.

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