Page 126 - Libro Max Cetto

Max L. Cetto and the Territory of Architecture

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of the artistic work), Cetto felt that this mural possessed an architectural character that
achieved integration, even if O’Gorman did not recognize it. According to Cetto, the main
problem with O’Gorman’s judgment was that he “inverts the natural order of architec-
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ture and the sister arts.” This resonated strongly with Poelzig, for whom architecture was
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first and foremost the ars magna, an idea assimilated by Cetto, who bravely explained it
to Goebbels, warning him that architecture was the “great art” (grosse Kunst), “that which
80
integrates all other productive human activities.” Despite the seeming pretentiousness of
these claims, the literal translations of ars magna and grosse Kunst are simply and redun-
81
dantly architecture. In yet another of his disciplinary reaffirmations, but one that could also
be read as a polemic calling for the subordination of “plastic” artists (who were such strong
personalities in Mexico) to the authority of the architect, Cetto declared that the integra-
tion of the arts required “disciplined partners.” 82
More than the library, whose virtue resided in the “architectural” nature of its deco-
rations, the most successful projects at University City, from a truly integral perspective,
were the sports facilities: Alberto T. Arai’s frontons and the Olympic stadium designed by
Augusto Pérez Palacios, Jorge Bravo Jiménez and Raúl Salinas Moro. Cetto highlighted the
adaptation of both projects to the landscape and their relationship with the architecture
of pre-Columbian ceremonial centers. Since the frontons depended on a system of hidden
concrete frames that enabled their exterior form, the stadium represented a more honest
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and ingenious interpretation of the construction methods of the ancient pyramids. Cetto
praised its harmonious, evocative form, the result of a construction process consisting of
large movements of soil, as well as its polychrome reliefs by Diego Rivera. Considering it
to be “the most notable structure in the complex and among the very greatest and most
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impressive achievements of modern architecture,” Cetto, in a Villagranian fashion, argued
that it brought together the utilitarian, social and aesthetic functions of architecture, con-
trasting it with a recent tendency that prioritized solely the aesthetic: so-called emotional
architecture. 85

The Third Front: Emotional Architecture

Considered another mannerist deviation in Mexican architecture, emotional architecture
was, for Cetto, the third front of critique in his book. His first observations were addressed
to the Torres de Satélite, designed in 1957 by Mathias Goeritz and Luis Barragán, the
two main figures of that movement. In allusion to the references made by its authors to
the towers of San Gimignano, Italy as the inspiration for their project, Cetto counter-
argued and differentiated both works, noting the beauty and usefulness of the first and the

77 See Juan O’Gorman “Autocrítica del edificio de la Biblioteca Central de la Ciudad Universitaria” (1953), in Ida
Rodríguez Prampolini, coordinator, La palabra de Juan O’Gorman (Mexico City: UNAM, 1983), 163-164. Cetto’s judgment
coincided with (and perhaps was based on) that of Henry-Russell Hitchcock, who claimed that the library mural was
eminently architectural, Latin American Architecture Since 1945, 77.
78 Max L. Cetto, Modern Architecture in Mexico, 30.
79 “Architecture as ars magna cannot simply arise from the soil, but comes about only where a great unifying revolution
has occurred and where the conviction that we must work for eternity has taken root.” Hans Poelzig quoted in Marco
Biraghi, Hans Poelzig, Architettura, Ars Magna (Venice: Arsenale, 1992), 6.
80 Max Cetto, “Brief eines Jungen Deutschen Architekten an Dr. Goebbels.”
81 The root arché, meaning “major” or “main,” and techné- (linked to the root tecton – “artifice” or “worker”), meaning
“technique” or “art.” See José Ricardo Morales, Arquitectónica: sobre la idea y el sentido de la arquitectura (Santiago, Bio-Bío
University, 1984), 159-64.
82 Max L. Cetto, Modern Architecture in Mexico, 30.
83 Max L. Cetto, Modern Architecture in Mexico, 30.
84 Max L. Cetto, Modern Architecture in Mexico, 30, 92.
85 Max L. Cetto, Modern Architecture in Mexico, 30.

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