Page 127 - Libro Max Cetto

Juan Manuel Heredia

exclusively formal character of the second. Sarcastically but also seriously, he claimed that
the visual beauty of the towers by Goeritz and Barragán “is not exciting enough for me to la-
bel them architecture. There is no such thing as architecture without utility to human beings,
any more than there can be a bullfight without a bull; both can fascinate by their aesthetic
charm but each lacks the vital truth.” 86
A few pages earlier, Cetto had already warned that the idea of an emotional architec-
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ture was likewise not new, since Le Corbusier’s work had been so from the beginning and,
more importantly, modern architecture had always contained emotional tendencies. Within
this current, he included so-called organic architecture, both that influenced by Frank Lloyd
Wright and the expressionist architecture of Hugo Häring, Erich Mendelsohn and Hans
Scharoun. It was understood that Cetto also included the O’Gorman house, although the
Mexican work he emphasized was by a little-known architect, who was nevertheless praised
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at the time by, among others, Diego Rivera: José Luis Hernández Mendoza. Cetto cen-
tered his critique not on a project, but on one element of a work by this architect: the stair-
case for his School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering at the National Polytechnic
Institute (1953), in which the slope constantly changed, supposedly to adapt to the fatigue
of the body as it climbs. Cetto called attention to the gratuitousness and wastefulness of the
resulting oblique, empty lines and, once again with sarcasm, mocked the architect’s “pro-
found explanations,” according to which his stairs “symbolize the struggle of the (Mexican)
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race.” In criticizing the Torres de Satélite for being equally useless, Cetto also mocked
their purported emotiveness by quoting Mario Pani, a promoter of this project, for whom
they “stand for that untamable urge to higher things which, useless though they may seem,
nonetheless give expression to the spirit and dignity of man.” 90
In contrast to all these examples, Cetto considered the structures and buildings by the
Spanish architect and engineer Félix Candela to be beautiful and technically ingenious, as
well as socially and practically useful, and therefore saw in his work a higher emotional
quality and integration of the arts. In his book, Cetto dedicates several pages to illustrate
Candela’s “shells,” praising his practical-intuitive approach to structural and architectural
design. 91
As one can appreciate in this part of his book, Cetto’s position did not represent a
negative critique of Mexico’s modern architecture, but a prudent analysis of both its
general situation and of a series of carefully-selected examples to illustrate both its positive

86 Max L. Cetto, Modern Architecture in Mexico, 30. Three decades later, the architect, artist and critic Fernando González
Gortázar praised Cetto’s “critical accuracy” in this book but regretted this particular comment: “I can’t understand his
furious attack on the Torres de Satélite: being such an intelligent man, I am surprised by the weakness of his central
argument that a work of architecture without a program is like a bullfight without a bull.” What is really surprising is to
perceive “fury” in Cetto’s words, when both the passage and the context in which it appeared conveyed the opposite of that
feeling. Perhaps González Gortázar’s criticism is due to some regional and national pride as a representative of the tapatía
school of architecture. See Fernando González Gortázar, “Indagando las raíces,” in La arquitectura mexicana del siglo XX,
Fernando González Gortázar, coordinator (Mexico City: National Council for Culture and the Arts, 1994), 264. On the
other hand, Cetto was more benevolent with another project by Goeritz: the Eco gallery and cabaret.
87 In his book, Cetto alluded to Le Corbusier’s 1923 text “Arquitectura: pura creación del espíritu,” included in Hacia
una arquitectura (Barcelona: Apóstrofe, 1977), 163-83, as well as to the Ronchamp chapel of 1953. Max L. Cetto, Modern
Architecture in Mexico, 25.
88 Here we should listen to Rivera’s lectures “Los nuevos valores de la plástica: la nueva arquitectura, la nueva pintura, la
nueva escultura,” given from March to July 1955, recordings of which have been preserved by the Fonoteca National de
Mexico. Accessible at: https://www.fonotecanacional.gob.mx/index.php/escucha/secciones-especiales/diego-rivera.
89 Cetto did not mention how illogical a solution this is, as it only makes sense when one is ascending, but not descending,
a staircase, yet he probably sensed it.
90 Max L. Cetto, Modern Architecture in Mexico, 174.
91 Apart from the introduction and the section dedicated to Candela, Cetto’s book has a section on the centuries-old
ecological problems of the Valley of Mexico and their close connections to the city’s architectural production. An analysis
of this section deserves a separate chapter. It is important to mention, however, that Cetto began to reflect on these
problems following the 1957 earthquake, after which he wrote a highly prophetic text: “Letter from Mexico” (Zodiac,
October 1, 1957), 206. See Daniel Díaz Monterrubio and Juan Manuel Heredia, “Tarde o temprano” (Arquine-blog,
September 20, 2015, https://www.arquine.com/tarde-o-temprano/).

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