Page 128 - Libro Max Cetto

Max L. Cetto and the Territory of Architecture

and negative aspects. His analyses, as we have emphasized, were based on clearly disciplinary
criteria that echoed principles that, from ancient times, formed an identifiable legacy and,
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in a sense, are still appropriate today. In this regard, his assessment of his own works
and those of his colleagues was generally favorable. His praise was especially directed at
those collective efforts that, thanks to the post-revolutionary drive, had been transformed
into official public construction programs, especially schools, hospitals and, to a lesser
extent, housing. With regard both to these programs as well as to institutional and pri-
vate projects, Cetto’s critiques and analyses focused on the organization of space, its
proportions and the relationships they established with their respective urban or suburban
contexts.
In a way that evokes Vitruvius –for whom architecture “depended” on six fundamen-
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tal principles: order, arrangement, proportion, symmetry, propriety and economy – Cetto
was guided by similar criteria he absorbed during his apprenticeship with Poelzig and
which he brought to maturity over four decades of uninterrupted professional practice. The
application of these criteria was never absolute, but was tempered by a respectful
understanding of the specific –social, economic and ecological– circumstances of each work.
Even with all his openness and empathy, it was nevertheless possible to detect in Cetto’s
judgments a certain preference toward more rationalist approaches, not in the formalist
sense of the term, but in that of works whose form and arrangement revealed a reasoned
or reflective attitude toward their surroundings, without denying but rather always af-
firming the value of the imagination and the creative force of the architect. In this sense,
Cetto concluded his introductory text by quoting another German master, Karl Friedrich
Schinkel:

People are only really alive when they are creating something new; wherever they feel
quite sure of themselves the situation is already suspect, for there they know something
for certain. Now, something that is already there will simply be manipulated, applied
time and again. Vitality of this kind is already half-dead. Wherever people are uncertain
yet feel a craving for and catch a glimpse of something beautiful that must be expressed,
there, where people are seeking, they are truly alive. 94

92 On the relevance of Vitruvius, see David Leatherbarrow, The Roots of Architectural Invention: Site, Enclosure, Materials
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
93 Vitruvius, De architectura, Book I, Chapter 2, Sections 1-9.
94 Max L. Cetto, Modern Architecture in Mexico, 32.

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