Page 155 - Libro Max Cetto

Max Cetto: Architect and Historiographer of Mexican Modernity Daniel Escotto

the most important was the Culinary School at the Professional Pedagogical Institute
(1928), where Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky –who designed the famous kitchen (Frank-
furter Küche) for May’s Siedlungen, in which the rationalization of the “space-function” was
an example of perfection– participated in the design of the furniture. Max Cetto thus
surrounded himself with his colleagues at the Department of Public Works in his pri-
vate projects. This particular project had broad similarities with Gropius’ Employment
Office in Dessau (1927-1929); the spatial play of the rectangular element that confronts
the semicircle was a common theme among the architects of the time. The circulation
through the building is the same and both have radial workstations: in Cetto’s case, they run
up against a glass wall –the same solution as in the 1929 Ostpark pavilion– which provides
contemplative views of the outside; in Gropius’ case, the circulation routes free the work-
stations from the semicircular wall. Spatial relationships, such as routes and services, are
controlled from the center of the semicircle. In both, the rationalization of space is evi-
dent. The semicircular solution, providing comfort for the individual and a relationship
with the outside through an “infinite” surface, circular and transparent, would be a re-
curring theme for Cetto. During this same time, he also designed the Ostpark pavilion.
Cetto’s most important collaboration with his colleagues from the Department of Pub-
lic Works was with Wolfgang Bangert (Urban Planning and Housing Program) in the
competition for the Palace of Nations in 1927.

Mexico via the United States

Max Cetto emigrated to Mexico in 1939 after a brief stay in the United States, during
which he visited his old friend Walter Gropius and spent a short time in his famed Lincoln,
Massachusetts home. There he had the opportunity to get to know the ideology that led
Gropius to design that house in a neo-regionalist vernacular, which influenced Cetto later
on in his approach to the early architecture for El Pedregal de San Ángel, Mexico City.
A short time later, he met Frank Lloyd Wright at the legendary Taliesin, where he
remained for several weeks; Wright’s architecture had always had a deep impact on Max
Cetto. He had, in fact, influenced most German architects of Gropius’ generation, primar-
ily due to the 1911 exhibition, which had been published in the famous Wasmuth portfolio,
which has been found in the archives of many of the architects of the Neue Sachlichkeit.
Within weeks, Wright recommended Cetto to work with Richard Neutra in the West; it’s
not surprising that Cetto accepted, even if his goal was to do so with Lloyd Wright, as the
California-based Viennese spoke German and had work to offer Cetto: supervising the
Sidney Kahn house for seven months.
In 1937, Esther Born had just published a supplement in Architectural Record titled
“The New Architecture in Mexico” in which she states, “Mexico, the country of siestas
has woke-up,” and in which several modern works in Mexico were shown, among them
the well-known studio houses for Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo by Juan O’Gorman and
houses by Luis Barragán, who had already established himself in Mexico City. Around this
same time, Richard Neutra had made an extensive trip through Mexico, accompanied by
Barragán himself. Neutra’s work had been extensively published in architectural magazines
in Mexico, so it is not strange to think that Neutra would talk to Cetto about Mexico and
Cetto would then make the decision he had been considering: that of “coming down” to
Mexico. It should be remembered that Mexico was then a social democratic country under
the Cárdenas administration of the late 1930s, associated with the idea that “in Mexico... a
new world is forming.” 18

18 Phrase coined by the Spanish republican philosopher and poet Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez in 1939, upon his emigration
to Mexico.
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