In an article for the New York Times Style Magazine, AA alumnus Suleman Anaya (MA History and Critical Thinking, 2012) has reevaluated the work of legendary Mexican architect Luis Barragán by revisiting some of his less well renowned works. Anaya's work moves beyond the world famous, canonical works of Barragán and sheds new light on the architect by interrogating what we can learn about his design process by studying his self-described 'small buildings.'

'Not all of these buildings are masterpieces. A rental project Barragán designed for his brother lacks the attention to detail and emotional resonance of the rest of his work, its only point of interest a little roof terrace featuring an unglazed stripe window to frame distant mountains. A heavily modified apartment building on Calle Estocolmo, where the architect doubled as landlord, is similarly anodyne. But most of them contain elements — a meticulously modulated staircase, strategically placed skylights, in some cases just a simple, unnecessarily elegant metal mail slot — that speak to Barragán’s genius for imbuing space with wonder and enveloping even the most pragmatic projects in a thought-out sort of invisible parallel function: to provide the user with the most agreeable spatial experience possible.

Visiting these often unassuming buildings, one senses the architect’s inner conflicts and his unwillingness to compromise, endowing even the most prosaic of works with extraordinary angles, emotionally affecting progressions between rooms, abundant natural light and a wealth of other sensory gratifications that no one asked from him, least of all the people who employed him at this stage of his career.'

Read more