Recreating spaces: Mexico is breeding ground for today's top architects.

Mexican architecture has long been acknowledged for its bold exploration of contemporary design commingling with an admixture of vibrancy and diversity that echoes the roots of its ancestral past.

In no other nation of the developing world has the definition of space and form been so consciously carved out as it has here. Mexico has become an incredibly fertile architectural breeding ground. One is hard-pressed not to make comparisons with the grandeur of Mexico's pre-Hispanic past--the best examples being products of cumulative cultures such as existed in Mexico City and Teotihuacan--and the interpretative vision of the present as pertains to Mexico with the world beyond.

Despite the long list of celebrated 20th and 21st century Mexican architects and designers adhering to modernist concepts such as functionalism (with roots in Bauhaus design and Le Corbusier), regional perspectives and a cultural definition of space and form here in Mexico define the movement even in today's internationalist atmosphere.

As Mexico enters the fast-paced world of globalization, a dynamic discussion in the shape of cement and steel is taking place. At the heart of this dialogue within contemporary Mexican architecture is a quiet conversation between the convivial yet restrained composure of interior spaces, and their resolution in an exterior fortitude of high-tech internationalism and expanding cultural complexity.

Figure And Function

One needs only to amble into Mexico City's Parque Durazno, one of the country's pre-eminent commercial centers. The Parque transforms both figure and function of a shopping mall into an admixture of city park, gardens and businesses that underlines the human dimension with its wide walkways and inviting multi-terraced fluid lines. At the same time, it embraces the whole of this multi-use space in uncompromising majesty on a grand scale.

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Grupo Arquitech's Juan Jose Sanchez Aedo, and Grupo Danhos' Jose Daniel Kabazz and Salvador Daniel Kabazz seem to have paid tribute to the traditional concept of confluence between inner and outer spaces by blending several architectural components into one harmonious whole. This ultra-modern formula--attempted in both the United States and Europe within a similar context of transparency with its cut glass, polished steel and light-colored concrete - meets with resounding success in Mexico City. The visual horizontal plane created by ample walkways and long, fast lines of terraced levels seem to defy the mass of the 1,300-square meter dome that caps the structure's elliptical central plaza with its impressive height.

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Here, within the commercial center's core, the blurred lines between inner and outer spaces and the echo that resounds within the context of cultural memory undeniably conjure the urban hub of a traditional Mexican city center.

Accessible on foot at one side of the structure, the outer perimeter joins the interior with its small plaza from where the interior space is visible. From the opposite parallel street, the structure seems to invite the spectator with a spectacular suspension of gleaming steel that feeds into the lobby like an open mouth.

Similarly, the center's restaurants and cafes reproduce the warm human dimensions of the overall interior construction.

Attention To Detail

Perhaps even more dramatic, nearby is one of Mexico's most noteworthy monuments to post-modernism, Arcos Bosques Corporativo.

The importance of this structure--the creation of Mexico's most renowned living architect, Teodoro Gonzalez de Leon, along with J. Francisco Serrano and Carlos Tejeda--cannot be underestimated in the annals of contemporary Mexican architecture.

Gonzalez de Leon, a student of Corbusier, probably more than any other architect has heralded in the age of internationalism while maintaining an acute awareness of the unique Mexican concept of space and its age-old culture.

What is often overlooked in the design of this imposing structure--shaped like a squared upside-down U--is the attention to detail and the elegance and functionality of its interior design.

The 33 floors of offices communicate with one another along a partially enclosed tree-lined, gardened passageway replete with fountains and an imposing sculpture, the creation of Mexico's preeminent sculptor, Juan Soriano.

Here again, as with Parque Durazno, there is a completely harmonized confluence between form and function as the structure's design subtly shifts in perfect proportion between its equally elegant interior.

High-Tech Pizzazz

Already populating the world stage with its illustrious lineage--Barragan, Goeritz, Gonzalez de Leon and Zabludovsky--today Mexican sensibility in architecture and design has been making its mark the world over.

Although the younger generation's adaptation to the slick gleam of internationalism has been termed as a breakaway movement by the traditional modernists, the truth is the perspective has been altered.

In a country that only recently opened for business within the international arena, the view for this generation encompasses a wider scope and allows for freight between cultures to move back and forth as never before.

Because of this change, Mexico's importance internationally reverberates across the globe. This year, in the world's capital of modern architecture and design, the New York Center for Architecture features the display "Mexico City Dialogues: New Architectural Practices." The exhibit features 14 projects by young Mexican architects (through May 7).

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In the same city, we find the high-tech design savvy of Enrique Norten in evidence at Brooklyn's Visual and Performing Arts Library. Furthermore, Gonzalez de Leon displays his daring and self-assured hand from Texas to Germany, and Ricardo Legorreta splashes wide swatches of sun-drenched Mexican color across the globe from San Francisco to London and Madrid.

Perhaps at a quicker pace than Mexican business or policy, the architecture and design community effortlessly plies the two-way street of our global village, and here in Mexico City the results have been eye-catching to say the least.

Mexican architects have been called upon to recreate spaces that serve the needs of business while at the same time projecting a corporate image.

Grupo MAC, headed by architect Gonzalo Montano Estrada, was contracted to take on the three additional floors of Grupo Panamco-Azteca where the administration of Coca-Cola Bottling Co., Latin America, is concentrated. The project, in Mexico City's Torre Esmeralda, called for an efficient confluence between spaces in keeping with the company's image that dictated a solid, modern and serious ambience within an amiable atmosphere.

Montano Estrada took advantage of the oval-shaped structure and the spectacular perimeter views from the 20th to 22nd floors by creating a more fluid and open floor plan that projected power from the lofty vantage point, while capturing the dramatic and often moody light of the high valley.

For the company's meeting room, Montano Estrada reined in the space to human dimensions with a large, U-shaped table of light-grained wood, accenting the room with light, muted tones and blue fabric chairs where up to 30 executives can be comfortably seated (pictured on preceding page).

Other notable recent projects--such as the Corporativo-3M and Merck Sharpe & Dohme Mexico, designed by the international architectural firm KMD (Kaplan, McLaughlin, Diaz) are true to their own distinct expertise. However, they also share the graceful and sinuous sense of interior spaces that feed seamlessly into an outer environment through an imaginative utilization of translucent, metallic and light-colored materials that incorporates inherently Mexican details in its sense of light, color, confluence, craftsmanship and art.

In bridging the gap between trends in the architecture of internationalism and a national vision and projection, KMD and the other firms mentioned above have resolved the high-tech gleam of globalization by embracing the sensibility of a millennial culture.

And this is nowhere more apparent than in the innermost sanctums of these impressive and grandiose structures meeting the new age without compromise as they emanate from a unique and wholly Mexican heart.

Albert Sgambati is a freelance journalist based in Mexico City.