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The architecture in Mexico during the last decades of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was based on producing countries like France, England and the United States. Not only were taken as guidelines established by the European and American schools but, for effective implementation, in many cases were imported, much of the same architects as the projects and materials. This happened in the case of public buildings like the Palace of Fine Arts, the Central Post Office and the Justice Palace for which was hired French and Italian architects, the Beaux Arts marble was brought from Carrara and the blacksmithing was held on Florentines workshops.
In other cases, Mexican architects who had studied in Paris, as Antonio Rivas Mercado and others, backed by Cavalieri in San Carlos, and Manuel Cortina García, JG de la Lama, Gorospe, Emilio Dondé, José Hilario Elguero, were responsible for lighting the new bourgeoisie, to instruct in matters of "beauty and elegance, thanks to which the government buildings were not the only endowed with the charm of the School of Fine Arts. There was then in Mexico who was responsible for the production of domestic architecture, fueled with the European models, as we can verify in the time division fashion, Colonia Juarez.
The values that this architecture manifests are essentially eclectic and historicist, coupled with the present traditionalist trend in these movements.
In Europe, eclecticism was incorporated in the dominant trend since the second half of the nineteenth century as the culmination of extensive experience historicist covering nearly a century. It kept a new attitude, without abandoning the interest in different historical periods and ancient monuments, without advocating the interest in different historic ages and antique monuments, the supporters of eclecticism chose another possibility, it means, not to try all the time to obtain or seek from them the absolute rules but making a free usage of the forms.
He opposed then, the dogma of imitation of the ancients, the principle of free combinations. This position was based on a philosophical position which he regarded as transcendental claims of other historical moments and proposed to appraise to integrate a new doctrine body.
This, the architects drew from the different styles over time, which they considered useful, ornamental and aesthetic for new buildings, assuming that this repertoire choice was made depending on the character to the nature, purpose and importance of the work and in accordance to its peculiar temperament and way of thinking.
This approach answered, moreover, a rationalist kind concern. The free use of forms and elements involved, in turn, a commitment: to satisfy the changing needs of the time they were living and rational usage.
Housing models proposed by Charles Garnier in the Universal Exhibition of 1889 |
