Mexico City, Mexico
The Mexican National University, founded in 1553 by order of the Spanish emperor
Charles V, is the oldest university on the American continent. Institutes and colleges of
Entries A–F 503
the National University were located in the historical center of Mexico City, but in the
1940s, the structural problems of organizing the increasing academic activities led
Mexican politicians to commission plans for a new campus in the southern periphery of
the city. Inspired by Madrid’s university city of 1927 and by the tradition in the United
States of suburban campus and university planning, the Mexican planners designated a
seven-million-square-meter site of lava landscape at the Pedregal de San Angel for the
university city. In 1953, four centuries after its foundation, the entire National University
moved to Ciudad Universitaria.
The project of constructing a university city following contemporary urban planning
and architecture standards had high symbolic importance for the Mexican government
under President Miguel Alemán. Oil-exporting developing countries, such as Mexico,
Venezuela, and Iraq, hoped to make their economic progress visible by building huge
modern architectural projects for education. Although spatially different, the Mexican
university city shared political and architectural aims with Carlos Raúl Villanueva’s
master plan of 1950 for the University City in Caracas and provided the model for Walter
Gropius’s and The Architects Collaborative’s (TAC’s) design for the New University of
Baghdad, Iraq, in 1958.
The first urban plan for Ciudad Universitaria of 1946, by the architects Mario Pani and
Enrique del Moral, characterized by axial Beaux-Arts structures, was soon revised
because of the effect of the modern spatial concept of the UN headquarters in New York
and also because of pressure from architecture students around Teodoro González de
León. Together with José Luis Cuveas, a student of the former Bauhaus director and
emigrant Hannes Meyer, Pani and del Moral in 1949 presented the definitive urban
structure of Ciudad Universitaria. In a campus of 180 to 360 meters, the university
buildings were placed like isolated monuments in open spaces. In the southern zone, the
architects set sports and leisure installations, and west of the campus, separated by the
north-south axis of the broad In-surgentes Avenue, the stadium. Curved internal roads, an
idea of the Austrian-born architect Hermann Herrey, contrasted with the rectangular
structures of campus buildings and opened magnificent views to the lava-stone landscape.
Contemporary critics emphasized that this concept for the Ciudad Universitaria subtly
interpreted the topographic conditions, such as various levels of lava stones and sitespecific
vegetation. The grand open campus space, marked by huge horizontal and
vertical building volumes, reminded archaeologists of pre-Hispanic urban patterns.
Under the direction of the architect Carlos Lazo, a group of 150 Mexican architects,
most of them alumni or students, elaborated the designs for the 30 university buildings.
The outstanding buildings—Rectoría for the university’s president and the central
library—dominate the campus. Their cubic forms and vertical orientation contrast with
the low-rise buildings for the faculties of philosophy and architecture. At the eastern edge
of the central green campus, the tower of sciences marks the beginning of another
subdivision, for the faculties of medicine, chemistry, and law. The smallest building on
campus, the Pavilion of Cosmic Rays, was regarded as architecturally the most
interesting. Here, in 1951, Felix Candela with Jorge González Reyna constructed his first
shell building, which brought Mexico to the attention of international architecture
magazines.
One of the principal intentions of modern Mexican architects at that time was to
integrate artworks with the buildings to imbue International Style forms with national or
Encyclopedia of 20th-century architecture 504
local icono-graphic elements. Juan O’Gorman’s Central Library shows all the
contradictory aspects of this “integración plástica.” The cubic high-rise is covered with a
mosaic containing different worldviews and scientific concepts, graphically expressed in
the manner of pre-Hispanic codices. The library’s facades serve as huge canvases but do
not integrate art and architecture. Other campus buildings show applied murals or
ornaments, as in David Alfaro Siqueiros’ relief mural at the Rectoría.
The most outstanding example of artistic intervention and structural integration into
the landscape is the University Stadium, used for the 1968 Olympics. Its conical, oval
form rises out of the surrounding lava rocks. Exterior walls are covered with rough, gray
lava stones, yielding at the central entrance to an unfinished mural by Diego Rivera
showing the development of sports from pre-Hispanic to modern times. For its
combination of dynamic forms and archaic material, the University Stadium was admired
worldwide as a model for site-specific entertainment architecture.
The Ciudad Universitaria and stadium complex forms claim a landmark of
international standing. Together with the neighboring luxurious Pedregal housing
development by Luis Barragán and Max Cetto, the Ciudad Universitaria adds ecological
and topographical aspects to the modern urban concept of open spaces. The immense
urban growth of Mexico City has, however, affected the Ciudad Universitaria. Originally
planned for a community of 25,000 students and academics, the campus serves about
300,000, reflecting the increasing population of Mexico City (3.5 million in the 1950s,
probably 20 million in 2000). New university satellites were planned in the 1970s and
1980s, among them the cultural center at the southern edge of Ciudad Universitaria.
There, the National Library in raw concrete and the research institutes in modular
functionalist forms are located between an open forum for contemporary sculpture and an
ecological reserve. The circular Espacio Escultorio, which reveals the geologic origins of
the site, was designed in 1978 by a group of Mexican artists under the direction of
Mathias Goeritz.
Despite all intentions to decentralize higher education in Mexico, Ciudad
Universitaria, with its dense concentration of science and culture, is still attractive and
therefore exceeds its intended capacity. Uncontrolled urban growth endangers the
generous open and green spaces of Ciudad Universitaria. The agenda for the 21st century
will require protection of its urban, architectural, and artistic concept not only as a
landmark but also as a lively space and as ecological compensation for the megalopolis.
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