70 Years of Engineering and Architecture Through The Lens of Art

O'Gorman offers a panoramic view of the urban hubs of the forties, with colonial domes, construction sites, functionalist architecture, and art-deco meshed together, we see iconic sites such as the La Nacional Building, the Teresa Cinema, and in the background, the street of San Juan Letrán. This photograph captured by the Mexican Aerial Company 14 years later, shows how buildings began to crowd the landscape with the Latin American Tower rising from the horizon and how the historical city center began to evolve, stretching from the west to the east

The Ermita Building is one of the few buildings that continue to stand practically without any alterations in the Tacubaya neighborhood of Mexico City. It is a building designed by the architect Juan Segura, who was in charge of the Mier y Pesado Foundation and a pioneer in designing mixed-use buildings that combined commercial with residential.

An airport had to be built until 1939 to the opening of a terminal in the neighborhood, Colonia Peñón de los Baños east of the city.

Mexico City experiences the greatest growth in its history in the 1940s; in the period from 1941 to 1950 alone, the area increased 47.5 percent. The El Moro Building is considered one of the first modern skyscrapers in the country's capital, located on the corner between Paseo de la Reforma and Avenida de la República.

This multi-family dwelling heralded the arrival of modernity during the second half of the 20th century. The first urban growth of Mexico City occurred in this period, during the presidency of Miguel Alemán Valdés, the first civilian president of the country. These multi dwellings were a symbol of a nation project known as the Benefactor State.

Mexico City began to spread to the south, with the creation of the University City of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) on the grounds of El Pedregal de San Ángel.

In Mexico City, the population grew exponentially, from a million in 1930 to 3 million in 1950. In the space of one decades this figure jumped from 4 million in 1960 to 7 million in 1970. This building embodies the new vision of the government that integrated plastic arts and muralism with architecture.

The National Medical Center was inaugurated in 1961 and the medical center was adorned with pictorial works alluding to health. "Los relieves" was created by the artist Francisco Zúñiga, "Aire es Vida" by Luis Nishizawa decorated the lobby of the cardiology division, and "Apología de la futura victoria de la ciencia médica” was made by the famous muralist, David Alfaro Siqueiros. Other important pieces like Paralelismo histórico de la revolución científica" and “La revolución social” are located on the ground floor of the oncology unit.

Francisco Eppens represents the different layers that make up the city and its history. From the pyramids as the foundation and the colonial buildings perched on top, to the more modern buildings branching out. The work highlights a Quetzalcóatl made from steel, which crosses the mural, uniting these three historical moments with an eagle, which is a recurrent motif in the work of Eppens. He would later on reuse this motif while redesigning the Mexican national emblem in 1968.

The National Museum Plan promoted by Jaime Torres Bodet during the sixties inspired the construction of the cultural center of the National Museum of Anthropology. The architect Pedro Ramírez Vázquez was in charge of the project. The Museum, which spreads across 45 thousand square meters, houses the archaeological and ethnographic pieces of the country.

The shift towards vertical developments not only signaled the collaboration between architects and engineers, but also a deeper understanding of how the subsoil and foundations worked, as well as seismic studies and urban development opportunities.

Built for the XIX Olympic Games, the Sports Palace was designed by the architects Félix Candela, Antonio Peyrí and Enrique Castañeda Tamborell and has a capacity for 17,800 spectators in an area of ​​6.7 hectares.

These urban developments and subsoil experiments led to the discovery of archaeological sites and important findings. This raised questions on how to protect a city's historical heritage with its eagerness to reinvent itself.

The Metro stations project involved the most important architects of the 20th century in Mexico. The architect Félix Candela was in charge of the design of the San Lázaro Station, by using low-cost and sustainable materials, he managed to cover the largest amount of space with the fewest possible pieces.

The ICA company was invited to carry out the work to build the new Basilica of Guadalupe, a design led by architects Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, Alejandro Schoenhofer, Gabriel Chávez de la Mora, and Javier García Lascuráin.

The relationship between civil engineering and water is as old as civilization itself. The Deep Drainage project emerged as a response to the constant flooding.

In 1979, the campus suffered damages by an earthquake, and in 1985 its new and current campus was built, located on land donated by the Federal District Government in the Santa Fe area. The project was carried out by the architects Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, Rafael Mijares Alcérreca, and Francisco Serrano Cacho.

The International Airport of Mexico City is the busiest terminal in Latin America. Terminal 2 was designed by Francisco Serrano and was inaugurated in 2006.