HOUSE STUDY: CASA

BARRAGAN
ARCHITECT: LUIS
BARRAGAN
FOCUSSING ON COLOUR, SCALE, LIGHT & SHADOW
BY SIDDHI CHIRANIA, PURV PRABHAKAR & SHAGUN PANDEY
KNOW THE ARCHITECT, LUIS
BARRGAN
• Luis Barragán was a world-renowned Mexican architect
and civil engineer. His work has influenced many
contemporary architects, visually and conceptually. He
conceived the new methods to create emotional
architecture with serene spaces encouraging
meditation, joy, and quietude.

• Barragán was trained as an engineer, and travelled

through Spain and France after his graduation. He met
artists, designers, writers which greatly inspired him
and inclined him towards arts. His voyage
through Europe captivated him – the architecture,
landscaping and urban planning spoke to him on a
deep level.
• In 1931, Luis Barragán once again travelled to France and then
New York, where he actively pursued an education in modernist
design. This journey brought him face-to-face with Mexican-mural
painter José Clemente Orozco, the Austrian-American architect,
theatre designer, artist and sculptor Frederick Kiesler and a few
architecture magazine editors. This furthered his education and
awareness in design. The journey was brought to climax when he
visited the Swiss-French born architect Le Corbusier, who forever
left an impact on his practice.

• Now back in Mexico, filled with a poetic design sense, and

obsessed with a notion of developing his own style of Modernist
architecture, Luis Barragán started to believe in an ‘emotional
architecture’ as opposed to the thought that a house is built as a
‘machine for living.’

I believe in an “emotional architecture.” It is very important for

human kind that architecture should move by its beauty. If there are
many equally valid technical solutions to a problem, the one which
offers the user a message of beauty and emotion, that one is
architecture.
- Luis Barragan
 BARRAGAN’S DESIGN PHILOSOPHY
• Barragán defined contemporary Mexico’s architectural identity. Along
with looking into the past traditions and Spanish colonial style, he also
embraced European modernism.
• Using greenery, water, simple geometric forms, and bold
colors, Barragán created a poetic and painterly yet elegantly minimalistic
architectural style.
• To illustrate, his iconic Cuadra San Cristóbal consists of flat planes,
minimalist geometric lines. It’s softened by pink and earth-tone walls,
Moorish motifs, beautiful textures, a body of water, marvelous gardens,
and light to evoke a sense of calm.
• His signature style consists of wall thickness, scale, light, shadow, form,
texture, and spaces built with the bold color are immersed in the
harmony of the garden. Indeed, these elements are found throughout all
of Barragán’s striking architecture.
• Additionally, Barragán’s architecture has influenced the world of fashion.
Louis Vuitton is one of the prominent brands whose collection has been
inspired by Barragán’s work and ideas.
• Also influenced by the European model of modernism, he designed
buildings imbibing the characteristic, straight, clean lines of the Modernist
movement, often using raw materials such as stone and wood. Bright
shades of yellow and pink dominated most of his works, breathing life
and personality into his structures.
 HOW LUIS BARRAGAN USED LIGHT TO
MAKE US SEE COLOR
• In Luis Barragán’s poetic imagination color plays as significant a role as dimension or space. Rough
textures and water reflections heighten the impact of bright sunlight in his colorful buildings. But where
does such vibrancy come from and how is it heightened by the architecture itself?
• PROTECTING WALLS

• The walls in Barragán’s architecture not only carefully frame

views, but also cast shadow or render the play of shadows by
trees.
• His compositions include walls with both rough and smooth
textures. The rough texture originates from pea-gravel mortar
applied to brick and creates vivid, irregular patterns and
emphasizes a tactile dimension. By contrast, the smooth
texture comes from a regular mortar surface and forms a silent,
abstract scenery, offering a contemplative canvas for light
beams moving across the wall.
• While the overall structure of his walls is kept minimalist, the
element of texture and color create a poetic experience.
• This relationship was recently explored in an installation by
American artist Fred Sandback, as seen in the images
accompanying the article.
• THE NEED FOR HALF LIGHT

• Especially in regions with cloudless skies, people look for

shaded areas to avoid the hot and harsh sunlight. Walls
providing shade and smaller or screened windows
contribute to a comfortable atmosphere in these areas.
• This spatial strategy is apparent in many of Barragán’s
projects, such as the chapel for the Capuchinas
Sacramentarias or the Casa Gilardi, where he minimizes any
direct view to the sky.
• He believed that to recover mental and spiritual ease and
to alleviate anxiety, the salient characteristic of these
agitated times, and the pleasures of thinking, working,
conversing are heightened by the absence of glaring,
distracting light.”
• Barragán reduces daylight to a minimum. Light is filtered
with yellow opaque glass for the corridor at the Casa Gilardi
or windows are even moved to the very corner of rooms in
his own house.”
• GARDENS AND COLORS

• Meeting the French landscape designer Ferdinand Bac

opened Barragán’s eyes to the beauty of gardens.
• Barragán felt deeply inspired by Bac’s relation to gardens
and his views, quoting Bac's words in his 1980 Pritzker Prize
acceptance speech: "the soul of gardens shelters the
greatest sum of serenity at man's disposal."
• After seeing photographs of Barragán's houses, Bac sent his
book Les Colombières about the garden in Menton on the
French Riviera with the inscription: “To Mr Luis Barragán,
whom I would like to call my godchild for the perfect
comprehension you have of my renovation of a
Mediterranean-Spanish style.”
• His imagination ran free in the haciendas and gardens of
Mexico, inspiring the spacious and colorful designs
throughout his career.
• I don’t divide architecture, landscape, and gardening; to me,
they are one. My house is my refuge, an emotional piece of
architecture, not a cold piece of convenience. A garden must
combine the poetic and the mysterious with a feeling of
serenity and joy.
- Luis barragan
• When asked about Barragan’s color scheme many critics
refer to brilliant colors of indigenous buildings in Mexico.
• For the Japanese architect Yutaka Saito it is clear that the
colors derive from the flowers of his living environment:
“Thus, his pink comes from the bougainvillea, his red-rust
color is extracted from the flowers of tabachin, and his
light-purple is the color of the jacaranda flowers. Blue is the
color of the sky and yellow ochre that of the earth. What a
revelation when I took the flowers and checked the
coordination with the buildings: they matched perfectly.”
• These colors build a strong contrast to the green trees and
plants. Sometimes Barragán also used blue walls to extend
the cloudless sky in patios or for interior spaces. But the
intense colors cannot be taken for granted. Mexico’s harsh
sunlight requires the walls to be periodically repainted to
preserve the quality of the space.  
ONE OF HIS BEST WORKS AND HIS
HOME: CASA BARRAGAN
•  Widely recognized for his emphasis on color, light, shadow,
form and texture Luis Barragan encompasses all of his
trademarks. On its street in Mexico City, the stark facade of
the house humbly blends in with its neighbors, giving no
hints to the personality of it's interior.
• The most prominent aspects of the design of Casa Barragan
are the use of flat planes and light, both natural and
artificial.
• The skylights and windows allow for visual tracking of light
throughout the day; the floods of natural light and views of
nature are the key purposes of the windows.
• Opening up into the garden, the back of the house creates
a visible and physical relationship between the lower level
and the backyard.
• Barragan often called himself a landscape architect because
he placed as much emphasis on the exterior and
surroundings of a building as he did on the interior.
• THE ENTRANCE, AN EXPERIENCE: areas. On the roof, a window is accentuated by the use of
wooden girders.
• The room is dim, with a small rectangle of natural light coming in
through a filtered window above the door to the street. One
feels immediately removed from the outside world, yet stuck in a
sort of intermediary state.
• One of the walls is made of light wood, local to the area, and as
the guide flips the light switch, we suddenly see that the other
walls are a bright yellow.
• The light itself is recessed behind the wood in the top corner of
the room, so the low-ceilinged hallway is brightened by a soft
light.
• A few volcanic stone stairs lead up to the next door, giving the
sense that we are ascending from darker, cramped quarters into
something more comfortable. 
• Then an encounter with a pink wall, the first engagement with
the known style of Barragan.
• The only function of this main room is to use the telephone, but
it is still characteristically lit and decorated with simply a chair
and a table, neither of which have changed location in the last 50
years.
• The double height space of the main room is seperated only by
lower partition walls, which separate the space into different
• THE USE OF PLANES, COLORS & SCALE TO PROVIDE aspects of the house: the floating wooden staircase to the
bedrooms. The natural wood appears almost weightless against
A TRANSITIONAL SPACE EFFECT the white wall, and flows smoothly into the wooden door of the
• Throughout the house, one goes from small, low-ceilinged same material on the second floor.
hallways to large, two-story spaces and back again.
• There’s a clear demarcation between rooms for spending time
in and hallways that act as a sort of mental palate cleanser for
the next room.
• In contrast to the open plans that are common today, these
distinct spaces mean that moving through the house feels
dramatic. From the entry hall, for example, a door leads into the
living room and library. Once again one first encounters a
smaller space, with the view into the larger room partially
blocked by a fabric screen. After moving past the screen, the
space opens up into an airy living room, with a two-story tall
ceiling, furniture designed by Barragán and designer Clara
Porset, artwork by Josef Albers and Amedeo Modigliani, and a
window that takes up almost the entire west wall.
• The living room is connected to the library, which is divided by a
half wall, so that the natural light from the two-story garden
window extends into the book-lined reading area. Here, the
books mingle with ceramics, artworks, and religious
iconography.
• The room also includes perhaps one of the most photographed
• INCORPORATION OF PERSONAL LIKES AND also an axis unraveling the spiral of breath that animates all of
Barragán’s work. 
BELIEFS IN HIS DESIGNS
• While we might have noticed saints on display among the
books, or the cross-like mullions of the garden window,
Barragán’s Catholicism comes to the fore in the more private
rooms.
• In a guest bedroom, the shutters to the window form a cross
when left slightly open, light pouring out through the
openings like a manifestation of the Holy Spirit.
• Barragán’s dressing room is even called “cuarto del Cristo” or
“Room of Christ,” with its large crucifix on the wall and its
spare, low-level furnishings.
• Barragán cites the monasteries found throughout Mexico as
an important influence: “With a certain reverence, I have
always been deeply moved by the peace and sense of well-
being I found in those uninhabited cloisters and solitary
courts.”
• Admirers of Barragán’s work often use similarly spiritual
language to describe the experience of his buildings.
• Of Casa Barragán, Alberto Ruy-Sánchez Lacy proclaimed that
“the house is a manifesto of Barragán’s creative principles and
a testimony that embodies his conception of the world. It is
• THE DESIRE TO MAKE THE WORLD MORE LIVABLE
•  To explore the world of Luis Barragán is to establish a
dialogue with the horizon. For it is a horizon that speaks: it
poses questions and it responds with forms, making the
boundaries of our own world more livable.” This desire to
make the world more livable is evident in Casa Barragán’s
organization.
• The windows onto the street are small, as the central focus
lies at the back of the house: a large private garden designed
by Barragán himself. The floorplan demonstrates that the
space devoted to the garden is nearly as large as the space
devoted to the house.
• Large windows in the kitchen, breakfast room, dining room,
bedrooms, bathrooms, and living room all open up to the wild
greenery of tree branches, vines, and wild grasses.
• As the architectural historian Keith Eggener notes: “Barragán’s
postwar gardens, including that designed for his own house,
seem to have been intended less for direct use than for
viewing from relatively detached architectural interiors.”
• In fact, though yellow, pink, and gold dominate the walls, and
the furniture is made of wood, there is no green to be found
within the house. The garden adds it of its own accord, almost
perpetually, thanks to the temperate climates of the city.
• COMPLIMENTING NATURE THROUGH SCALES &
COLORS

• The relationship between indoor and outdoor space is one of

the central features of Barragán’s work.
• The residential community designed by Barragán with help from
Cetto called Les Jardines de Pedregal, or the lava field gardens,
outside Mexico City, has a specifically small footprint for the
houses as compared to the amount of space devoted to the
gardens made within the natural lava formations. Barragán
worked on Pedregal during the same period he was working on
Casa Barragán, and the similarities can be found not only in his
personal garden, but in the volcanic stones used in the floor of
the entryway to the house.
• In case the garden wasn’t enough, Barragán included one more
space that offered a retreat from the world: the rooftop. As soon
as you climb the stairs and open the door, the large monolithic
steles of the roof make you feel incredibly small.
• Because of the high walls, the street below is impossible to see,
so instead visitors are forced to focus on the color of the walls
(orange, pink, and the green of treetops beyond) and the color
of the sky. In fact, the roof seems purposely designed to frame
the sky.
• SUBTLE INCORPORATION OF LIGHT & SHADOW

•  Barragán didn’t use lights on the ceilings.

• There is only one found in his studio because he wanted to
incorporate a lampshade he received as a gift from
Morocco. So, he creatively used it in his dining room. But the
rest of the illumination is from table lamps and the natural
daylight.
• One of the very unique aspects of Barragán’s architecture is
the fact that he works with both colors and light in a very
symbiotic way.
• Even when there is a white wall, you see the colors
reflecting over it. Either from the colorful walls around or
the green of the plants outside.
• He used to provide a frame to the nature through his
designs.
• He used to compliment his designs with more of the natural
light.
• Everything, from scales to colors, from light to shadow and
from forms to texture were correlated in his art.
• ELEVATION OF CASA BARRAGAN
SOME OTHER AESTHETIC DETAILS OF THE HOUSE:

• OUTDOORS DETAIL • SIGNATURE STAIRCASE IN THE HOUSE

• Use of texture, flat plains & colors • Mixes with the wooden bedroom door that it leads to
• STYLISH STUDY AREA • LIVING ROOM SPACE FULL OF LIGHT
• Use of different wall sizes, incorporation of lamp shades at • Complimenting nature with a frame. Play with light and
the corner to form interesting shadows, and light focusing nature.
mainly on the desk and lighting the bookshelf subtly
• HOUSE DETAILS. FIREPLACE HEATER TO KEEP THE HOUSE • HOUSE DETAILS
WARM IN COLD MONTHS
• Use of long, plain, low lying furniture
• Use of texture on the white wall against the black color.
• ART IN THE HOUSE • A LOVELY LIBRARY
SOME OTHER WORKS BY LUIS
BARRAGAN
• TORRES DE SATELITE
• Marking the sparkling future of a new district, Ciudad
Satelite, this sculptural marvel was designed in
collaboration with painter Jesus Rayes Ferreira and
sculptor Mathias Goeritz. With five isosceles pyramids in
a central avenue painted in the three prime colors of red,
blue and yellow are accompanied by two neutral white
icons.  The cranky texture on the concrete created by the
wooden frames during construction makes it a blend of
art and architecture.
• CHAPEL OF THE CAPUCHINAS
• Everything from calmness to serenity to charm to solace to
spirituality is all found in this chapel designed by Barragan.
Putting his soul into the work, the yellow prayer hall wall
across the black stone-walled pond surrounded by
a white massive wall, altogether made the whole premise
very similar to a part of the heavens mentioned in the bible.
Be it the huge cross inscribed into the wall, the
perpendicularly placed floating bench or the light peeping
through the small windows, the tiniest of the details is what
makes this place unique.
• GALVEZ HOUSE
• This project slips a little beyond modernism, bringing in
clean finishes with the Mexican hues, a new experiment
undertaken by the architect. He considered creating poetic
conversations between spaces, the adjoining streets and
the elements that surround. Though the concept sounded
vague, the result was an incredible piece of art adding
another feather into his cap. The stucco walls painted with
colors of pink, yellow and white along with glass openings
and wooden or gravel flooring made up the material
palette of the product.
SKETCHES
MODELS
GROUND FLOOR PLAN
FIRST FLOOR PLAN
SECTIONS
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