We are known for the films of Pedro Infante and Sara Garcia of the golden age of Mexican cinema around 1950; the most contemporary Hollywood movies are showing Mexico with sepia filters in rural environments filled with unpaved streets and wild animals roaming the houses, but now with organized crime inserts where you can buy drugs in the corners and drugs without prescription. Apparently in 60 years, the image of our country stagnated on a cliché that the film industry has seized and that the population wanted to keep; even in series as Sense8 where a more cosmopolitan side of our country and mainly Mexico City is shown, the only marketable theme of our culture remains in machismo, violence and pistols.
In Architecture unfortunately things are not different. Regardless the contributions of Enrique Norten, Alberto Kalach, Augusto Quijano or Michel Rojkind have made in recent decades in our country, when international people think of Mexican architecture dates back to Santa Fe style that had little incident in our history and leaves aside the breathtaking mansions of the historical center of Mexico City, Puebla and Aguascalientes or a simpler but no less fascinating ones in Queretaro, Leon and Guanajuato.
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| Santa Fe House |
Santa Fe style born in the cultures of the region Oasisamerica in the north of our country and the southern United States architecture with thick adobe buildings, stuccoed stone, filleted corners and small windows. Its best exponent is Paquimé, a pre-Hispanic city located in the state of Chihuahua where more than isolated buildings there is a maze of walls and spaces that make it surprising and enigmatic, a set of volumetrics that breaks the Mesoamerican orthogonality. On arrival of the Spanish in the sixteenth century to the north of our country, which back then was still made up by the American states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah and parts of Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma, they retook part of the principles of the architecture of the pre-Hispanic cultures that brought them more comfortable than the outside microclimates and introduced distinctive elements as wood accents and blacksmithing mainly on Catholicism themes, which until now still form the eclecticism that characterizes this style.
Its name comes from the eponymous town in the state of New Mexico where it had a revival from 1910 when they sought the new buildings in the city retook the principles of pre-Hispanic and Hispanic architecture instead of following the Victorian line that dominated United States, taking then the name by which we know it and becoming an important tourist attraction for the area. Since the 1980 was introduced to our country mainly in the tourism and hotel industry in Los Cabos and Loreto and in some residential subdivisions that spread through the country taking the name of Rustic Mexican or Mexican Rural, incorporating elements such as lookout towers or apparent materials like stone wall and have their origins in the Spanish countryside architecture primarily in Seville.
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| Santa Fe House, Los Cabos |
By fusing with the hotel architecture and in an attempt to keep up, the Santa Fe style is now even more eclectic and we see it mixed with large windows, worked forges steel, gabled roofs with tile and large circular volumes not found in its origins as well as becoming an apparent overlapping style with facades and details not care to traditional building systems that would provide the benefits to which owed its revival. Architectural programs are not strangers to this trend and traditional areas that made Santa Fe homes have been lost over time, leading to open and multifunctional spaces that has been integrated contemporary Family Room outpacing the kitchen, that both in the pre-Hispanic and Hispanic cultures, ranks as the center of life of all housing.
Undoubtedly the most influential factor not only in setting but in the perception of Mexican architecture in this style, is the participation of American professionals in the design, construction and sale of real estate in places like Los Cabos and Loreto who have dominated the market due to international interest in these destinations, perpetuating a cliché that through our history is completely misleading.
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JPV
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