Luis Barragán House and Studio

Luis Barragán House and Studio, often called Casa Luis Barragán, was the home of the celebrated Mexican architect in Mexico City’s Miguel Hidalgo district. The house was built in 1948, just after the Second World War, and it captures Barragán’s architectural approach from that period. He lived there until his death in 1988. The property now belongs to the Fundación de Arquitectura Tapatía and the Government of the State of Jalisco. It opened as a museum in 1994, displaying Barragán’s original furniture and personal belongings, including a mostly Mexican art collection that spans the 16th to 20th centuries and features works by Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, Jesús Reyes Ferreira, and Miguel Covarrubias. The museum also serves as a workspace for visiting architects. In 2004, UNESCO designated it a World Heritage Site, calling it one of the most influential and representative examples of modern Mexican architecture.

The site originally lay just outside the historic town of Tacubaya. Barragán bought the property in 1943 as part of a larger development, at a time when his career was shifting from real estate to architecture. He later sold off the rest of the land but kept this parcel for himself. Before this house, he lived in the nearby “Ortega House,” which reused an existing building, from 1943 to 1947. The house itself was designed and built in 1948 for Barragán himself, and he moved in that same year, even as he was developing the elite subdivision Jardines del Pedregal in southern Mexico City. Over the decades, he made many modifications to the house, treating it as a laboratory for his ideas.

In 1993, the government of Jalisco and the Arquitectura Tapatía Luis Barragán Foundation acquired the property, converting it into a museum the following year. It is the only private residence in Latin America to be named a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The designation recognized the house as a key representation of 20th-century architecture that blends traditional and vernacular elements with various mid-century philosophical and artistic currents. It has also been called one of the ten most important houses built in the 20th century. Several publications have focused on the house, including the book “La casa de Luis Barragán,” written by three experts on his work.