Few people are aware that the house designed by Mexican architect Luis Barragán—known today as Casa Barragán—was designed originally for not just one occupant but two. Similarly, few know that this house, built in 1948, was not only Barragán’s residence but also the studio where he tested ideas and designed many of his best-known works. In 1982, reflecting on several of Barragán’s projects, American author and architectural historian Esther McCoy referred to his architecture as the result of a beautiful contradiction: that of a seeming calm that contained the effervescence of memories beneath.¹ And indeed, visiting this house on General Francisco Ramírez Street in the historic working-class neighborhood of Tacubaya does reveal a contradiction, though not the one pointed to by McCoy.

In a 1987 interview by architecture critic Joseph Giovannini, McCoy spoke of the work of several contemporary Mexican architects, including the house of Luis Barragán, which she had first visited in 1951.² In this conversation, McCoy traces the influences that can be found in his work, defining Barragán’s architectural style as “a cross between Corb and the village churches,” making reference to the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier, who Barragán allegedly met during one of his extended stays in Europe.³ To describe this unlikely combination, she goes on to coin the term “Corbusian regionalism,” a mixture of Barragán’s “tropicalization” of the ideals of architectural Modernism and his reinterpretation of church and monastery architecture. Even more revealing, further on in the interview, Giovannini asks McCoy whether she also considered Barragán’s style to be informed by the architecture of Mexican ranches, a modern and more politically correct way to refer to haciendas.⁴ In an almost disparaging tone, McCoy responded that there was nothing “rancho” about Barragán, adding no further comment.⁵

At first sight, it is true that there is nothing manifestly “rancho” in the architecture of Barragán. His own house, for instance, is filled with windows of all types and sizes that allow for natural light to shower its interior spaces, in sharp contrast to traditional hacienda architecture that tended to be more enclosed due to the construction techniques employed and environmental conditions it protected against. Even more distinctive, it was perhaps Barragán’s innovative use of traditional materials—the vivid colors with which he painted walls and his modern take on traditional Mexican residential decoration—that blocked McCoy from seeing further.

But one critical aspect of the house, overlooked by McCoy, is the role and configuration of its service spaces. Even though Barragán is understood to have led a life of relative solitude, he was nevertheless consistently accompanied by the people who served him. Until this day a common practice among upper-middle and upper classes in Mexico, millions of households in the country have full-time housekeepers. The role architecture has played in the continuation of social discrimination and in the reinforcement of poor working conditions in Mexico throughout the twentieth century—especially in residential design—should not be underestimated.⁶ Looking closely at these service spaces reveals the relationships Mexicans have constructed as a society, with architects as accomplices, between housekeepers and their employers. And since service rooms have long been a requirement of the residential real estate market in Mexico, no architect, regardless of their fame or position, can avoid their expected inclusion. In Casa Barragán, the architect was both designer and occupant, and he wasn’t alone.

After returning from an extended trip to Europe in 1925, considered to be a watershed moment in his career, at the age of twenty-three Barragán began practicing architecture in Guadalajara.⁷ His first commissions were private homes located within a few blocks of each other in the traditional neighborhood of Colonia Americana. These homes, designed and renovated for prominent public figures, all share an austere but graphic quality. They were heavily influenced by the haciendas of Jalisco as well as by the Moorish architecture Barragán saw during his visit to Spain—specifically to the Alhambra villa and Generalife gardens in Granada.⁸ Many of the formal and spatial qualities of the Alhambra and Generalife—the multilevel patios and walkways, the solid walls around courtyards and gardens, and the open arcades—can be found in the architect’s early work. After almost ten years practicing in his hometown, at the end of 1935, Barragán moved to Mexico City, leaving his family behind so he could build a career in the country’s capital.

From one perspective, the Mexico of the early twentieth century in which Barragán was raised was composed primarily of two social groups: a vast working class and a small, masculine elite. Just as it had been established almost four hundred years earlier during the colony, the employer of the 1900s was still typically either Spanish or a descendant of someone who was, while his employees tended to be of indigenous origin, descendants of the people who for centuries had worked the land. Despite the government’s efforts to modernize—specifically through the enactment of the new Ley Agraria and the Constitution of 1917—the Mexico of the turn of the century was still dependent on latifundios, agricultural lands whose products were mainly destined for export.⁹ The system of latifundios was primarily composed of a type of plantation known as the hacienda. These originated in land grants given by the King of Spain during the conquest of Mexico to Spanish conquistadores in exchange for social and military services as representatives of the crown in the so-called New World. In order to recruit its workforce, the new landowner, or patrón, would turn to the nearby communities offering its members work in exchange for food and a roof under which to sleep, a proposition that often represented the best opportunity for their families’ survival. As such, the system of haciendas was a fundamental part of the social and spatial order introduced under colonial rule and carried on all the way into the beginning of the twentieth century.

Production aside, most haciendas were composed of similar programmatic components: the main house and guest quarters, the servants’ quarters, stables, granaries, and corrals. Perhaps the most unique of these components was the “tienda de raya”—literally meaning “line shop”—a monopolistic credit establishment owned by the patrón where workers were forced to acquire basic goods for their subsistence. Since there was no real currency inside haciendas, workers would get paid in “scrip,” pieces of paper with a pre-assigned value, which they could only exchange for goods at the store inside the hacienda property.¹⁰ The total amount spent at the end of the month in the “tienda de raya” would be discounted from the workers’ already meager salaries, resulting many times in lifelong debts with the patrón that further increased their dependency.¹¹

With the objective of having full control over the workers’ lives, the programmatic components of haciendas were expanded to include a school for the workers’ children and even a chapel. A resident priest—another loyal servant of the patrón—ensured the transmission of the evangelical message, first disseminated more than two centuries before his time during the Spanish colony while also continuing to reinforce the bond between power and religion. Graveyards were also commonly found inside these complexes, transforming them into small towns that workers would literally never need to leave.

Before Barragán’s generation, few well-known Mexican architects had looked for inspiration in the popular architecture of their own country.¹² On the contrary, starting with the Spanish conquest and continuing into the early 1900s, the common practice was to turn outside Mexico in the search for ideals of beauty and new modes of living. As a result of this phenomenon, during the early decades of the twentieth century, all historic Mexican architectural traditions—especially those of the pre-Hispanic period, but also those imposed during the Spanish colony—were disparaged by the elites. At the time, due to the influence of the regime of Porfirio Díaz, the small sector of the population able to commission architects looked to the Beaux-Arts emanating from Western Europe, specifically France, as reference.¹³ In a country characterized by harsh social inequality, this duality found throughout Barragán’s oeuvre is the first of a series of notable contradictions: while his architecture is in many ways a reflection of Mexican folklore—the country’s popular beliefs, customs, and traditions that emerged from the encounter of the pre-Hispanic and the colonial—it is also inevitably imprinted with social protocols of the highly conservative Mexican elites.

For some residential architects during the first half of the twentieth century, to include service spaces would seem to contradict modernism’s progressive principles. Hoping to reconcile with the technological and social advancements of the time—including the emergence of labor unions, legal workers’ rights, and the growth of a middle-class and white-collar labor force—spurred many to reconsider the role of service spaces inside the home and deem them obsolete. However, service spaces have remained hidden in plain sight in many canonical modernist buildings. This misalignment with the ostensibly progressive aims of much of the modern movement’s discourse points to the movement’s internal contradictions. In Mexico, these contradictions are particularly striking in residential design, where architectural Modernism was implemented primarily as an aesthetic choice—not necessarily as part of a deeper social paradigm change.

Casa Barragán is no exception. By analyzing the configuration of its spaces in plan and section, one can note the discomfort service areas seem to have caused its architect. The architectural drawings reveal what can only be intuited while visiting the house in person: Barragán purposely segregated all service spaces away from the rooms he occupied, especially those considered private. He achieved this not only by keeping them physically at a distance but also by deliberately hiding them from clear sight. The areas occupied by housekeepers were squeezed to their absolute minimum, split into two segments—one on the ground floor and one on the third floor—and connected vertically through a slender and hidden spiral staircase. The first and most important of these service spaces was without a doubt the kitchen, the space where the women working for Barragán spent most of their time. Located on the ground floor adjacent to the party wall abutting Casa Ortega—the first house designed by Barragán for himself in Mexico City—both the kitchen and the service staircase are pushed alongside the garage, which allows for independent access from the street.

The same scheme is followed in the spatial arrangement of the second floor, where the master bedroom; dressing room; cuarto blanco, or “white room”; guest bedroom and bathroom; and personal study are located.¹⁴ These rooms constrict the size of and access to the service staircase that directly connects the ground and third floors, where the service bedroom and bathroom are, thus preventing housekeepers from having direct access to Barragán’s most intimate spaces. The decision to block any entrance from the service staircase to the second floor resulted in a back of house composed of inefficient circulation routes. For example, whenever a housekeeper needed to go from the third floor to the second, she had to first travel to the ground floor kitchen and then back up through the main staircase. This organization may have provided spaces on the second floor with privacy, but it also generated the potential for increased interaction between server and served in other areas of the home. On the top floor of the house, the service areas expand to take almost a third of the area of the rooftop, which was separated from Barragán’s private terrace by high walls. This might seem generous but should not come as a surprise, since Mexican architecture has traditionally reserved rooftops for the work of housekeepers, primarily due to the fact that this is the place where clothes are washed and hung to dry.

Similarly, looking at the elevation of the house from the garden with its different window sizes and treatments reinforces the idea of a calculated segregation of the service spaces and its users from the rest of the rooms. The interior façade that overlooks the garden gives a clear reading of the progression from the most public of Barragán’s spaces on the left—the living room with its large square window—to the least public room on the far right—the kitchen with its small reticulated window.¹⁵ Furthermore, the kitchen window is composed of translucent, textured glass, allowing for only natural light to enter this space and for its users to be nothing more than a blurry image from the exterior.¹⁶ And while it is important to note that the working conditions and the quality of the spaces in the service rooms of Barragán’s house were more humane than those in traditional haciendas, the spatial operations remain the same.

Take for instance Le Corbusier’s Villa Stein completed in 1927. In this case, the service bedrooms are separated from the main public areas of the house on its fourth and last level. They are open to the roof garden, Corbusier’s fifth point, and are easily accessible to all residents. The two service rooms have windows to both the front and back façade, making them visible from the main access and garden. In the case of Mies van der Rohe’s Villa Tugendhat, completed in 1930, service areas and bedrooms are situated with comparable ease. When analyzing its ground floor plan and the spatial sequence from the pantry and through the kitchen, an enfilade of service spaces culminates in a service bedroom, which contains two twin beds looking toward a large window. In this case, the path from public to secluded service spaces is fast and straightforward. The service areas are in proximity to the most public spaces of the house as well as those inhabited by the owner, all positioned on the same floor and divided by a single wall. Interestingly, other residential projects by Barragán of the same period, including Casa Prieto López (1947–49) and Casa Gálvez (1955), take a similar approach to the placement and access of service spaces, which is far more direct than in Casa Barragán. In these examples, spaces such as the laundry room and service bedroom are accessed through minor patios or garages, which are, in turn, connected to common spaces of the house via simple staircases and corridors.

But, similar to the way service areas once operated in haciendas, in Casa Barragán these spaces and their occupants were concealed from the public eye via compartmentalization. These operations were made possible through the deployment of specific architectural devices—foyers, corridors, walls, and doors—rendering housekeepers invisible all while keeping them at a convenient distance for when they might be needed. Particularly relevant to the practices of segregation implemented by Barragán in his house are a series of airlock-type anterooms of different scales positioned in between public and service spaces. By inserting these transitional spaces into an already complex circulation system, Barragán added an additional layer of separation between public and private. Bodies were required to stop and turn upon entering a space, which slowed down foot traffic and restricted sight lines. The compartmentalization of rooms characteristic in Barragán’s work, taken to the extreme in the design of his own house, plays a double role: It not only acted to conceal the service spaces but also provided the rest of the rooms in the house—specifically those occupied by him—strict control and privacy.

The regimen of control put in place by Barragán did not stop at the level of fixed architectural elements. The placement of furniture and interior objects such as artwork, screens, and religious paraphernalia reinforced the perception of seclusion and privacy in the house’s interior. Of particular relevance to this practice are glass gazing balls, one of several ornaments Barragán allegedly discovered through his friend, artist, and aesthetic consultant Jesús Reyes Ferreira.¹⁷ Barragán was known to place gazing balls throughout his home, typically against walls and near areas of transit, such as corridors or doorways. In doing so, these reflective orbs allowed him to capture the reflection of anyone coming in through a door behind him and avoid sudden interruption.¹⁸ Specific works of art played a similar role, such as the famous Goeritz square gold-leaf painting hanging at the top of the main staircase, with its blurred reflection of light and image. Other elements like free-standing screens—used by Barragán in lieu of airlock-spaces when these were not architecturally present—could be found throughout the house. They were placed at the entrance of select rooms (one can even be found in the access to the service bedroom) in order to block any direct interior gaze as well as to deflect access.

Barragán’s discomfort in public and efforts to set himself apart from others, both physically and ideologically, have been widely documented.¹⁹ His evasion of interviews, speaking to an audience, and established design trends is popularly explained by framing him as a solitary genius who pursued introspection in order to foster his most creative self. However, the regimen of control Barragán designed and implemented inside his own home cannot be attributed solely to his apparent unease with the public sphere. Casa Barragán’s tightly choreographed sequence of spaces and objects—a true total interior—implies he did not feel safe outside the confines of his own home and experienced a similar unease while inhabiting it as well. A premeditated and designed effort to protect himself from unwanted human contact inside his home was a lifelong project. Raising and extending walls, closing up windows, and rearranging furniture were all operations Barragán deployed consistently during the four decades he inhabited the house.

Perhaps one of the contradictions that fascinated McCoy, Barragán embodied the personas of both a dandy and a monk. Throughout his life he maintained written romantic correspondence with several women who he was also known to shun. In addition, Barragán’s heterosexuality has been questioned by historians and curators in recent years based on several observations: his friendships with openly gay men,²⁰ the fact that he never married or had children of his own, his self-proclaimed devotion to the profession of architecture above all else, his rare public appearances and interviews,²¹ and even an alleged exaggeration of his religiousness to deflect discussion of personal life.²² And while none of these claims point to a single sexual identity, they do reinforce the image of a man who guarded against showing himself both in and to a public.²³

The architecture of Casa Barragán is autobiographical and, as such, a reflection of his convictions and contradictions.²⁴ With its labyrinthian circulation, its characteristic play of spatial compression and expansion, and its precise use of decorative objects ultimately served as personal armor—a kind of counterarchitecture to the trends of its own time, both local and international.²⁵

Of the photographs taken by Timberman, there is one that is unique. This photograph documents McCoy poised at the top of the famous volcanic-stone stairs of the entrance hall (completing the void that perhaps spurred her contradictory feelings) and captures the back of a uniformed woman below her.²⁶ This anonymous woman picking up the phone—perhaps as part of her duties or maybe just because the patrón was not home, is believed to be a woman named Ángela, a housekeeper who worked for Barragán when McCoy visited the house in 1951.²⁷ Accident or not, this photograph shows a glimpse of one other figure that lived under the same roof as Barragán, the woman who helped him with the cooking and cleaning and who later took care of him.

Barragán did not write or theorize at length about his architecture, and thus, apart from his buildings and drawings, he did not leave behind any comprehensive intellectual testimony. However, glimpses of his thinking can be found in the few lectures and interviews he gave throughout his career. During one of these conversations, he expressed a phrase that could give meaning to the feeling McCoy felt when first visiting his house. He began, “mi casa es mi refugio” or “my house is my refuge” and continued, “an emotional piece of architecture, not a cold piece of convenience.”²⁸ This phrase might contain not only the logic for the design of his house but also a fundamental part of the design principles of his work. The house served solely to protect Barragán—not only from the inclemency of the weather and the city but also from unwanted social interactions. In 1980, during his acceptance speech at the Pritzker Prize ceremony at the Dumbarton Oaks Museum in Washington, DC, Barragán listed his eight design principles. The fourth was “solitude,” of which he said, “Only in intimate communion with solitude may man find himself. Solitude is good company and my architecture is not for those who fear or shun it.”²⁹

Achieving his appreciated solitude, however, came with a price. Informed by ideologies of inequality, the architecture of Casa Barragán perpetuated discriminatory practices on one hand and protected its main occupant from them on the other. Ultimately, this contradiction is drawn with lines of class, race, and gender. Barragán held a position of power that enabled him to design a total interior in which to reside, a condition that he worked to perfect over forty-one years. Those who served him were confined to the spaces they were given.

After Barragán’s death in 1988, his house became a museum. Foreseeing this, Barragán left one stipulation in his will regarding the future use of his home: he would allow for his last housekeeper, Ana María Albor, to continue living there for as long as she wished. As a result, all service spaces of the house—kitchen, laundry room, service patio, and bedroom—were given to Albor, who continues to live and work there today.³⁰ While Barragán’s testament stipulations were undoubtably concerned with the welfare of his employee, the act is double-edged. By accepting Barragán’s gift—through desire or necessity—Albor continues to be rendered invisible by the people she serves. Much like the “tienda de raya” credit system found in haciendas, this “gift” extends her dependency on them far past the life of her original patrón. Paradoxically, the architectural practices rooted in colonial histories of segregation and oppression have allowed for her to live within the iconic home in undisturbed seclusion, hidden inside the walls of an otherwise public-by-appointment museum.

Postscript

In 2018, almost a century after the end of the Mexican Revolution, Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled there was no constitutional reason that domestic workers should be denied affiliation with national social security programs; to deny them this basic labor right would be considered discrimination. Consequently, on December 5 of the same year, the door was opened for the first time in history for 2.4 million domestic workers—most of whom are women—to enter the formal economy. As a provisional measure, the contribution of employing families to the social security system in favor of their housekeepers is still voluntary. Once the pilot program becomes law, its implementation will no doubt have long-lasting effects on the lives and security of domestic workers around the country, though its impact on the residential real estate market and the discipline of architecture at large in Mexico is still to be seen.³¹