Oh, I liked them and just looked them up, and dammit - of course...
The Torres de Satélite in Mexico City is a highway sculpture by Mathias Goeritz and Luis Barragán, completed fifty years ago. The towers stand dramatically as the busy highway wraps around it, and the urban environment around that. The five obelisks are regarded as the entrance to the Ciudad Satellite suburb. The concrete towers introduce a colorful statement on the city fabric, a sort of mixing of city aesthetic, billboards and such, and the infrastructure. http://architecturerevived.blogspot.com/2008/11/satellite-towers-mexico-city.html
I'm a long rabid Barragan person, and ever so slightly met him (he nodded at us) and talked with Mathias Goeritz for a bit, friendly, nice guy, not in a hurry (I was in a small group) back in the mid eighties, when they came to Cal Poly Pomona for a talk. I think it was mid eighties, time flies.
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ossobuco
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Mon 4 Mar, 2013 08:07 pm
@fbaezer,
Yes, I think it was one peso when we took them - but maybe I misremember and it was slightly more.
I've just read all about chinampas. Truly fascinating. The flooding makes complete sense now. The aztecs had it figured out, built a massive lake with dams and the Spanish blew it all up. All the rain gathers in the mountains and rolls down the hills. In 1629 the city flooded and remained under water for five years. Mexico City defies nature.. it's amazing that in what was a lake lies one of the biggest cities in the word. Ingenuity abounds.
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fbaezer
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Fri 22 Mar, 2013 08:12 pm
Remember Juan O'Gorman?
He's the important muralist and architect, mostly famous for the building and mural of the Central Library of UNAM.
His house has been rehabilitated. It is next to the Diego & Frida studio-house built by O'Gorman in San Angel Inn:
And it now hosts an exhibition about O'Gorman's former house (now destroyed) at San Jerónimo, which was a crazy very anti-functionalist, and anti-O'Gorman building:
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fbaezer
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Fri 22 Mar, 2013 08:20 pm
And... remember the statue of Azerbaijani dictator Aliyev at Chapultepec?
It's a month now that it is gone. The city government decided it "did not honor the city". The map of Azerbaijan remains, though.
Azerbaijan donated for the remodeling of that part of the park, and negotiated to get the statue with the former mayor.
Most Mexicans don't even know where is Azerbaijan.
