Author: Rodrigo Méndez
For most of my life, Saturdays were my time to visit my paternal grandparents. They lived in a house within the Infonavit Iztacalco housing complex, and I always found it a fascinating place. I experienced this space in different stages and was thrilled to explore it, whether it was stopping by the market*1 to buy vegetables, going for bread, or accompanying my family on daily tasks. Discovering its nooks and crannies offered me a different aesthetic, which was revealed each week. Beyond the treasured memories with my grandparents, this complex taught me, among many things, how its inhabitants chromatically delimit the space to make it their own.
In the late 1970s, the Infonavit Iztacalco Housing Unit was inaugurated, a complex designed to provide housing for Mexico City workers eligible for INFONAVIT benefits. 2 In an architecturally diverse setting with several housing options, the unit shared a common aesthetic: brutalist-style buildings and a functionalist layout accompanied by gray and neutral tones with subtle accents of bright colors. This design represented an effort to integrate the successful European modernist movement into the Mexican urban context. The unit was not only a promise of modernity but also a manifestation of a Mexico that, at that time, aspired to consolidate itself as a modern city.
Overview of the different areas and stages of the housing unit. Image: Imanol Ordorika Arqs. and Associates archive. Via Escenarios.muca.unam.mx
View of the complex's interior streets. Photo: Imanol Ordorika Arqs. and Associates archive
Without going into extensive detail about the themes of modernism, it's important to note that, as my friend Eliel says, "Life trumps modernism." The everyday life and the rhythm of people oppose the ideal of order and efficiency proposed by space and its attributes. Despite the Mexican government's efforts to establish this style through architecture, modernism did not have the same impact in Mexico as it did in Europe. The Infonavit Iztacalco unit is one of my main references to illustrate this. Thus, Mexican society, with its eclectic and liberal character, did not adopt a single aesthetic line; instead, it chose to paint space, to transform raw materials with vibrant colors, nourished, in essence, by a wide range of influences. This approach has given rise to a unique aesthetic panorama. Among the values that have predominated in this context, the use of color stands out.
Color in Mexico not only has symbolic, social, or cultural connotations, but also represents an intrinsic characteristic of national identity. Here, color is not seen as excess, but as an aesthetic statement. There is no fear of color in Mexico.
View of the complex's common areas. Photo: Imanol Ordorika Arqs. and Associates archive
Today, the Infonavit Iztacalco unit doesn't look like the photos documenting its heyday when it was first inaugurated. Beyond what happens inside the unit, it's the inhabitants themselves who occupy and transform it, based on the collective needs that respond to a specific time and space. I never knew the gray buildings proposed by the architects who gave life to this place, but over the years, I have explored how these buildings have changed color time and again: bright, striking, indiscreet colors. Colors that are used to delimit or mark different areas within the unit, turning it into a living, changing entity that adapts to the passage of time, bucks trends, and is governed by the collective versatility of its inhabitants.
I continue to visit my family and explore this ever-changing and evolving space. I continue to believe that the changing colors of this unit remain, in essence, the same cultural response of Mexicans to the attempted imposition of European modernist aesthetics. This place remains an act of resistance through color, a declaration of identity, a rejection of the homogenization imposed by international movements, a cultural affirmation, unconscious and natural, based on a visual language that allows people to appropriate their space and give life to a territory that remains true to its essence, just as color can mark a territory and can be a stance of revolution and resistance.
View of one of the complex's squares. Photo: Imanol Ordorika Arqs. and Associates archive.
Photographs by Rodrigo Méndez
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