The name Luis Barragan evokes images of Latin American modernism--brightly colored plain surfaces set off against lush foliage. His 1,250-acre Gardens of El Pedregal, begun in 1945 on the lava fields of south of Mexico City, were dotted with houses and plazas, fountains and ponds, cacti and pepper trees. Barragan considered El Pedregal his most important project, and critics have described the houses and gardens there as a turning point in Mexican architecture.

This book examines El Pedregal's program and form, its representation in architect-commissioned photographs and advertising, and its place within contemporary discourses on cultural identity, design and place, and suburbanization.

Like our highly acclaimed Revolution of Form, Luis Barragan's Gardens of El Pedregal offers an in-depth analysis of this now much altered project through original documents, drawings, color and black-and-white photography, and critical examinations of the design process.

From the dust jacket:

"A first, much-needed, in-depth study of the most enticing and complex project of Luis Barragan. Realized on the unforgiving lava beds on the southern limits of Mexico City, El Pedregal offered a model for mid-century urbanism. With great acumen, Keith Eggener unravels the multiple components of a work in which Barragan merged the historical and the contemporary, the foreign and the native, the mystical and mercantile. This volume offers a seminal study of a seminal architectural experience." --Alessandra Ponte, Princeton University

"Keith Eggener convincingly demonstrates, in this most thoroughly researched treatment of the great Mexican master, that the ephemeral traces of Mexico's first automobile subdivision provide the pass key for unlocking the master's secrets. The revelation of the architect's unusual design methods, his relationship with business, national identity, surrealism, photography, fashion, and modernity, is grounded in brilliant detective work." --Richard Ingersoll, Syracuse University