The Casa Barragán is a museum that still feels lived in. The home of Luis Barragán (d. 1988), one Mexico's most revered modern architects, is maintained just as he left it, an intimate homage to his stream-lined, integrated design idiom that earned the architect the second-ever Pritzker Prize, in 1980. His books, his bedding, his religious icons, all in their place, as if waiting for the master's return.
Above, how it all looks under aluminum, for an intervention of the space by artist Francisco Ugarte. As curated by Viviana Kuri, the project consists of wrapping or covering nearly every object and piece of furniture inside the house in aluminum paper. Just about everything.
The effect is resplendent. As much of Barragán's work plays with opening and abstracting space with natural light, Ugarte's intervention finds light bouncing upon new corners and surfaces throughout the structure. Here is a Barragán's austere bed, under aluminum. And here's a view from inside a sitting room to the cocktail crowd on the rear patio. Ugarte apparently found nothing worth wrapping on Barragán's spectacular roof patio, where there is no shortage of light by any means.
La Jornada says the Ugarte intervention is up for two weeks, meaning it would close this Saturday, February 20. Casa Barragán is located just a block from metro Constituyentes, near the presidential residence at Los Pinos, on the south side of Chapultepec Park.