Lo Popular and the Modern: Displaying Popular Architecture in 1950s Mexico

Abstract

In October 1952, the exhibition Arquitectura popular mexicana opened at the still-unfinished Ciudad Universitaria (CU) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Displaying images of popular architecture within buildings identified with the pinnacle of Mexico’s modernist movement suggested the comfortable coexistence and shared principles of the modern and the vernacular and the utility of vernacular culture for inspiring and contextualizing Mexico’s modernism as unique, specific and timeless. However, through its mode of organization and display, the exhibition turned specific buildings into symbols, positioning vernacular architecture and those who build it as a generalized support for a specifically Mexican modernism.