I recently travelled to Mexico City after being invited to take part in the country’s Design Week. I took the opportunity to visit some places I had been wanting to see for a very long time. The kind of places you casually add to a list of favourites one Sunday afternoon, never quite knowing when you will get the chance to visit them.
Among them were several houses, of course. Luis Barragán’s Casa Estudio and Casa Ortega, as well as Frida Kahlo’s Casa Azul.
Now, as I write these lines, I find myself thinking about something rather curious: those houses, which I had imagined for so long, have somehow found their way into me. They now inhabit a part of who I am.
There was something magical within those walls. In the lush gardens. In the peculiar contrast between intimacy and character. In the way colour seemed to have a life of its own, almost as if it were beating and vibrating, rather than simply occupying a surface.
What struck me about Barragán was his deep spirituality. Small altars were scattered throughout different corners of the house, integrated with a surprisingly domestic ease. Upon them rested intricately carved skulls, gazing intently at those of us wandering through the rooms. It made me think about how the sacred does not always need a solemn space in which to reveal itself.
I also remember the terrace, stripped of ornament. There, the only things sharing the space were orange, pink and a small wooden stool. We were told that the architect would occasionally come up there to meditate. I was fascinated by this way of understanding silence. Almost as another room, somewhere to retreat to from time to time.
Everything seemed to respond to a very particular sensibility. A way of understanding architecture that went far beyond functionality. Spaces designed to be felt and contemplated.
Casa Azul captivated me for quite different reasons. Everything there seemed to speak of Frida. Of her singular way of seeing the world and her need to create a space of her own, where she could express herself freely, without filters and on her own terms. Everyday objects were arranged in unexpected ways, as if even the most ordinary things could take on a new meaning when seen through her eyes.
I found myself thinking about how, after the accident that changed her life, her home had also become a window onto the outside world. A small, chaotic universe that seemed to hold everything her body, at times, would not allow her to reach.
As I left, I found myself thinking about my own work. About design, and all the different ways it can express itself. About its undeniable ability to transform the everyday into something meaningful. And how, beyond form or function, we can bring shapes, colours, words and symbols to life in ways that stir something within others.
Perhaps one of the loveliest things about designing is precisely this: discovering that something which once began within us, perhaps as an initially far-fetched idea or an impulse difficult to contain, can eventually find a place in someone else. That something which first inhabited our imagination can, somehow, come to inhabit others, too.
