Esoteric Survey

I was slacking off and this is for the last two weekends.  This pile is from Mexico City. It was great to get back down there.  Libros de CDMX Mario Pani piggy bank Torre Insignia or Torre Banobras I did a post about it in 2016 .   My stuff from last weekend, including Ed Cromey and David Stewart This is an interesting take on a Noguchi table. It's very old.

Tijuana 1964: The Photography of Harry Crosby The Modern San Diego newsletter alerted me to this exhibition currently taking place at the La Jolla Historical Society . It has been extended to January 10th so there's still time to check it out. Harry Crosby moved to La Jolla in 1935 when he was just a boy.  He was as a science teacher at La Jolla High School in the 1950s and then pursued a career in photography.  One of his early assignments was to photograph Tijuana. This exhibition, Curated by Melanie Showalter, includes some of those photos. His photos were used in various publications during that era. Most of the photos in the exhibition are shot in a sort of documentarian style. There are a lot of wonderful images of what you'd expect to see in Tijuana-- craft vendors, taco stands and various street scenes. They're great but what about the architecture? Crosby documented that as well and this photo is one of the best examples.    The Instituto Mexicano del ...

Torres de Satélite ("Satellite Towers"),  located in Ciudad Satélite, a northern suburb of Mexico City. I stopped on my way back from San Cristobal . The concept was developed by Luis Barragán and Mathias Goeritz (both pictured), with inspiration from painter Jesús Reyes Ferreira. Completed in 1958, the monument was a symbol of modernity for Ciudad Satélite, a new upper-middle class master planned community outside of Mexico City. The plan for Satélite, as it's usually called, was designed by Mario Pani and José Luis Cuevas. Source: laguiainmobiliaria The tallest tower is 650 feet. A photo of the towers is in Luis Barragan's home studio .

Nonoalco-Tlatelolco (1964) is the largest apartment complex in Mexico and the second largest in North America. The plan, by architect Mario Pani, included 102 residential towers with plazas and public space in between. It was based on Le Corbusier's concept of towers in the park. Built as a mixed-income solution to a looming housing crisis resulting from urbanization, the city within a city included schools, recreation, businesses, gardens, hospitals, and art. The development was home to 80,000 people. Source: Browne Barnes Tlatelolco started as a city-state on the shore of Lake Texcoco and was overtaken by the ascendant Aztecs. During the conquest of Mexico by Cortés, in 1521, Tlatelolco was the last battleground between the Aztecs and the Spanish. Cortés's conquistadors won the fight, and 40,000 Aztecs were killed. There is now a plaque on the site that reads: “The battle was not a triumph, nor was it a defeat. It was the painful birth of the mestizon...