To the death of Ricardo Legorreta

At the end of last year, the most significant contemporary Mexican architect and the last holder of the highest Japanese award, the Praemium Imperiale, passed away at the age of eighty.
Legorreta was born in 1931 in Mexico City, where he also studied architecture. After seven years of working in the studio of José Villagrán García, he opened his own practice in 1960. He had a long-standing friendship with Mexican native Luis Barragán, who in the 40s and 50s was the first to merge the principles of modern architecture with traditional Mexican architecture in his work. Legorreta also admired the grand architecture of Louis Kahn as well as the pre-colonial period of Mexico and the courtyards of Islamic buildings. His buildings were characterized by bright colors, basic geometric shapes, water features, intimate courtyards, and well-lit interiors. Over his nearly fifty-year professional career, he created a hundred buildings, ranging from museums to hotels, offices, factories, and university structures, as well as private residences, not only in Mexico but also abroad. Among his most acclaimed works are the hotels for the "Camino Real" chain, the most famous of which is the hotel built in 1968 in collaboration with Luis Barragán for the occasion of the Olympic Games in Mexico City. Since 1993, Los Angeles has boasted his redesign of Pershing Square, where he designed ten-story towers in shades of lilac. For the World Expo 2000 in Hannover, he designed the Mexican pavilion, which today partially serves as a library for the University of Applied Sciences in Braunschweig.