Mexico is home to some of the most exciting modern and contemporary residential architecture in the world today. A new generation of architects is shaping a distinctive design language that reveres and reinterprets the forms, motifs, geometries and siting principles first employed by the Mesoamerican cultures that came before them.
By examining the architecture of Aztec, Maya, Olmec, Zapotec and other Mesoamerican peoples – from their construction of monumental pyramids to their innate understanding of how light and shadow can influence movement through a space – today’s architects are crafting innovative, atmospheric and deeply personal private residences for their clients.
A look inside Geraz Ato's richly-ornamented home.
For Su Wu, a writer and curator who has called Mexico City home for the past 12 years, the re-emergence of these ancient ideas is akin to a ‘renaissance’, she tells Wallpaper*. Her new book, Mesoamerican Modern (Phaidon, 2026), includes 16 exemplary residential projects that provide tangible evidence of this movement. ‘These ideas are not some part of dusty prehistory, but they're alive, and they have relevance,’ says Wu.
These ideas are not some part of dusty prehistory, but they're alive, and they have relevance
Su Wu
While Mesoamerican architectural forms and motifs have previously appeared in large-scale cultural projects, such as Mexico City’s Museo Tamayo and Museo Nacional de Antropología, their appearance in private homes is a relatively recent phenomenon. ‘That feels to me like a shift,’ says Wu, who was drawn to the residential sector for precisely this reason. ‘It's not a nation-building effort, but a deeply personal effort based around what people are willing to live with, and a reflection of an expanded sense of what we consider beautiful and valuable.’
While researching and writing the book, ‘there were a few very surprising principles that came up over and over,’ Wu says. To demonstrate these recurring themes, Wu reflects on five projects featured in the 305-page, photographically-illustrated volume, each representing a specific manifestation of Mesoamerican Modern.
Su Wu on Mesoamerican modernism
Casa 720 by Fernanda Canales
'Casa 720 is a beautiful example of geometric precision in Mesoamerican architecture, and also of the idea of the patio, or open space, as a central feature of the Mesoamerican home. Canales also spoke so beautifully of ‘giving space back above’ and considering the top of the house to be the sky, rather than the roof, with activated rooftops.'
Casa Bernal by Marcos Ruiz and Emmanuel Picault
'Many architects spoke of the importance of siting to Mesoamerican homes: the relationship of the house and its orientation to cosmological and natural elements, and of deriving meaning from specific topography. Examples in the book include a home built over two seasonal waterfalls, and this one, built in the shadow of the Peña de Bernal monolith in Querétaro, where every view, window orientation and roof slant was determined by its relationship to the mountain.'
Casa Nancarrow by Juan O’Gorman
'This house is by one of the patron saints of this book (the other being Agustín Hernández). Juan O’Gorman was known as the progenitor of functionalist architecture in Mexico, but this home, which he built for the avant-garde composer Conlon Nancarrow, shows his earliest turn away from what he called ‘square rooms with square windows’, towards the mosaic style he later applied to Museo Anahuacalli and the central library at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).'
'For me, it also shows another type of reverse syncretism: instead of colonial structures being built on top of Mesoamerican sites and using their stones as quarry, Mesoamerican motifs are applied to modernist or colonial structures.'
Casa Reyes Fernández by Pedro Reyes and Carla Fernández
'There’s perhaps no clearer expression of the idea that the past is still vividly part of the present in the distinct architecture and design of the Americas. This manifests not only in the material palette, the volumes of spaces and the deliberate application of the handmade, but also in how Pedro and Carla spoke of the space and advocated for the ideas of Mesoamerica as a source for the avant-garde and radical. Pedro describes "counterfactual scenarios where you can imagine how this place would have evolved without the colonial influence’ – ‘how they would have become, and what that would have led to."'
Tlalocan by Gerardo ‘Geraz Ato’ García and Marino García
'Hand-carved over more than 12 years by artist and construction worker Geraz Ato, this space in the shadow of the archaeological site of Teotihuacan offers both erudition through specific iconography and the capacity for ongoing interpretation. A large bas-relief overlooking the central patio features scenes of migration from present-day Oaxaca to the site in the Valley of Mexico, suggesting the complexity of Mesoamerican cities, with their ethnic enclaves, apartment complexes and gridded streets. The mural also features an image of Tlaloc, the rain god (the original sculpture now sits outside the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City). But Geraz’s version shows the deity still in an unfinished state, flanked by carvers – his own predecessors! – returning a sense of authorship to anonymous artefacts.'
