"Buildings can disappear long before they are demolished. Left to the forces of time and nature, they become places where architecture, landscape, and memory intersect in unexpected ways. The Barragán Lecture #6 explores these phenomena in relation to a building by the Mexican architect Luis Barragán (1902–1988).

This edition focuses on Casa Majahua, a remote holiday house that Barragán built on Mexico’s Pacific coast in the 1950s, which was abandoned only a few years after construction. Drawing from archival material as well as from their own survey drawings, photographs, and films, the architects and photographers Ingrid Moye, Christoph Zeller, Nina Kirste, and Josef Grillmeier uncover the site’s distinctive characteristics and explore how repair, reuse, and sustainable reactivation can offer new perspectives on seemingly lost places."

In my part of the talk, I spoke about what Barragán’s work evokes in me and how photographing his houses for my series ‘The Gospel of Serenity’ led me to my own reading of his work. Majahua presented me with different challenges: there, I had to learn to see anew and to engage with the condition of the house.

Presented by the Vitra Design Museum in cooperation with OPEN HOUSE BASEL and the Barragan Foundation.

With Ingrid Moye, Christoph Zeller and Josef Grillmeier.

Event photography: ©Vitra Design Museum, Photo Bettina Matthiessen