Praxis

'It was only after the Mexican War of Independence that the Indian fountain sprang forth. Only after the Spanish crown was expelled did the zeitgeist of Mexican art look to its ancient past with overdue awe. Ever since, painters, writers, and architects have drawn inspiration from this bloodline. Mexican modernism and muralism both took the pre-Hispanic undercurrent and blended it with the sensibility of their time, in the pursuit of national identity. From a vein out of this river emerged Agustin Hernandez'. -Tezontle Studio & Luis Orozco Madero

Praxis, Agustin Hernandez is the fourth book in a series devoted to some of our favourite architects, the houses they build, and the stories behind them. Born in 1924, Agusti?n Herna?ndez came of age as an architect in Mexico as modernist ideas coalesced with a renewed pride in the country's past. He was a frontrunner in combining the symbols, myths, and urban planning principles of pre-Columbian civilisations to create imposing architectural monuments that even today retain their avant-garde nature-from the military academy he built as a modern-day Mayan ceremonial ground to the remote meditation centre commissioned by his sister, based on the symbolism of the snake, and the studio-home that he built for himself in 1975: Praxis, a geometric treehouse that still towers over the Bosques de las Lomas neighbourhood of Mexico City.

Original photography by Ryan Lowry. Texts by Tezontle Studio & Luis Orozco Madero, Carlota Perez-Jofre, and Enrique Giner de los Rios.