MEXICO'S unique alchemy of bountiful land, natural resources, inexpensive labor, and mild climate has long offered local architects, as well as progressive emigre architects from the European continent, countless sites of experimentation. The opportune blend has produced a vast collection of building "prototypes." The Mexico City-based architect Fernanda Canales has been an earnest and committed chronicler of this canon. Her latest book is an extensive catalogue of housing projects, nicely bound and published in a handsome volume by Actar. Canales argues that housing the society's population should be at the top of any country's agenda-that it is the collective pooling of individual particularities and idiosyncrasies that makes for civilization. Yet in this notion lies the challenge of the book: how to synthesize concisely this broad array of singularities? Architectural publications typically combine words and images to best put forth a perspective on the works shown. But Canales's book does something decidedly different. It is split into two parts, texts and drawings. Canales repeatedly argues that the house, in its relation to its site, history, and occupant, is the essential building block of the world we produce. The world is currently in dire shape, she contends, and framing housing issues in a more human-centric way, making cities more ecologically, is necessary to save it. Channeling Aldo Rossi, she claims that a transformation in society is inconceivable without a change in architectural form. Domestic space is a setting for intervention, the stage upon which "a new life can be realized."
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