ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses O’Gorman’s rearticulation of functionalist architecture in the late 1940s after having abandoned architectural production in the 1930s. Instead of following the ideas present in the formally austere forms of his early functionalist work, he turned toward the idea of organic architecture championed by Frank Lloyd Wright. What becomes clear is that the cross-pollination of these two architectural directions shows that, in fact, they weren’t very different from each other in scope and focus in the manner that O’Gorman defined them and expressed them in the house he built for himself, the so-called Cave House. The building not only was built into El Pedregal and expressed the peculiar character of that site, a badlands environment defined by lava rock, but also integrated art and nature into its surfaces. The building’s walls were covered with rock mosaics depicting fantastical beings and forms and result in the merging of art and architecture. Despite its idiosyncratic nature, the building stood as a model for a new form of Mexican architecture where functional requirements were balanced by artistic ones.
