dieser beitrag wurde verfasst in: englisch (eng/en)
name: O'Gorman
vorname: Juan
wikidata-repräsentation: Q1378325
gnd-repräsentation: 122732022
biografische angaben: Born in Coyoacán on July 6, 1905, died in México City on Jan 7, 1982. Brother of historian Edmundo O'Gorman (1906–1995). The two were sons of the painter and mining engineer Cecil Crawford O'Gorman (1874-1943), who arrived in Mexico from Ireland in 1895, and Encarnación O'Gorman. Cecil was the grandson of Charles O'Gorman, who in the 1820s was the first British consul to Mexico city.
«I asked O'Gorman how much architecture in Mexico he regarded as truly Mexican. Modestly ignoring his own home, and his great mosaic-covered Library at the University which has become almost the symbol of the new Mexico, he replied: 'None. Except perhaps the University Stadium, designed by Perez Palácios with an assist from Diego Rivera. Why? Because it uses an earthwork structure as old as the pyramids, to save steel and concrete costs, and does it gracefully. As for the rest – well, three men, Corbusier, Gropius, and Mies, invented 'functional architecture' in Europe. Then it came to you, and to us. How can it be original?'
The paradox is that it was O'Gorman himself who introduced functional purism into Mexico! As Rivera's disciple in the twenties, it was he who first demanded an architecture wholly exempt from esthetic intentions – the fruit of 'science' and 'technique' applied in a strictly utilitarian manner. As a founder of the Superior School of Engineering, he excluded cultural subjects from the curriculum and defined architectural composition as 'the natural result of a rational process based on technique.'
'When I graduated in 1927 from architectural school, the idea of functionalism – a maximum of efficiency with a minimum of labor – seemed a necessity for a poor country. Besides, functionalism was a novelty, a way of destroying academic attitudes. We were romantics, iconoclasts, and don't forget that in technologically backward countries technology is embraced with passion. It's a mystic idea, a substitute for religions on the way out. […] Because of the dearth of talent here, we couldn't imitate Wright; but we could improve on Gropius. My colleague Legarreta […] and I instisted that architecture have nothing to do with art, being a necessity rather than a luxury. So I built thirty 'functional' schools here in the Federal District and a big one in Tampico; and in 1930 I lectured with José Antonio Cuevas, builder of the revolutionary Lottery Building with its floating foundations and cactuslike double vault; and finally, in 1937, realizing I was in an blind alley and that all of us were copying the functionalists badly – applying the forms derived from its principle merely for their esthetic effect – I gave up architecture for the time being and devoted myself to painting. I took it up again only when I saw the possibility of working in Wright's direction.'» (Rodman 1958, pp. 20–21)