UTSA professor's book featured in architecture exhibit in Mexico City

UTSA Associate Professor Edward R. Burian

By Jesus Chavez
Public Affairs Specialist

(Feb. 6, 2014) -- "Modernity and the Architecture of Mexico," a book edited by Edward R. Burian, associate professor in the UTSA College of Architecture, has been featured in a new retrospective exhibit on the last 110 years of Mexican architecture.

"Modernity and the Architecture of Mexico," published in 1997 by University of Texas Press and translated into Spanish by Gustavo Gili in 1998, was included for its role in the critical reappraisal of modern architecture in Mexico that spanned the 1920s through the 1960s. It is one of the few English-language works included in the exhibit.

The book includes nine essays by renowned architects and architectural historians about a range of topics from critical commentaries to discussions of individual architects and buildings.

"I'm honored to have my work included in such a groundbreaking and important exhibit," said Burian. "This exhibit offers the most comprehensive overview ever assembled on modern architecture in Mexico, and I'm delighted that my book, that was one of the very few books included in the exhibit in English, is being shown in a significant work of colonial architecture that witnessed a pivotal moment in Mexico's history.

The exhibit, "Architecture in Mexico 1900-2010, Works, Design, Art and Thought," ("Arquitectura en México 1900-2010, Obras, diseño, arte y pensamiento"), will be on display through June at the Museo Antiguo Palacio de Iturbide in the historic core of Mexico City.

The exhibit was organized by Fomento Cultural Banamex. It examines more than a century of architectural production in Mexico in relation to art and the city through several media. The work of more than 160 architects is represented in the exhibit, which is organized into six periods of Mexico's modern architecture.

Burian is an architect and architectural critic. He is a widely published scholar on the architecture, urbanism and material cultural of Mexico. He has written and edited three books and 27 individually authored essays on the architectural culture of Mexico, while his award-winning architectural projects in the American Southwest have appeared in national publications.

Burian received his Master of Architecture degree from Yale University and his Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Southern California. He has taught at several schools of architecture throughout the United States, and he has served as visiting professor at several prestigious Mexican universities.

For more information about Burian's book or to purchase the book, visit Amazon.com.