Héctor Hinojosa Zozaya, house on Samuel Ramos Magaña 27, view from the garden
Awaiting its forthcoming demolition, the house numbered 27 along a short street named after the philosopher of art Samuel Ramos Magaña grows conscious of its nearness to the ground, seeing that a taller life will take its place to at last level the above vista potholed by its two stories. It is among the buildings that remain squat in a block where shoot up apartments serving Mexico City’s swelling population, a market taken on by the sector of real estate which the Spanish language draws up as bienes raíces or bienes inmuebles. If taken faithfully to their Latin source, the pairs of words move the idea of rooted or immovable goods and act as antipodes to the bienes muebles. As such, they draw forth a dualism deliberated upon one’s adherence to the ground, if not, one’s wakefulness to being furnished, moved, and to where, as per the artist Jimmie Durham.1 Closely, those like the architectural historian Louise Noelle Gras believe that buildings are verily moving, in the sense like texts, which if enriched by the critic’s power to behold, radiates to whoever visits them.2
Héctor Hinojosa Zozaya, blueprint of house on Samuel Ramos Magaña 27, 1966
Among the genuses that will pass away hither are the parqué (marqueteried flooring), terrazzo (floor treated with chips of marble and granite set in concrete), gotelé (stipple ceiling), techo de teja de barro (clay tile roof), fachaletas de barro tipo ladrillo (brick-type clay facades), and azulejos (glazed tiles), durable derms of a domicile over, under, and around which, stray creatures including peoples, cats, worms, bugs, mosquitoes, and spiders, have passed parts of their brief and fugitive lives. The sundry surfaces whose work include heating, drying, spreading, dripping, inlaying, overlaying, and repeating, nuance the social climate of the house’s chambers. Take for example the cuarto and baño de servicio (maid’s quarter and bath) whose terrazzo flooring correlates with that of the downstairs cocina (kitchen) and adjoining desayunador or antecomedor (dinette) and differs from the wooden parqué of the three recámaras (bedrooms) and the azulejo of their baños. It is such disparate skins which too hold the house’s frame that is so rectilinear that its upstairs tenants for the most part move perpendicularly. They are led by the margins of narrow doors and halls, and a half turn staircase connecting the ground floor vestíbulo (foyer) to the second-floor landing, this latter at certain times turn pitch dark when all five doors which rim it close shut. Here, on the upper floor, the sensation is hermetic as it is uncooperative to the modernist tendency to construct space that flows between different rooms3 and makes indistinct the often-coupled indoors and outdoors. Instead, what persists is a domestic life requiring the utmost privacy and intimacy,4 the desire for such the architectural historian Enrique Ayala Alonso traces to a social distinction, which beginning in 17th century Mexico was coveted by families living with servants with whom they did not want to mix.5
Héctor Hinojosa Zozaya, blueprint of house on Samuel Ramos Magaña 27, 1966