1930 - 2015

Carlos Mijares Bracho, one of the most unique Mexican architects, passed away on 19 March, at the age of 84. Born in 1930 in Mexico City, Mijares was chair professor at the UNAM, where he had graduated in 1952. His whole academic career in fact would be linked to his alma mater. With a keen artistic sensitivity, Mijares began his career during a period that was strongly marked by organicism and the vernacular, but influenced by Louis Kahn, he soon adopted a language rooted in monumentality, the study of materials, and the rigorous geometry of Classical architecture. These principles were materialized in extraordinary works like the factory of Vehículos Automotores Mexicanos (1965), the church of Nuestra Señora del Perpetuo Socorro in Ciudad Hidalgo (1983), the Pantheon Chapel in Jungapeo (1986), or Christ Church in Mexico City (1990). His peculiar way of understanding the profession has been distinguished with the Luis Barragán Prize (1994), presented by the Institute of Architects of Mexico City, and in 2013 with the Fine Arts Medal of the National Institute of Fine Arts of Mexico.