Carlos Mijares was born at a time when Mexican modernity was beginning to go up with the intention of inventing cities anew, but he took architecture as a product of tradition. He was part of the generation that first populated the Ciudad Universitaria campus of the Pedregal which expanded the capital southward. This generation left the historical buildings of the old Academy of San Carlos, in the city center, for the works of their masters, pioneers of modernity like José Villagrán and Mario Pani. From them he learned to question dogmas, and even before finishing his studies he challenged them with the magazine Perspective, which he launched in rejection of Arquitectura México, directed by Pani, where the modern spirit had become formulaic. Mijares knew to look beyond the styles by which both the past and modernity were catalogued, and he never believed there to be an abyss in between that was impossible to span. At heart, he never abandoned the historical buildings of his early training, nor did he think the modern postulates were unquestionable. As a student, he competed in grades with his classmate Ricardo Legorreta, who soon envied his talent as a builder and, at the end of his life, described Mijares as one of the most brilliant architects of the 20th century...