1919 - 2013

Born at the end of the Mexican Revolution, and fated to become a lawyer, Pedro Ramírez Vázquez decided to study architecture persuaded by Carlos Pellicer, who talked to him about the city as a space for interaction. Ramírez Vázquez, one of the fathers of Mexican modernity, would not forget this idea throughout his more than sixty years of career. During this time he completed buildings like the National Museum of Anthropology and the Modern Art Museum, both raised in Mexico on the same year (1964), as well as the Basilica of Guadalupe (1975) or the Azteca Stadium (1968), all of them functionally exact works that are essential to understand a national language midway between the modern aspirations and the evocation of its Aztec past (1968). Ramírez Vázquez also played an important role within the public realm developing education and housing programs, furthermore contributing to giving the country a new image, particularly as president of organizing committee of the Olympic Games of 1968, those in which Bob Beamon beat the long jump record with the Azteca Stadium as backdrop.