Juan O'Gorman (1905–1982) was a Mexican architect and painter, a pioneer of functionalist architecture in Latin America who later turned to murals and to an architecture rooted in Mexican landscape and tradition. Born in Coyoacán, Mexico City, he graduated from the Academy of San Carlos in 1927 and studied the theories of Le Corbusier. As head of the architecture office of the Ministry of Public Education from 1932, he designed 26 primary schools in Mexico City in a spirit of "eliminating all architectural style". After six years of strict functionalism he turned to painting and murals.
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In San Ángel he built the Casa O'Gorman 1929 (Cecil O'Gorman House), a small house and studio for his father that he called the first functionalist building in Latin America. Its neighbour, the Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo House-Studio (1932), is two houses joined by a bridge. He played an essential part in building Rivera's Anahuacalli Museum (1964), made of volcanic stone quarried on its own site. His best-known work, the Central Library (UNAM) (1956), is wrapped in some 4,000 square metres of mosaic murals of coloured stones he gathered across Mexico.
Casa O'Gorman 1929 (Cecil O'Gorman House)1929 · Mexico City
Central Library (UNAM)1956 · Mexico City
Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo House-Studio1932 · Mexico City
Anahuacalli Museum1964 · Mexico City