Luis Barragán (1902–1988) was a Mexican architect and engineer whose houses and gardens have influenced architects around the world. Born in Guadalajara, he trained as an engineer there and travelled in Spain and France, where he discovered the gardens and writings of Ferdinand Bac and briefly met Le Corbusier. He practised in Guadalajara from 1927 and in Mexico City from 1936. Turning away from functionalism, he sought an "emotional architecture", writing that "any work of architecture which does not express serenity is a mistake", and worked with raw stone and wood, strong colour and hidden sources of light. In 1980 he became the second winner of the Pritzker Prize.
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His own home, Casa Luis Barragán in Mexico City (1948), became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004. With the sculptor Mathias Goeritz he planned the Torres de Satélite (1958), five tall towers marking a new suburb. Cuadra San Cristóbal (1968), an equestrian estate, and Casa Gilardi (1976) are among his best-known later works, and the bright reddish-orange Faro del Comercio in Monterrey (1984) was built from his design.
