Curator Su Wu on Mesoamerican Modern

"When I began this project, I thought that we would be documenting a history, like the aura surrounding the artifacts in a museum," says Su Wu, author of Mesoamerican Modern: Ancient Ideas in Contemporary Mexican Homes.

"Instead, what I found was the vibrant, living presence of Indigenous ideas in Mexico, in gestures that are at once traditional and radical, of the past in the future, and what is possible in a home."

Casa Möbius, San Jerónimo, Mexico City. Picture credit: © Luis Garvan

Think of Mexican design, and chances are you’ll think of bold, saturated colours: hot pinks, cobalt blues, sunshine yellows. But there’s a new contemporary design movement taking hold in Mexico that couldn’t be further from these clichés, one that draws on the wisdom and aesthetics of its ancient cultures.

Mesoamerican Modern is the first book to explore these pre-Hispanic traditions at the heart of contemporary Mexican interior design, presenting sixteen extraordinary homes across Mexico that exemplify the movement.

Casa Bernal, San Sebastián Bernal, Querétaro. Picture credit: © Luis Garvan

Mesoamerica refers to the historical and cultural region stretching from central Mexico through parts of Central America. It was once home to sophisticated civilisations including the Aztecs, the Maya and the Olmec, societies that developed monumental architecture placing nature, ritual and community at the centre of daily life. They built stepped pyramids aligned with the stars, cities organised around ceremonial plazas and homes designed in dialogue with climate and landscape.

"Though the focus of the book is on the home, and spaces shaped for everyday life, the movement it traces is of far broader significance," Su Wu says.

"It finds affinity in public projects such as architect Gabriela Carrillo’s resolutely local markets in Chiapas and Tamaulipas, and outside Mexico in the expansion of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art by Frida Escobedo. Among architects and designers working in Mexico today, it is the oldest ideas that are inspiring the most forward-thinking spaces."

Casa Reyes Fernández, Coyoacán, Mexico City. Picture credit: © Luis Garvan

"In these Mexican homes, I have seen that nature is not something apart from us; that light has physicality; that the square is a convention, and that rooms can comfortably be pyramids too," she says.

"In cataloging the recurring visual elements I lucked into a larger understanding. At the heart of what was so blatantly mislabeled a New World, the interior spaces of Mexico offer an expanded sense of what home can be, an alternative non-European narrative of care."

Casa Cometa, Mazunte, Oaxaca. Picture credit: © Luis Garvan

The book features stunning original photography shot by acclaimed Mexican photographer Luis Garvan. It opens with an essay by Mexico City chef Elena Reygadas, named the world’s best female chef in 2023.

"This is the first book I know of to celebrate the modern and contemporary homes of Mesoamerica,” says Wu. “(These are) spaces of private observance that demonstrate the continued relevance of preColumbian design in residences today—and in doing so, contest the term pre-Columbian itself."