Eight of Mexico's most stunning modern homes

From a sculptural icon by an early modernist master to a remote, rosy-hued dream home, here are some remarkable Mexican dwellings.

Mexico has a dazzling architectural heritage – 15,000 to 20,000 years ago, its ancient pyramids were created, and from 1521 ornate Spanish Baroque styles were imported. Over the past century, this rich history has inspired Mexico's most acclaimed architects, featured in a new book Mexico Modern, by Tami Christiansen.

Modernism first emerged after the Mexican Revolution of 1910 to 1920, expressing a new national identity, free of colonial influences. Architects began to emulate indigenous, pre-Columbian architecture whose elemental, geometric forms aligned with the European modernist taste for simplicity.

But the Mexican modernists didn't replicate their European counterparts' work, Christiansen tells the BBC. "Mexican architects reinterpreted their ideas, softening them with colour, texture and by connecting them more to landscape and climate. They also gave concrete more tactile, expressive qualities."

Here's our pick of eight Mexico homes designed by acclaimed 20th-Century modernist architects, and architects working in a modernist vein today.

1. Praxis by Agustín Hernández Navarro

This house was designed in 1975 by Agustín Hernández Navarro (1924–2022), a leading light of Mexican modernism. Its totemic, sculptural tower looms, periscope-like, over the heavily wooded, affluent Mexico City neighbourhood, Bosques de las Lomas ("bosques" means forest in Spanish). Navarro opted for a Brutalist style – a sub-genre of modernism, defined by its use of raw, exposed concrete and massive forms. Inspired, appropriately, by a treehouse, the house was the late architect's private retreat, and combines different geometric elements, such as pyramids and prisms, reflecting Navarro's passion for pre-Columbian architecture. 

2. Casa Bernal by Chic by Accident

This dining room is part of the modern, concrete wing of Casa Bernal, designed by Mexico-based, French architect Emmanuel Picault of practice Chic by Accident. Annexed to a 16th-Century colonial mansion in the central Mexico state of Querétaro, it responds to its context. "The project offers a playful relationship between the old and new," he tells the BBC. The dining room's full-height steel-and-glass windows are strategically positioned to maximise dramatic views of an extinct volcano – Peña de Bernal – that the house is named after. The floor is made of Mexican slate ("pizarra"). Picault is inspired by Mexican modernism and the dining room is sparsely furnished with a table and chairs designed by Ricardo Legoretta in 1972. The sculptural spheres on the floor, created by Chic by Accident, are made of local volcanic soil.

3. Rain Harvest Home, co-designed by Javier Sanchez Arquitectura and Robert Hutchison........

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