Guardians of Their Own Health

Abstract

José Villagrán García's Tuberculosis Sanatorium at Huipulco (1929–36), outside of Mexico City, was one of Mexico's first important modern buildings. Commissioned by the federal government and designed to cure and transform the Mexican working class, the project reflected its architect's pioneering integration of architectural rationalism, Julien Guadet's theories, and the reform ambitions of the Mexican government. At Huipulco, Villagrán also referenced established sanatorium design as a means of visually associating Mexican architecture and medicine with admired European practices in both fields. In Guardians of Their Own Health: Tuberculosis, Rationalism, and Reform in Modern Mexico, Kathryn E. O'Rourke argues that understood in the context of Mexican social policy and compared to buildings by Guadet's famous student Auguste Perret, the Huipulco Sanatorium reveals the reach of French rationalism and the complex genesis of modern architecture in Mexico. Its story helps to historicize and particularize the International Style within histories of modern architecture and open further the question of how modern architecture was understood by architects working beyond European centers.