Heritage and industrialization; reinforced concrete in Mexicali’s architecture, 1915 - 1930

Abstract

The city of Mexicali in the north west of Mexico undertook sizeable changes and transformation on its urban image and architecture in only three decades since its foundation in 1903. This was mainly driven by the construction of important government and social buildings constructed with reinforced concrete. The location of the city on the northern border of Mexico allowed the participation of American architects and contractors, facilitating the development of the city by building public buildings, schools, commercial and services facilities to accomplish its new functions as the capital city of Baja California (designated the capital of Baja California in 1915). This phenomenon exposes a chapter of the history of Mexican history that is not widely documented. This phenomenon follows a process with a strong influence from the combination of local and foreign circumstances, strongly driven by foreign influence as the developments in Mexico where so far away in the central part of the country. It is not strange that this geographical and historical detachment from the capital to the Baja California peninsula, determined the omission of the Baja Californian architecture of the XX century from most Mexican heritage books. Five buildings were selected for this study to analyse the influence of foreign companies on this historic architectonic building processes in Mexicali. Based on a literature research, field observations and on site interviews with locals at these five locations, it was possible to identify that the foreign technology and building processes had a major influence on the architecture of the city of Mexicali.