Carlos Merida, Artist/ Muralist MARIO PANI ARCHITECT

UTOPIAN BEGINNINGS

Your Utopic Dreams became a reality for over 30 years in a society not always very lending to social class movement.

Each building had extensive CUBIST artwork.

Mario Pani had a progressive outlook.

1999 View of the low-rise apartments still left over.

Over 90% of the development was destroyed in the 1985 earthquake.

MULTI-FAMILIAR MIGUEL ALEMAN

Still standing today, similar to Multi-Juarez. Shown to demonstrate a sample of architectural style of the lost Juarez development which was more vast and even better planned, less urban-like in nature, and more community oriented in nature and much larger.

YOU WHERE SO ORDERLY...SO CULTURED...SO PROUD!

You stood tall, dozens of your buildings where 12 and 24 stories high lined up in a neat, uncrowded symmetrical fashion. You where a city within a city.

"Flowers on the Window Sill"

This sheer elegance/ beauty prevailed throughout the entire master-planned community. People demonstrated a love for their community.

MASSIVE YET FRIENDLY

Some of my childhood's coziest experiences in Mexico City, took place in the Mutli-Familiar Juarez. One could often hear children playing, riding their tri-cyles, walking with granmas to the grocery store and viewing the sun shine through the large trees, One could also watch young couples walking together in modern and as well as elegant clothes.... people where for the first time experiencing better times. The Multi-Juarez was a maasive development that included natural setttings, beautiful murals, and most importantly allowed thousands of fomerly poor Mexicans to become Doctors, Architects, Artists, Nurses, Teachers, among others. Includying my father, who ultimately became a Math College Professor with a Ph.D. Situated in the traditionally elegant Colonia Roma, a former Mexican Jewish neigborhood. The multi included dozens of neatly placed low rise and high rise buildings surrounded by large, elegant homes and streets. I would often marvel at the height of some of the buildings, the cozy gardens, the organized fashion the buildings were in was not a common sight in such a grand scale. Literally thousands came from substandard housing to these back then modern apartments. I miss the Multi like one would miss a special gem given by a grandparent and then loosing it.

YOU CROSSED THE STREET

Boulevards would travel underneath some of your 24 story structures..You were that big. I had fun riding in a car underneath in the great tunnels you created.

YOU LOOKED SO STRONG...SO PERMANENT

CUBIST ART WORK, Carlos Merida

MUTLI- FAMILIAR MIGUEL ALEMAN

This project/ development still stands, yet was built before the Juarez development, and wasn't as as utopic. Still this development already had Day Care since its inception!

BUT IN 1985 YOU (MULTI-JUAREZ) CAME CRASHING DOWN....ALL SO QUICKLY

You took with you many lives, many dreams, many family traditions. Many ideals, a movement not be seen in your country again. Thousands of middle-class Mexicans owe you much, but now you are no longer there for them to return and thank you. The children racing down your parks in cute little tri-cicles....... are now but a bittersweet memory. I thank you though, I deeply do.You did so much! I remember your gardens, your first floor stores, but most of all. I remember the pride you exemplified. You showed the world Mexico could be organized, modern, neat, full of nature and still include the umistakable Mexican warmth in people that lived there. Your were not in the outskirts of this oldest city in this Hemishpere. No, you where interwon into the classy fabric of the Colonia Roma. I miss you, I truly do. You are so empty now, where have you gone? Where have your ideas gone? You believed in equality, in culture, in family, in life.....where did you ever run away to?

El Hotel Plaza (1945) MARIO PANI

Well ahead of his time, this building, (Still standing/2000) . This building hosts the city's Intl. Rock Station, Radio Orbita FM. Pani efficiently took the challenge to fit the building on a main thoroughfare ( Insurgentes/ Reforma) in a vital corner of the metropolis.Today it looks as hip as ever. He ensuured that the building could be appreciated from both boulevards, a hard feat indeed, yet gracefully achieved by the late Mario Pani ( 1911-1993, Mexico D.F.).

The first high rise condominium proyect in Mexico City, Mario Pani.

Built in 1955, this building (still stands/ 2000) in prestigious Paseo de la Reforma. Mexico City, thanx largely to people like Pani and Legoretta, contributed greatly to the world of modern architecture since the early 1950s.

PANI THE ARCHITECT

( Home in master planned middle and upper middle-class suburb of Ciudad Satelite pictured above, this suburb was also a Mario Pani concept/design in the 1960s/70s). Lack of proper maintenence, not design, forced many of the Multi Juarez buildings to collapse.

TORRE DE RECTORIA. UNAM. ( Autonmous Mexico City University) STILL STANDING

Colaborating architects, Enrique del Moral, Salvador Ortega and Mario Pani. Murals by David Alfaro Siqueiros.

Along with the Juarez Development loss...this intersection was also lost..

One of my favorite intersections back in the day.....much has been rebuilt, yet certain structures, and specially lives can never be reclaimed. ( This corner building/ hotel was not designed by Mario Pani, but was another of many landmarks lost in the 1985 earthquake, and where early examples of Mexican contributions to modern architecture in the 1950s and 1960s, very early in the "game")

Real History. My much adored and respected is "abuelita" looking onto a buidling in which she worked at decades ago as a newly wed mother. She is looking at the Edificio de Correos Mexicanos. This building, along with many others in the historical downtown are finally being restored after the flight away from this area after the 1985 earthquake that took so many lives and so much history.

Great museums.

Carlos328@WebTV.net

I MISS YOU. I ALWAYS WILL.

The 1985 Mexico City Earthquake took you away with many lives and dreams. With you, you also took a movement, an artform, a way of life and countless numbers of childhood memories. LOVE ALWAYS J. Carlos Zavala, Idealist c. 1999

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