The building materials of Luis Barragán: light and colour

The aim of this contribution is to investigate the potential offered by a design approach in which light moulds matter and colours reveal the beauty of forms and spaces. In this context, Luis Barragán is certainly the one who, more than anyone else, has masterfully experimented with the use of colour to transform spaces. His architecture employs a language in which the daring use of colour is correlated with an ever-increasing degree of awareness, starting from the earliest conception and realisation. Light and colour do not only play an ornamental role but actually represent his building materials. The paper seeks to show how colour is able to strongly characterise architecture, through the analysis of some of his projects: the Casa Barragán in Calle Ramirez, (1947-48), the Capilla de las Capuchinas in Tlalpan (1952-1955), the Torres de Satélite (1958), the Los Clubes complex (1964-1969), and the Casa Gilardi (1975).