From Aztec to High Tech 2017-05-22T19:26:22+00:00

 From Aztec to High Tech by Lawrence Herzog: book coverFrom Aztec to High Tech

Architecture and Landscape across the Mexico-United States Border (Creating the North American Landscape)

1998

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About

The United States and Mexico share a two-thousand-mile boundary where landscape and architecture clash in a vivid contrast of two cultures. From Aztec to High Tech explores the architectural future of interdependent neighbors who share a history, an economy, and a landscape. After reviewing three key periods in Mexico’s three-thousand-year-old architectural past — indigenous, Spanish colonial, and modern — urban planning scholar Lawrence A. Herzog focuses on the border territories of northern Mexico and the southwestern United States, particularly in California.

Through eighty black-and-white photographs and interviews with architects from both sides of the border, this engaging book provides a compelling picture of how traditional Mexican architecture has intersected with the postindustrial, high-tech urban style of the United States — a mix that offers an alternative to the homogenization of architecture north of the international border.

Reviews

“Herzog reflects on the two-thousand-mile border between Mexico and the U.S. that stretches between San Diego, California, and Brownsville, Texas… Herzog perceives this area in terms of a crisis of ‘space and place,’ conveying loss of identity and loss of community. He has personally interviewed architects, investigated buildings, and covered much of the ground of the book, reaching all the way back to Aztec Mexico.”

— Choice

“The author creatively captures the tension between memory and futurism, between old and new, and ponders what the twenty-first century will be.”

— Joseph L. Scarpaci, Latin American Research Review

“This is a fascinating study, and one that is very relevant to our rapidly evolving age.”

— British Bulletin of Publications

 

“From Aztec to High Tech is full of interest and ideas… Scott’s approach is essentially chronological and the geographical range is very broad… [making the book] a much more stimulating read.”

— Valerie Fraser, Journal of Latin American Studies