I have a ridiculous amount of beautiful design books, and I realize that I don’t pull them down often enough. I’m making a conscious effort to keep the coffee table real estate in rotation, so that I can pick up a different book every few days and enjoy it all over again. I was enjoying my favorite Barragan book so much that I decided I had to share some images with you (the subtitle is Armando Salas Portugal Photographs of the Architecture of Luis Barragan)*.     The collaboration between architect and photographer featured in this book is as good as it gets. Luis and Armando worked together for forty years.

As I studied the images, I immediately thought of Donald Judd, Martha Schwartz, and Ed Bye, just to name a few. Barragan’s mastery of use of materials whether for commentary, contrast, practicality or as ruled by site remains unrivaled by anyone practicing today (IMHO!). As someone with training in landscape architecture, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen someone with such astute mastery of outdoor spaces – the way he responds to the context and immediate site, frames views, considers scale and contrasts with color continues to blow my mind. Anyway, here are is a smattering of some of my favorite photographs of Barragan’s work, taken by Armando Salas Portugal:

I should also add, well, you know on design shows how they will put a stencil of a leaf on something or hang a bay leaf wreath and then say “yeah, we’re really CONNECTING THE INDOORS TO THE OUTDOORS!”? It’s become an embarrassing bad cliche. However, Barragan is one of the best examples of a designer who understands architecture, interiors and landscape, and how to balance and maximize these relationships in his site planning. If you want to see true connection among these elements, look to Barragan’s work.

*Unfortunately, this book is rather hard to find these days, but  there are some other great books about Barragan still in print.  Here’s a link to other ones with Portugal’s photographs.