UNAM/Ciudad Universitaria

The Biblioteca Central is the image that fixes Ciudad Universitaria in the mind: Juan O’Gorman’s 4,000 m² mosaic mural, “Representación histórica de la cultura”, wraps the building on all four sides in coloured stone. Made between 1951 and 1953, it turns a library into a vast public artwork, with prehispanic, colonial and modern Mexico worked into the façade.

That sense of art being built into the campus is the point. Planned and constructed from 1949 to 1952 by more than sixty architects, engineers and artists working to a single master plan, Ciudad Universitaria was conceived as one piece: urbanism, buildings, landscape and monumental murals. The Central University City Campus of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2007.

Walk further and the setting keeps adding layers: volcanic rock from the Pedregal de San Ángel, Diego Rivera’s polychrome stone high-relief at the Estadio Olímpico Universitario, and MUAC’s post-1952 Mexican contemporary art extending the conversation.