MANUEL PARRA

(1911-1997)

Manuel Parra was an architect’s architect. His style continues to fascinate even today, perhaps because it refuses any of the categories it has been put under, which range from neo-Colonial to modern. At the heart of his practice one can always find a sense of humor, since he enjoyed recovering sections and even entire structures from demolitions and repurposing them in his own designs, forcing columns, tiles, and wood to do things they were not originally meant to do, often bringing rural referents into urban contexts. Making furniture was one of his pastimes, as he liked to pick pieces of wood randomly and keep them until something could be assembled out of two or three pieces he had collected. Jokingly, he liked to call these pieces Early Mexican Handmade, as they were obviously shaped at some point in time for some other purpose, such as a drinking station for cattle or a milking stool.