John O'Gorman
Introduction
O'Gorman House or Cave House O'Gorman was a residential house built between 1948 and 1952 by Juan O'Gorman in Jardines del Pedregal to live in with his family. After financial problems, he sold it in 1969, and it was demolished by its new owners.[1].
History
Around 1931 Juan O'Gorman completed a house-studio for his own father, Cecil O'Gorman, on land in San Ángel. On this land, to one side, he would build what is now the Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Studio House Museum. Said functionalist style building "Functionalism (architecture)") was not lived in by the father, but it served his son for architectural practice.[2] He would return to it in 1964 until his death in 1982.
For his home, the architect took advantage of land purchased in 1949, which had large trees in the front and a natural rock formation of volcanic stone in the background in the newly built Jardines del Pedregal neighborhood as a starting point.[3].
The space was created alongside the mural Historical Representation of Culture "Biblioteca Central (UNAM)") that covers the openings of the Central Library "Biblioteca Central (UNAM)") of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, with which it has a close aesthetic relationship in the use of colored stones as mosaics.[4] It took as influence the integration of architecture with the natural environments of Frank Lloyd Wright's Cascade House as well as the personal postulates of organic architecture by creating spaces with less rectilinear angles and vertices.[5] O'Gorman lived in the house with his wife Helen Fowler and their daughter whom they called Bunny.
Due to financial difficulties, the family sold the house to lawyer and notary Manuel Gregorio Escobedo Díaz de León and his daughter Helen Escobedo. The house was demolished in 1969. The artist wrote an article in the newspaper El Universal in which he expressed his indignation at the loss of the house.[6] The fact was denounced by the historian Ida Rodríguez Prampolini[7] who led the television station Televisa to document the demolition, an action that was censored by equating the disappearance of the heritage with those who disappeared during the 1968 Movement. According to Rodríguez, a friend of O'Gorman, that This fact deepened the depression that led O'Gorman to death.[8] O'Gorman described the demolition as follows:[8].