From Aztec to High Tech

The United States and Mexico share a 2000-mile boundary where landscape and architecture clash in a vivid contrast of two cultures. This is an exploration of the architectural future of interdependent neighbours who share a history, an economy, and a landscape. After reviewing three key periods in Mexico's 3000-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 80 black-and-white photographs and interviews with architects from both sides of the border, the book provides a picture of how traditional Mexican architecture has intersected with the post-industrial, high-tech urban style of the United States - a mix that offers an alternative to the homogenization of architecture north of the international border.