The Hacienda in Mexico (Roger Fullington Series in Architecture)

The Mexican hacienda was a work place a residence a place of leisure and of religionin short a closed and self-sufficient rural world in which landowners and workers engaged in agricultural and livestock production. Constructed and modified from the sixteenth until the beginning of the twentieth centuries they are today some of Mexicos architectural treasures. The haciendas layout and buildings though derived from earlier Spanish forms constitute a uniquely Mexican vernacular architecture that deserves to be widely known and celebrated. The Hacienda in Mexico is the first detailed architectural study of these rural communities. In this beautifully illustrated book Daniel Nierman and Ernesto Vallejo present color and black-and-white photographs site plans building plans and elevations to document all aspects of the haciendathe compound big house chapel spaces for production materials and construction methods and architectural details. In the accompanying text they discuss each of these elements as well as the haciendas historical development and the ways in which its productive activities shaped its architecture. To produce this work the authors traveled extensively in the states of Hidalgo Tlaxcala and San Luis Potos photographing and drawing haciendas interviewing their owners and state and federal authorities and researching in hacienda archives. This in-depth treatment of the hacienda clearly identifies the architectural elements that make it unique while adding a new chapter to architectural history and to the history of New Spain.