Mario Schjetnan is a Mexican architect and landscape architect that manages to "unite social concerns, aesthetics and, increasingly, ecology- all by way of interpreting and celebrating Mexico's rich and diverse culture." He is co-founder of the interdisciplinary firm Grupo de Diseno Urbano in Mexico City known for designs in which the building is subordinate to the landscape. Among his numerous awards are the Prince of Wales/Green Prize in Urban Design for Xochimilco Ecological Park and the ASLA

ASLA

ASLA may refer to:* Academia de Ştiinţe, Literatură şi Arte* American Society of Landscape Architects...

 President's Award for Excellence for Parque El Cedazo.

Background

Schjetnan was born in 1945 in Mexico City, a climate that gave him an immense appreciation for water that would appear in his later works. His paternal grandfather was a railroad builder and Norwegian immigrant which explains the last name and his blue eyes. His father was an architect, professor and golf course designer while his mother had a degree in history and was interested in literature and theater. His parents' professions helped to inspire his own interests in 20th century modern architecture, pre-Columbian myth, and colonial history.

Schooling

Schjetnan attended National University of Mexico (UNAM), where he received an undergraduate degree in architecture in 1968. There, he studied under such names as Ricardo Flores and Alvaro Sanchez and was taught the international designs of Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier

Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930...

 and Louis Kahn

Louis Kahn

Louis Isadore Kahn was an American architect, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. After working in various capacities for several firms in Philadelphia, he founded his own atelier in 1935...

. Mario went on to get a masters degree in landscape architecture with an emphasis in urban design from the University of California at Berkeley in 1970. At Berkeley, he was taught systems theory, ecological planning, and social inquiry techniques by Garrett Eckbo

Garrett Eckbo

Garrett Eckbo was an American landscape architect notable for his seminal 1950 book Landscape for Living.-Youth:...

, Robert Royston

Robert Royston

Robert N. Royston was one of America’s most distinguished landscape architects, based in the San Francisco Bay Area of California in the United States. His design work and university teaching in the years following World War II helped define and establish the California modernism style in the...

, Donald Appleyard

Donald Appleyard

Donald Appleyard was an urban designer and theorist, teaching at the University of California, Berkeley.Born in England, Appleyard studied first architecture, and later urban planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After graduation he taught at MIT for six years,and later at Berkley...

, and Ian McHarg

Ian McHarg

Ian L. McHarg was born in Clydebank, Scotland and became a landscape architect and a renowned writer on regional planning using natural systems. He was the founder of the department of landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. His 1969 book Design with Nature...

. In 1985 Schjetnan was appointed a Loeb Fellow in Advanced Environmental Studies at the Harvard Design School and received an honorary PhD from the Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo León in 1995.

Influences

In contrast to his father's inspirations, young Mario was influenced by Mexican Modern Architects such as Luis Barragán

Luis Barragán

Luis Barragán Morfin was a Mexican architect. He was self-trained.-Early life:Educated as an engineer, he graduated from the Escuela Libre de Ingenieros in Guadalajara in 1923 and was self-trained as an architect.After graduation, he travelled through Spain, France , and...

, Max Cetto

Max Cetto

Max Ludwig Cetto was a German-Mexican architect, historian of architecture, and professor.Born in Koblenz, Germany, Max Cetto studied at the Darmstadt University of Technology, Munich and Berlin. At the latter he studied with Hans Poelzig, graduating as an engineer–architect in 1926...

, and Mario Pani

Mario Pani

Mario Pani Darqui was a Mexican architect and urbanist, one of the most active under the rule of president Miguel Alemán Valdés...

. In terms of landscape design, Schjetnan was drawn towards the works of Luis Barragán, Roberto Burle Marx

Roberto Burle Marx

Roberto Burle Marx was a Brazilian landscape architect whose designs of parks and gardens made him world famous. He is accredited with having introduced modernist landscape architecture to Brazil...

 and Lawrence Halprin

Lawrence Halprin

Lawrence Halprin was an influential American landscape architect, designer and teacher.Beginning his career in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, in 1949, Halprin often collaborated with a local circle of modernist architects on relatively modest projects. These figures included William...

. He was also interested in the revolution and work of leftist artists such as Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera

Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez was a prominent Mexican painter born in Guanajuato, Guanajuato, an active communist, and husband of Frida Kahlo . His large wall works in fresco helped establish the Mexican Mural Movement in...

, José Clemente Orozco

José Clemente Orozco

José Clemente Orozco was a Mexican social realist painter, who specialized in bold murals that established the Mexican Mural Renaissance together with murals by Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and others...

, and Juan O'Gorman

Juan O'Gorman

Juan O'Gorman was a Mexican painter and architect.-Biography:O'Gorman was born in Coyoacán, then a village to the south of Mexico City and now a borough of the Federal District, to an Irish father, Cecil Crawford O'Gorman and a Mexican mother...

. Shortly after his graduation from UNAM, the events surrounding May 1968 in Paris and the Tlatelolco massacre

Tlatelolco massacre

The Tlatelolco massacre, also known as The Night of Tlatelolco , was a government massacre of student and civilian protesters and bystanders that took place during the afternoon and night of October 2, 1968, in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in the Tlatelolco section of Mexico City...

 in Mexico City inspired Shjetnan to design for social needs at the INFONAVIT

Instituto del Fondo Nacional de la Vivienda para los Trabajadores

The Instituto del Fondo Nacional de la Vivienda para los Trabajadores is the Mexican federal institute for worker’s housing, founded in 1972, and located in the Barranca del Muerto 280, Mexico City....

 (Mexico's federal institute for workers' housing). Now with over 40 years of experience in his firm, "ecology is increasingly becoming the organizing principle of his work." He is now inspired by architects such as Renzo Piano

Renzo Piano

Renzo Piano is an Italian architect. He is the recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, AIA Gold Medal, Kyoto Prize and the Sonning Prize...

, Tadao Ando

Tadao Ando

is a Japanese architect whose approach to architecture was once categorized by Francesco Dal Co as critical regionalism. Ando has led a storied life, working as a truck driver and boxer prior to settling on the profession of architecture, despite never having taken formal training in the field...

 and Norman Foster in addition to environmental artists such as Doug Hollis, Richard Long

Richard Long (artist)

Richard Long is an English sculptor, photographer and painter, one of the best known British land artists. Long is the only artist to be shortlisted for the Turner Prize four times, and he is reputed to have refused the prize in 1984...

, and James Turrel.

Style & philosophy

Mario Schjetnan views public parks as an expression for environmental justice- an extension of the public housing work he did at INFONAVIT. He works with low budgets, basic materials and modest details while gaining financial and political support by linking public spaces with infrastructure improvement. He acknowledges the importance of landscape to both individual memory and public history by utilizing "critical regionalism": "self-reflective adaptation or transformation of both modernist and traditional design languages." The result is a "metropolitan ecology" in which architecture, urbanism, and nature coexist in a dynamic mosaic.

Major works

1. Tezozomoc Park
2. Malinalco

Malinalco

Malinalco is a town and municipality located 65 kilometers south of the city of Toluca in the south of the western portion of the Mexico State. Malinalco is 115 km southwest Mexico City....

 House
3. Mexican Cultural Center
4. Culhuacan Historical Park
5. Xochimilco

Xochimilco

Xochimilco is one of the sixteen delegaciones or boroughs within Mexican Federal District. The borough is centered on the formerly independent city of Xochimilco, which was established on what was the southern shore of Lake Xochimilco in the pre-Hispanic period...

Ecological Park
6. Malinalco Golf Club
7. Archaeological Museum
8. Parque El Cedazo
9. Chapultapec Park
10. Paquine Pueblo Museum
11. Cornerstone Garden