Mario Pani, a Universal Man

Abstract

It is difficult to talk about Mario Pani because as Francisco Treviño and Sara Topelson already said, he takes on everything. It it difficult because he is timeless... If he were here, he would be exactly the same! If he came in here, he would be the same he used to be. He was a congruent man, respectful to others: how he lived, how he designed, how he spoke; he was universal... universal in everything: in his architecture, his way of being, of thinking. It"s interesting: in a time dominated by mediocrity, analyzing a man who always thought big; not only in architecture, even having supper! Mario was involved in everything, he opened the world to us, he made us see what we could do, and changed our vision of being building designers to being leaders of our country. He opened the door and proposed wonderful crazy things... There is a saying that goes: "The world is filled with crazy people and the ones in their senses..." The world makes progress thanks to crazy ones. Mario combined that madness with good sense, because he had enough madness to invent condominiums, but he built them... he built them and he convinced the people to use them. One of the conclusions we can highlight from this book is the examplehe sets us, by the way, very difficult to imitate. We complain by saying: "authorities: cities are being worst..." but Mario sorted things out and he even joked about saying -you know what? You have a great advantage over me; "chambas" (the projects) are given to you; I have to invent them. We cannot say his works had a style, not at all, it was his personality the one that kept shown: his work can only be in Mexico, nowhere else. He made a "truly" Mexican architecture. What an overpowering personality! thank you very much!