Erected over a volcanic ground, the Mexico University City is located at the south of the country’s capital, a  rough and inhospitable place called El Pedregal (the rockyland), covered by the lava resulted from the eruptions of several volcanoes more than six thousand years ago, since then it invited the settlers to the contemplation of its exotic landscape.

It was not but until the beginnings of the decade of 1940 that it was decided this site as the seat for the new University facilities, which at that time occupied diverse buildings within the Center of Mexico City.

Constructed between the years of 1950 and 1954, the Mexico University City exemplifies in a paradigmatic way a critical moment in the cultural and political life of Mexico. The University City is an evocation of the Modern Man, the site and its history, its creation, it is itself an evocation of the Modern Mexican as  a continuation of the revolutionary process initiated in 1910; the Modernity nationalized was melted with the ideals of the Modern World and the Universal Man, and it was capable of representing the contrasts and the differences of Mexico through a new identity.

The buildings of the Campus clearly show the interpretation of the Modern International Architecture postulates, rationalist, technical, and objetive, but at the same time, also of the traditional Mexican architecture. The University City is a true fusion, the result of the union without precedents of the Modern Mexican architects, more than sixty architects interacted to give origin to one of the most emblematic complexes of the Modern Mexico.

The stone used as raw material in the construction of the complex evokes directly the tectonics strength of the volvanic mantle, the rooting with the site, and the millenarian past, reflected in the Olympic Stadium and in the Handball Courts: the latter acquire their shape from the pre-Hispanic traditional Ball Game. Both pieces achieve a forceful abstraction and geometric rigor. The modernity and technological innovation the country was experimenting at that time are represented with the use of steel, glass and shown concrete, and synthesize the influence form international models of the 20th century.

The open space and the relation among the buildings of the complex also are presented as a tribute to the Ancient Mexico. It is important to underline that the composition of the Campus maintains certain similarities with some elements of the pre-Hispanic cities, as for example, the central axis of the Calzada de los Muertos in Teotihuacan, or the symmetrical equilibrium of the great plaza in Monte Alban.

The architecture of the University City shows another peculiar condition, that of the plasctic integration a recurrent theme in the Mexican history. Art in the pre-Columbian cultures was already presented as an important element part of the architecture and urban space, as the Mayan constructions of Uxmal, Chichen Itza, or Bonampak show us. In the buildings of the Campus central the same occurs, the plastic artists participated since the very beginning, understanding art and architecture as a whole, as a “total work of art” very to tone with the European German concept of the Gesemkunstwerk. The Muralism as a clear representation of the artistic research for a new national identity, presents itself as a leading actor in the University City. These murals are a transgression to the purism of the international style and the rationalism reigning in that epoch: the majority of the most important painters, muralists, and sculptures of that Mexican artistic moment worked on them: and as codices in the antiquity, murals serve to represent graphically a cultural message, Architecture and Art in the University City are a metaphor of Life and Knowledge.

The Campus central of the University City clearly shows the reflections that have been the eternal dichotomy of the Mexican modern man; proudly national and at the same time universal.