In the 1950s, the municipality of Tultitlán de Mariano Escobedo in the State of Mexico was still mostly rural, with its land used for cattle raising and agriculture. However, in this same decade the urbanization process brought the Mexico-Queretaro highway, inaugurated in October 1958, and the construction of the Bacardi plant, which became the only building by the German architect Mies van der Rohe in Latin America.
The then president of the Bacardi company, José María Bosch, intended to build a headquarters building in Cuba, and after seeing photographs of Crown Hall at the Illinois Institute of Technology in LIFE magazine, he knew that the right architect for the job was Mies van der Rohe. So when Bosch hired the legendary architect in 1957, he told him: "My ideal office is one in which there are no divisions, in which everyone, bosses and employees alike, can see each other.
For the construction of this building, Mies van der Rohe traveled to Cuba with the American architect Gene Summers, where they learned that a building with glass and steel like Crown Hall was impossible due to the climatic conditions and the difficulty of obtaining steel on the island. Finally, in January 1959, Mies traveled to Havana to present the final design: a square volume supported by two columns on each side. However, that same month the Cuban Revolution triumphed and with it, the Bacardi company was forced to close operations and abandon the architectural project.
Van Der Rohe and Bosch were determined to use the design that had already been delivered. It is said that the architect took the Cuban building as a basis for the construction of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, while the Mexican businessman thought it would be a good idea to continue with Mies' design for his next plant in the state.
This is how Mies van der Rohe visited Mexico in November 1958, in order to see the site of his first and only building in Latin America. Although there are not many records of this unique visit to Mexico, Summer noted that they were received at the airport by about 100 Mexican architects - in Pedro Ramírez Vázquez's archive there are photographs of Mies van der Rohe with Enrique del Moral, Nicolás Mariscal, Abraham Zabludovsky, Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, Vladimir Kaspé, Félix Candela, Carlos Obregón Santacilia, Jorge González Reyna, and Alberto Arai, to name a few. Despite the evidence, the rumor spread that the German architect never visited Mexico and that he only sent the plans to Bosch's team.
Although his visit was short, it was enough for Ludwig Mies van der Rohe to design a whole project for the alcohol factory, in addition to the original office building. Mies' project consisted of several buildings extending over the acres of land, a canteen and a gatehouse. It should be noted that none of these buildings were commissioned by Bosch and therefore were never built, only the pavilion, which is located to the north of the complex, and which some critics have considered to be a variation of the 1945 Edith Farnsworth House.
The Bacardi Offices were built in 1961 in Tultitlán de Mariano Escobedo, EDOMEX -the steel and glass volume was surrounded by large gardens made up of 30,000 tulips and dahlias. The entire plant was completed by a bottling and aging area, designed by architect Félix Candela, and in recognition of the German architect's work, this building was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2001.
The Bacardi Offices of Mies van der Rohe are not open to the public, except forspecialevents.
