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Daily Inspiration Quote by Luis Barragan

"I don't divide architecture, landscape and gardening; to me they are one"

About this Quote

Barragan’s line is a quiet rebuke to the way modern life chops the built world into professional silos: architect here, landscape architect there, gardener somewhere below the line item. When he says he “doesn’t divide,” he’s not just declaring a preference; he’s staking out an ethic. Space, in his view, isn’t an object to be admired so much as a lived atmosphere shaped by walls, light, plants, water, shadow, scent. Treat any one of those as decoration and you get a house that photographs well but feels thin.

The subtext is also cultural. Barragan worked in a Mexico where courtyards, gardens, and thresholds have long carried social and spiritual weight. His best-known projects - from the gardens at El Pedregal to Casa Gilardi’s saturated planes of color - turn “nature” into something composed, almost liturgical. The garden isn’t a backdrop; it’s architecture’s equal partner in orchestrating privacy, surprise, and repose. Calling it “gardening” (a word that sounds domestic, intimate, unheroic) is the tell: he’s refusing the macho modernist fantasy of mastery, where buildings dominate land like machines dropped onto a site.

Context matters: mid-century modernism often prized clean separation - building versus site, form versus ornament, reason versus feeling. Barragan’s refusal is a counter-modernism that still uses modern tools (abstraction, minimal detail) to pursue older goals: serenity, sensuality, and the slow drama of time as vines grow and light shifts. It’s a manifesto for wholeness disguised as a modest personal statement.

Quote Details

TopicArt
Source
Later attribution: It's Lonely in the Modern World (Molly Jane Quinn, 2011) modern compilationISBN: 9780811879286 · ID: johQZLmo_NoC
Text match: 95.00%   Provider: Google Books
Evidence:
... I don't divide architecture , landscape , and gardening ; to me they are one . LUIS BARRAGÁN ( 1902–1988 ) Considered the most important Mexican architect of the twentieth century , Barragán studied engineering but was self - taught as ...
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Barragan, Luis. (2026, February 8). I don't divide architecture, landscape and gardening; to me they are one. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-dont-divide-architecture-landscape-and-87788/

Chicago Style
Barragan, Luis. "I don't divide architecture, landscape and gardening; to me they are one." FixQuotes. February 8, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-dont-divide-architecture-landscape-and-87788/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I don't divide architecture, landscape and gardening; to me they are one." FixQuotes, 8 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-dont-divide-architecture-landscape-and-87788/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

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I dont divide architecture, landscape, gardening - Barragan
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About the Author

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Luis Barragan (March 9, 1902 - November 22, 1988) was a Architect from Mexico.

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