Teodoro Gonzalez de Leon, was born in the post-revolutionary Mexico and died due to cardiac arrest, the day when every year is celebrated the Mexican independence in one of the largest metropolises in the world is held, a city he helped transform, the place where are the majority of its projects and whose work have left an indelible mark.
"I have over 80 years learning how to live, how to be. I have not learned disciplines, I have become ways of life; reading is a way of life, drawing, painting, sculpture, are a way of life; visit the cities, listen to music and architecture are forms of life; no religion is my way of life."
On Friday he was working, -in his architectural studio located across the street where is located his house-, in new projects such as the expansion of the library of the Colegio de Mexico, a classic of architecture built in 1976 or Manacar tower 22 floors, a project south of the citya complex program, with housing building and shopping center.
His tenure, in the 1940s, as a pupil in the studio of Le Corbusier, -as other so many, it leaves a clear mark of the Swiss architect in the way they work, whose influences defined the vision of its architecture along seven decades, a work characterized by the use of concrete as main material, used on buildings as the Museo Rufino Tamayo de Arte Contempóraneo, the expansion of the National Auditorium, and other as, the Embassy of Mexico in Berlin and the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), the latter a work of 2008 he designed at 82 years old.
His early work, -after studying at the Escuela Nacional de Arquitectura de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and spend 18 months by the French government in the studio of Le Corbusier, came from the hand of architects and consolidated as Carlos Obregón Santacilia, Carlos Lazo Barreiro and Mario Pani Darqui.
His work began to stand out thanks to its partnership and collaboration with another great master of Mexican architecture, Abraham Zabludovsky (1924-2003). Resulting of this collaboration buildings like the National Auditorium or the Tamayo Museum designed in the Bosque de Chapultepec, where it appears synthesized much of its architectural, monumental, a kind of Mexican architectural brutalism, characterized by the expression of large geometric gestures and structural as well as the characteristic use of concrete.
His work was a sintexis between modernity and abstract reinterpretation of prehispanic architecture, (it is a constant reference to the great examples of that architecture as the nearby city of Teotihuacan) influenced by artists such as Juan Gris and Fernand Léger, reflecting his love of painting, sculpture and photography.
The architect cumplia 90 on May 28 and was present at the tribute was paid at the Palace of Fine Arts in the Mexican capital and said the following.
"I have over 80 years learning how to live, how to be. I have not learned disciplines, I have become ways of life; reading is a way of life, drawing, painting, sculpture, are a way of life; visit the cities, listen to music and architecture are forms of life; no religion is my way of life."
