Modern in Tijuana

Six years ago, architect Jorge Gracia came to Dwell’s attention with a house he built for his family that was radically different from any other in his hometown of Tijuana, Mexico, where the hillsides are peppered with unplanned, makeshift houses for the poor and pastel-colored, ersatz Spanish manses for the rich. Despite Mexico’s strong modernist tradition—think of the work of Luis Barragán and Enrique Norten—Tijuana hasn’t been its beneficiary. “I’m an architect in a city with no architecture,” Gracia told Dwell in 2005. “In a place like this, you have to ask a client to have faith, and faith to me has always been the belief in something you can’t see.”