Abstract

Although materials are well-understood as a central component in a building's construction, they
seldom are discussed as collaborators in that construction. Instead, they take the place of the raw
and inert matter through which the architect expresses their vision. To better situate materials as
collaborators, this thesis focuses on Casa Estudio Luis Barragán, the home and studio of late
Mexican architect Luis Ramiro Barragán Morfín (1902-1988), to investigate how particular materials
are active participants in the process of construction. My argument follows a New Materialist
framework that allows me to focus in-depth on some of the relationships between materials,
people, and plants that comprise Casa Estudio. This method shifts attention away from the architect
as the sole authorial figure behind its edification and uncovers the feminist, postcolonial, and
ecocritical narratives embedded in Casa Estudio, which account for the role of human-nonhuman
collaboration in the building process. Importantly, this thesis argues that the building's creation
was possible through the collaboration between the different actors that have interfaced with
Casa Estudio and Barragán to ultimately contend that architecture is a collaborative process that
extends beyond the architect.