To walk through Mexico City is to stroll down centuries at once. The ruins of the Aztec empire are exposed on the ground beside colonial structures built from the same stones that once made up the ancient temples. A few blocks farther, 1900s European-inspired townhouses are pressed against 1940s Art Deco apartments, and modern skyscrapers shoulder through the city’s diverse skyline.

Outside Mexico’s capital, a similar trend holds true. Various aesthetics that would otherwise seem incompatible blend together to form a new architecture movement that borrows from its long past while creating something entirely new.

In her new book, Mesoamerican Modern, the curator Su Wu and the photographer Luis Garvan document these like-minded homes and propose a new way to understand the region’s most thrilling contemporary residential spaces: as continuations of ancient traditions that never really went away.

“In many places in the world, the convention is to use geographic descriptions—Asian art, Oceanic art, or African art—yet in the Americas, the use of the term pre-Columbian has this implication that history ended,” Wu, an expatriate who has lived in Mexico City for more than a decade, tells Fast Company.

“It implies that there was no resilience, no continuity, and that the ideas are not still relevant and present in how people think about modern and contemporary architecture and design, which is not the case,” she says.

Through a survey of 16 contemporary homes in Mexico, Wu reveals a style that draws from shared cultural elements like history, materials, and an appreciation for the natural landscape.

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