ABSTRACT:
To Which Revolution?
Perkins + Will at the National School of Agriculture and the Center for the Improvement
of Corn and Wheat in Texcoco and El Batán, México, 1963-1968.

Nikki Moore, Ph.D., S.M.Arch.S
Department of Art, Wake Forest University
In 1967, architect William Brubaker of Perkins + Will aimed to unite two sets of warring agronomists in the National School of Agriculture’s campus expansion, in Texcoco, Mexico, sponsored by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the US Agency for International Development, and the Mexican government. The question at the heart of the split was this: for whom are Mexico’s resources metabolized? One set of researchers anchored their work in the communal agrarian aims of the Mexican Revolution–embodied in the history of the campus’ original hacienda. The other half, who laid the foundations for the techno-scientific transformation of agriculture known as the Green Revolution, supported a modern, international facility for agricultural research and training. Attempting to sidestep both the Green Revolution and the Mexican Revolution, Brubaker oriented his campus plan toward a third revolution: that of the earth around the sun, in which brise-soleils and other climatically attuned architectural solutions transformed solar energy in an attempt to a-politically negotiate local conditions in the interest of international development.