A Guide to the Best Architecture and Interiors of Mexico City

UNAM is Mexico's National Autonomous University, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was built in the 1950s to the south of the city centre as politicians decided it was better to geographically expunge the risk of protesting students around parliamentary buildings. If anything, the new build encouraged more passionate student innovation. Featuring an enormous central quad, a library covered in murals by Juan O'Gorman which blend Aztec tradition with Science and Félix Candela's Cosmic Ray Pavilion which shows a curved roof of pioneering mathematical complexity, UNAM's modernist architecture screams liberal expressionism. This has seeped into the questioning minds of its students who attend courses on sustainable urban planning and design plastic replacement materials out of tamarind seeds.

Nestled in charming Coyoacán, Mexico City's most colourful district, Casa Azul will envelop you in the artistic world of Frida Kahlo. Literally speaking, as this was the house in which she was born, lived and died. Everything from the vivid blue walls, to the plethora of quirky souvenirs and the explosion of greenery in the garden embodies her passion, pain and artistry. You feel her close affinity to Mexican culture at every turn, her debilitating illness in every furnishing and her turbulent relationship with Diego Rivera oozing out of the colours and writing on the walls. As a curation of her life's interests and experiences, the interiors of Casa Azul are seen as one of her most expressive works of art in itself.

The Soumaya Museum speaks for itself. Panelled with 16,000 hexagonal mirrored-steel elements, its futuristic façade varies depending on the time of day, the weather and the location of the viewer. It rises like the undulating body of a snake amongst the more lifeless corporate buildings of Plaza Carso. It has a story too. It was designed by Fernando Romero for his father-in-law, the richest man in the world, Carlos Slim, who in true billionaire style named the building after his late wife, Soumaya. It houses Slim's private art collection of nearly 70,000 works, including the world's largest collection of Rodin sculptures. The rhomboid structure was named "impossible to build" but thanks to 28 curved steel columns, seven perpendicular rings and the innovative mind of the young architect, there are certain things money can buy.

30 miles northeast of Mexico City lies the Mayan site of Teotihuacan, one of the largest ancient cities dating as far back as 100 BC. Yet the urban design of this city of pyramids is remarkably modern, displaying a grid layout and a grand central avenue. The Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon are both remarkably huge in size and built in line with the constellations. Stone steps run down the front of these pyramids, designed with spatial perspective to give perfect symmetry - which we have imitated on our Cruz fabric. The legend goes that the Pyramid of the Sun was designed in such a way that, at the summer equinox, a ray of sunlight is cast on the steps to resemble a slithering snake. It is just unfathomably impressive how the ancient civilization completed such an advanced design feat.

The house of Luis Barragan embodies the Pritzker Prize winner's pioneering style and validates his role as an iconic figurehead of modern architecture. Hidden behind a distinctly unassuming façade, the design and decoration of his house is an experimental playground of light and colour. Skylights and windows are consciously placed so that the rooms naturally illuminate throughout the day and the sharp, architectural lines cast interesting shadows on the block-coloured walls. Minimalism jostles with mid-century furniture and quirky collectibles, all bought from antique shops and craft markets. Barragán has created a unique space which both expresses his personal interests and where poetry can be written by nature.