The

Bacardi Bacardi Limited (; ) is one of the largest privately held, family-owned spirits companies in the world. Originally known for its Bacardi brand of white rum, it now has a portfolio of more than 200 brands and labels. Founded in Cuba in 1862 an ...

buildings of

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ( ; ; born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies; March 27, 1886August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect. He was commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. Along with Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd ...

and

Felix Candela Felix may refer to: * Felix (name), people and fictional characters with the name Places * Arabia Felix is the ancient Latin name of Yemen * Felix, Spain, a municipality of the province Almería, in the autonomous community of Andalusia, ...

are located in the

Greater Mexico City Greater Mexico City refers to the conurbation around Mexico City, officially called Metropolitan Area of the Valley of Mexico ( es, Zona metropolitana del Valle de México). It encompasses Mexico City itself and 60 adjacent municipalities of the S ...

, Mexico. This site was added to the

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...

World Heritage A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area with legal protection by an international convention administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Heritage Sites are designated by UNESCO for h ...

Tentative List on 20 November 2001 in the Cultural category.

Office Building

Originally constructed between 1958 and 1961, van der Rohe designed the corporate Office Building, and Felix Candela designed bottling plant and distillery cellars of Bacardi & Co. The bottling company's owner, Jose "Pepín" Bosch, had originally commissioned Van der Rohe to design the company's headquarters in

Santiago de Cuba Santiago de Cuba is the second-largest city in Cuba and the capital city of Santiago de Cuba Province. It lies in the southeastern area of the island, some southeast of the Cuban capital of Havana. The municipality extends over , and contains t ...

and Bacardi's plant in the outskirts of

Mexico City Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley o ...

. Bosch was impressed with

Crown Hall S. R. Crown Hall, designed by the German-American Modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, is the home of the College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, Illinois. History Before the building of Crown Hall, t ...

, and requested an office "where there were no partitions, where everybody, both officers and employees, could see each other." The two-story rectangular Office Building's dimensions are 56 meters by 27 meters, and it was constructed in a parallel fashion to the main highway from Mexico City to

Querétaro Querétaro (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Querétaro ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Querétaro, links=no; Otomi language, Otomi: ''Hyodi Ndämxei''), is one of the Political divisions of Mexico, 32 federal entities of Mexico. I ...

. The building is two floors high and eight meters tall. It's an open-plan lobby. The second floor has offices and meeting rooms, enclosed by glass.

Distillery and Ageing building

Felix Candela designed the buildings to incorporate large concrete shells: "long-barrel vaults" and umbrella domes at the warehouses and workshops. These materials allowed for above average illumination indoors, and along with overall design, it created a unique architectural collection. They were inspired by

Minoru Yamasaki was an American architect, best known for designing the original World Trade Center in New York City and several other large-scale projects. Yamasaki was one of the most prominent architects of the 20th century. He and fellow architect Edward D ...

’s and Anton Tedesko’s 1956 Lambert-St. Louis Airport Terminal. The factory roof was originally formed by three vaults 4-centimeter (1.6 inches) thick and 26 meters (85.3 ft.) square in plan with 2.5 m. (27.9 ft.) overhanging arches on each side. A second row of three vaults was added in 1971 using the same design but built by another architect.

References

{{Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Architecture in Mexico Buildings and structures in Mexico City Bacardi