Two Views of Meso-American Architecture

For this week we are to compare and contrast two separate groups of architecture, one from early Mexico versus one from the Classic Mayan stage.

First I'd like to focus on the grouping of buildings shown below from Mitla in early Mexico.

This photo shows the grouping of the buildings in Mitla, depicting how a couple areas including the ones listed as Grupo Adobe and Grupo de las Columnas have corners that do not meet up, while the other groupings of structures shown have corners that do meet up creating closed structures. Ritual manuscript scenes are painted on the interiors of several of the buildings in the Mitla groupings, as a typical style of decoration for the early Mexican art within the architecture.

Second, I'd like to focus on the photo below as an example of Mayan architecture from the Uxmal area.

In the photo above, you the layout of the structures found at Uxmal in a Classic Mayan fashion, though this grouping has some stylings that are slightly less "classic" in design and function, according to our Kubler text. Note, there is the same parallel of groupings where some have closed corners and a few do not, including the North group shown to the far right of the photo above. Both the Uxmal and the Mitla groupings have negative batters, meaning their facade walls lean outwards, which is a bit of an anomaly in terms of likelihood between the two different sets of historical architecture.