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08 · Postmodern & Contemporary

Developer Modern

c. 1990–present

Plain developer-built houses and apartment blocks: flat or low roofs, rendered or panel walls, identical windows in a grid, no ornament.

Look for

Flat roof Modular repetition Stucco wall Parapet
Ciudad Valdeluz, Guadalajara, Spain: an example of Developer Modern architecture
Ciudad Valdeluz, Guadalajara, Spain. Photo: RinzeWind, CC BY 2.0
El Quiñón, Seseña, Spain
El Quiñón Seseña, Spain · Flavio Leite, CC BY 2.0
El Quiñón from the air, Seseña, Spain
El Quiñón from the air Seseña, Spain · Marostegui, CC BY-SA 4.0
Fraccionamiento Los Fresnos, Nuevo Laredo, Mexico
Fraccionamiento Los Fresnos Nuevo Laredo, Mexico · Miguel Angel Omaña Rojas, CC0
Urbi houses under construction, Mexico
Urbi houses under construction Mexico · WTF Formwork, CC BY-SA 3.0

what it is

Developer Modern is the plain housing and apartment building produced by commercial developers from about 1990. Buildings usually have flat or low-pitched roofs, walls of painted render (a cement coating) or factory-made panels, and windows of the same size set in a regular grid. They have no columns, cornices or carved ornament. One standard plan repeats from house to house along a street, or from floor to floor in an apartment block.

In Mexico, the developers Casas GEO, Urbi and Homex built hundreds of thousands of identical houses on city edges, including Urbi's Valle San Pedro in Tijuana. In Spain, the El Quiñón development in Seseña, Toledo, was planned as 13,500 homes. Contemporary Modern buildings are designed one at a time by architects, with large glass walls, cantilevers and mixed materials. Developer Modern repeats one stock design, with small windows and a single wall finish.

how to spot one

Flat roof A roof that is level or nearly level, often edged by a low wall called a parapet. It is standard on modernist buildings and on Pueblo adobe buildings of the American Southwest. Modular repetition A facade built from one identical unit, such as a window and its frame, repeated in a regular grid. It is common on postwar buildings made of precast (factory-made) concrete panels. Stucco wall A wall coated with stucco, a plaster of cement or lime, sand and water, finished smooth or textured. It is common on Spanish Colonial Revival, Mission Revival and Mediterranean Revival buildings. Parapet A low wall rising above the edge of a roof, terrace or balcony. On flat-roofed buildings it hides the roof from the street. It is common on commercial blocks and on Spanish Colonial Revival and Art Deco buildings.

Also look for

Symmetrical facadeRibbon windowHipped roof

history

Developer-built housing in Mexico grew after the federal workers' housing institute Infonavit was founded in 1972; its mortgages shifted production from self-built homes to homes built by companies. Casas GEO was founded in 1990, Homex in 1989 in Culiacán and Urbi in 1981. Homex went from about 5,000 homes a year to more than 50,000 a year by the mid-2000s, and Urbi had built more than 430,000 homes by 2013.

The same model appeared in Spain during the construction boom of the 2000s: by mid-2008 fewer than 3,000 of the apartments at El Quiñón had been sold. In Mexico, the US Securities and Exchange Commission found that Homex had inflated its reported home sales by about 317 percent between 2010 and 2013. Urbi sought bankruptcy protection in December 2014, and a Mexico City court declared Casas GEO bankrupt in March 2019.

where to find it

Mexico's city edges, such as Ixtapaluca in the State of Mexico and Urbi's Valle San Pedro in Tijuana, and Spain's El Quiñón development in Seseña.

easy to confuse with

One World Trade Center, an example of Contemporary Modern Contemporary Modern Today's default architecture: floor-to-ceiling glass, crisp panel facades, bold cantilevers, and mixed materials. Modern farmhouse, an example of Modern Farmhouse Modern Farmhouse White vertical siding, black window frames, metal gable roofs, and a big friendly porch. Villa Savoye, an example of International Style International Style Glass walls hung on exposed steel or concrete grids: weightless, ornament-free, and endlessly repeatable. Falowiec, an example of Socialist Panel Housing Socialist Panel Housing Long flat-roofed apartment blocks made of identical precast concrete panels and windows in a regular grid, with balconies.