So what of Mexico's architecture today? Where does it stand on the international stage? Kalach, who is one of the rising figures in the new generation of architects there, moves with ease between the macro and the micro. His house known as "Casa GGG" encapsulates much of the tradition of distinctive modern architecture for which Mexico has become known, while simultaneously possessing an international flavour. Precision-jointed glass is set against rough poured concrete, of the kind favoured by Le-Corbusier-influenced older-generation Mexican architects such as, pre-eminently, Teodoro Gonzalez de Leon. (Gonzalez de Leon is the country's standard-bearer of heroic sculptural monumentalism, as evidenced by his National Auditorium of 1991 and his earlier university work).

At the Casa GGG, there are large, sun-shading overhangs, and a blurring of boundaries between inside and outside space. A closed, fortress-like quality to the street elevation contrasts with an unfolding of horizontal and vertical planes on the garden side. Plus- as perhaps a knowing homage to the Mexican architectural aesthetic of saturated colour as developed in the modern era by the late Luis Barragan and subsequently by Ricardo Legorreta - there is a bright yellow, freestanding wall. There is a confidence and verve about such a house. It knows where it has come from, and it suggests where it might be heading.

Gonzalez de Leon has written of Kalach with affection as "rebellious, provocative and profoundly creative". Moreover, he points out that he has a passion for the city, not just for individual buildings. The fact that the two men, old and young, get on, suggests that they have much in common. That there is a continuum. And indeed, contemporary Mexican architecture has yielded riches, ever since Luis Barragan and a handful of colleagues began to develop a regional alternative to the anonymous "International Style" before the Second World War - though it was to be the 1950s before it began to make significant headway with the University City in the south of the capital. In that huge development, by many hands, some saw the influence of pre-Columbian architecture rather than European or North American models. Elsewhere, it was the adobe-walled colonial period that architects drew on for their more abstract modern creations.