The increasing international success of Mexican architects is symptomatic of the independent spirit of the country itself. Having always had an uneasy economic relationship with its neighbour the United States, there is now a project that celebrates both the differences and the assonances between the two countries, and suggest a new confidence. "Bridge Mexico/USA" is to be a museum straddling a river that forms the border. Designed by the practice LCM - which stands for "Laboratory of Mexico City", it is a simple but asymmetrical shape like two square megaphones standing back to back. It is brilliantly simple in concept. Citizens from both countries will be able to enter the museum from either side. Inside will be two territories, visible to each other. There is irony and humour in the fact that the museum will deal with the vexed topic of immigration. Like all the best Mexican architecture, it is both regional and universal in meaning.

Today, then, you find Enrique Norten and Teodoro Gonzalez de Leon working alongside Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind, Toyo Ito, Jean Nouvel, Philip Johnson and other leading international names to make the JVC Cultural Centre in Mexico's "Silicon Valley" in Guadalajara. This architectural fashion parade concerns an unprecedented $500m scheme in which all the architects collaborated on the masterplan and have now designed ten individual buildings. The significance is not so much what it is but where it is. Having successfully exported itself, Mexican architecture can now import the best of the rest of the world as well, to work alongside its home-grown talent as equals. The Guadalajara project will not necessarily be repeated everywhere - indeed, some wonder if the original scheme is too ambitious ever to happen - but it is a sign, along with the new ecologically-aware plans for Mexico City, that the country is entering a fertile new phase in its architectural development.