Mexican wave hits the garden

If you have ever thought about creating a calm, reflective water feature in the garden, considered building part of your home around an existing tree or painting the patio pink, you have probably, knowingly or otherwise, been influenced by the work of Luis Barragán, who practised architecture and landscape gardening in Mexico from the Twenties through to the Seventies.

Many architects and garden designers, including some in the television makeover programmes, remain blissfully unaware of the source of their inspiration because Mexico, with its very different climate and lifestyle, seems an unlikely starting point for a modern British home, let alone a contemporary British garden.

Born in 1902, Barragán started his career as a civil engineer before turning to architecture and landscape design. He is known mainly for his extraordinary colour combinations and clever use of strong geometric forms, and used this interplay between form and colour not just in his interiors, but as an integral part of his siting of a house within the garden and the urban or natural landscape. James Peto of the Design Museum, where Barragán's work is examined in a new exhibition, says: "His influence has been significant in domestic, commercial and garden design. His strong use of colour, the dramatic sculptural qualities of his buildings and his radical use of water and geometry within landscape design make him a leading inspiration for designers today."

Barragán's designs sprang from beliefs that many contemporary designers consider irrelevant. It was, he maintained: "Alarm-ing that publications devoted to architecture have banished from their pages the words beauty, inspiration, magic, spellbound, enchantment, as well as the concepts of serenity, silence, intimacy and amazement ... they have never ceased to be my guiding lights." His buildings, with their walls painted in shades of humming, vibrant pinks and sizzling yellows, offer surprisingly calm and intimate environments.

Home and garden should provide privacy and relief from the stress and strain of "constant communication", he felt. "All architecture that does not express serenity is not fulfilling its spiritual purpose." The success of his designs in achieving his underlying beliefs give his ideas a particular relevance to those seeking some escape from the complexities of contemporary urban life. Many were originally conceived for urban living and are well suited to the small town house and garden.

His buildings combined Moroccan Casbah, Southern Spanish and Pueblo Mexican with Modernist influences. He disliked large expanses of plate glass, preferring the privacy and shelter of walls. Nevertheless, he used large windows to frame views and open onto sheltered courtyards. The walls were often textured and usually painted in surprising colours, echoing Mexican folk art.

Barragán was fascinated by the integration of the garden with the home. He was able to put his money where his mouth was by becoming a property developer and buying El Pedregal, a tract of volcanic land near Mexico City. His master plan created plots that preserved the original character of the landscape with each house having a garden sheltered by walls, trees and foliage screening it from its neighbours. He was one of the first to describe the garden as "a living room where one can sit, eat and meet", pre-dating the current enthusiasm for indoor-outdoor rooms by three-quarters of a century.

Water features were integral to his patio gardens, usually taking the form of a shallow, rectangular expanse of water into which water might trickle from a sculptural high-level form, echoing the Moorish gardens of Alhambra. The flat surface of a pool would often be framed by walls painted in shades of pink, orange and yellow. The streams and formal pools beloved of contemporary garden designers owe much to his work, as does their interest in non-traditional paint schemes. His subtle manipulation of light and colour on changing surfaces and the use of water as a central feature are well worth copying.

"In a beautiful garden," he wrote before his death in 1988, "the majesty of nature is ever present but it is nature reduced to human proportions and thus transformed into the most efficient haven against the aggressiveness of contemporary life." Ground Force please take note.

Luis Barragán: the Quiet Revolution runs until 8 July at the Design Museum, Shad Thames, SE1. Books available from the museum shop include Luis Barragán by René Burri (Phaidon, £9.95), Barragán: The Architecture of Light, Colour and Form by Amando Salas Portugal (Rizzoli, £32) and The Life and Work of Luis Barragán by José Maria Buenida Juilbez (St Martin's Press, £32).