Alberto Arai (March 29, 1915 - May 25, 1955) was a Mexican architect, theorist and writer, of Japanese descent. March 29 is the 88th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (89th in Leap years). ... 1915 (MCMXV) was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... May 25 is the 145th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (146th in leap years). ... 1955 (MCMLV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Architect at his drawing board, 1893 An architect is a person involved in the planning, designing and oversight of a buildings construction. ... In mathematics, theory is used informally to refer to a body of knowledge about mathematics. ... The term writer can apply to anyone who creates a written work, but the word more usually designates those who write creatively or professionally, or those who have written in many different forms. ...

Born in Mexico City, the son of a Japanese ambassador in Mexico, Alberto Arai studied philosophy, espousing Neo-Kantianism and becoming politically a socialist. He became a supporter of Functionalism, with its emphasis on the social applications of architecture, and was also a founder, with Enrique Yañez, of the Unión de Arquitectos Socialistas (1938), helping to draw up a socialist theory of architecture. He was one of the most active participants and attempted to put his socialist theory into practice on two unexecuted projects in the same year: the building for the Confederación de Trabajadores de México and the Ciudad Obrera de México, both with Enrique Guerrero and Raúl Cacho. Mexico City (Spanish: Ciudad de México) is the name of a megacity located in the Valley of Mexico (Valle de México), a large valley in the high plateaus (altiplano) at the center of Mexico, about 2,240 metres (7,349 feet) above sea-level, surrounded on most sides... An ambassador, rarely embassador, is a diplomatic official accredited to a foreign sovereign or government, or to an international organization, to serve as the official representative of his or her own country. ... Neo-Kantianism means a revived or modified type of philosophy along the lines of that laid down by Immanuel Kant in the eighteenth century. ... Functionalism is a term with several senses: For functionalism in sociology, see Functionalism (sociology). ... In the field of building architecture, the skills demanded of an architect range from the more complex, such as for a hospital or a stadium, to something simpler, such as planning simple residential houses. ... A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service. ... The Confederación de Trabajadores de México (CTM) is the largest confederation of labor unions in Mexico and was for many years one of the essential supports for the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI), which ruled Mexico under various names for more than seventy years. ...

Later, when Mexico opted for a developmental policy, Arai became a standard-bearer for nationalism in architecture. He re-evaluated traditional building materials, such as tree trunks, bamboo, palm leaves and lianas, using them in a plan for a country house that was adapted to the warm, damp climate of the Papaloapan region. The building of the Ciudad Universitaria, Mexico City, gave him his greatest architectural opportunity when he designed the Frontones (1952). In these he used the volcanic stone of the area to great effect in truncated pyramid shapes inspired by Pre-Columbian pyramids. His numerous books and articles addressed conceptual problems in Mexican architecture. // Nationalism is an ideology which holds that the nation, ethnicity or national identity is a fundamental unit of human social life, and makes certain political claims based upon that belief; above all, the claim that the nation is the only legitimate basis for the state, and that each nation is... Ciudad Universitaria (University City) is UNAMs main campus, located in Coyoacán borough in the southern part of Mexico City. ... This article is about volcanoes in geology. ... Stone can refer to any of the following: Stone may be used as a building material, as in this dry stone wall Look up stone in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The term Pre-Columbian is used to refer to the cultures of the New World in the era before significant European influence. ... This is about the polyhedron. ...