The Torres de Satélite are five slender, brightly coloured concrete towers that rise from a traffic island at the entrance to the Ciudad Satélite suburb of Naucalpan. Designed in 1957 by Luis Barragán and Mathias Goeritz, they stand between 37 and 57 metres tall and are painted in combinations of yellow, orange, red, white, and blue. As pure abstract sculpture at urban scale they are remarkable, and as a marker of Mexico's postwar engagement with international modernism they are historically important.
The towers are best seen while driving past — which is how they were intended to be experienced. There is limited pedestrian access, as the towers sit in a busy traffic interchange. They are a UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of the broader designation of Barragán's work, and represent one of Mexico's most significant contributions to 20th-century design. A visit to Ciudad Satélite makes a good combination with the towers: the suburb itself, though now fully absorbed into the metropolitan area, retains some of its mid-century planning character.