Mexico’s Mextrópoli 2019 explores cities and architecture across generations
At Mextrópoli 2019, Mexico City’s annual architecture and city festival (9-12 March 2019), many questions were posed around the theme ‘Where the City Ends’. During a round-table discussion between international architects David Chipperfield, Guillermo Hevia, Frida Escobedo and Mariam Kamara, Chipperfield addressed the topic of how the next generations could improve the life of cities.
‘The profession has to consider how we can be societally effective,’ he said. ‘Architecture doesn’t sit in a gallery or on a bookshelf. We are a service dependent on societal engagement.’ It’s a sentiment that a group of students confronted head-on at the festival’s outdoor-installation activation at Alameda Central, Mexico City’s oldest public park, where 18 projects were presented by various studios and architecture and design institutions.
One of the most popular ones, a collection of 31 doors placed in various sequences that allow entry from one to another in a haphazardous, free-flow manner, was the idea of three fourth-year architecture and urbanism students from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, aided by peers from the Faculty of Architecture at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). ‘We’re presenting a city without limits,’ said Daniel Carvalho Mendonça, one of the Brazilian creators. His collaborator, Felipe Ross de Mattos Oliveira added: ‘Political limits in a city aren’t real. When people open doors, they’re transforming these limits.’
The doors were fitted with peepholes, displaying tiny photographed images of daily life in the city, blocking the real vista until one opened the door to discover that such a constricted view does not exist. Rather, one was confronted by the vibrant city park, its towering spring-time jacarandas, and a smorgasbord of citizens from all walks of life.
By sourcing doors from various suburbs in the city, each with its own economic and social implications, they were uniting contexts not often integrated, transforming Mexico City’s story to one where, as co-creator Gabrielle de Almeida Maia da Silva said, ‘architecture contributes to breaking barriers’. Besides its main two-day conference, where Chipperfield and Kamara formed part of the prestigious speaker line-up, Mextrópoli hosted workshops, discussions and film screenings, and included a variety of exhibitions openings, many of which will be running into the coming months.
Independent architecture platform Liga presents The Horizon is Ours! (until 31 May) by Pedro&Juana, again talking to the city’s imagined limits. Their ‘diorama’ presents a ‘window into the city’, where each object inside this scene represents an element of daily life in Mexico City, its scale and false perspective questioning the power of the subject and its ability to contain, compose and fragment a constructed world.
In addition, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) – a global architecture, interior design, engineering and urban-planning firm that has defied city limits (it’s responsible for Dubai’s groundbreaking Burj Khalifa) – is also exhibiting in Mexico City. ‘SOM: Art + Engineering + Architecture' (on until 9 June at the historic Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso) is a display of over 30 structural models of projects that have created new dialogues within their urban environments – from the United States Courthouse in Los Angeles to Poly International Plaza in Beijing. Supported by sketches, sculptures and videos that demonstrate the company’s ethos of uniting engineers, architects and visual artists in its more than 80-year history, this exhibition provides next-generation architects even more lessons to learn from.
INFORMATION
For more information visit the Mextrópoli website
Wallpaper* Newsletter + Free Download
For a free digital copy of August Wallpaper*, celebrating Creative America, sign up today to receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories
-
Feel at home at Auberge, Château La Coste's new inn for culture lovers
Auberge La Coste sits at the heart of the art-filled estate, minutes away from the joyful town of Aix-en-Provence
By Harriet Thorpe Published
-
This Nova Lima apartment is a Brazilian family oasis with striking Minas Gerais views
A Nova Lima apartment designed by Jacobsen Arquitetura celebrates its long, natural Minas Gerais vistas
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Commune’s sustainable personal care products look ‘quite unlike anything else’
Commune’s Somerset-made products stand out in the sustainable skincare crowd. Madeleine Rothery speaks with the brand’s co-founders Kate Neal and Rémi Paringaux
By Madeleine Rothery Published
-
Step inside Quinto Sol house, a verdant oasis in Mexico's Pacific Coast
Quinto Sol house by architect Cristina Grappin blends indoors and outdoors in a masterful architectural composition in the Mexican countryside
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
The Duho Pavilion by Limbo Accra immerses us into its Caribbean setting
The Duho Pavilion by Limbo Accra is a Cayman Islands landscape project that celebrates the Indigenous Caribbean Taino people
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Lucha Libre and modernist architecture meet in Mexican short film ‘El Luchador’
‘El Luchador’ blends Lucha Libre and architecture, in a Mexican short film set in Agustín Hernández Navarro's modernist home Casa Praxis in Mexico City
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Mexico’s Amelia Tulum is where ‘the architecture becomes part of the jungle’
Amelia Tulum by Sordo Madaleno combines a human-centred approach and lots of greenery to craft a Mexican residential community like no other
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Scenic Garden offers architectural pavilions and a new green lung for Mexico City
Scenic Garden, designed by Michan Architecture and a team of collaborators, adds green infrastructure to Mexico City's bustling urban experience
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
A first look at Serpentine Pavilion 2024: ‘It really is an archipelago’
The Serpentine Pavilion 2024 opens its doors and we catch up with its architect, Minsuk Cho of Mass Studies, to talk about the design’s origins, concept and future travels
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Emerald Screen Pergola brings wonder and intrigue to an everyday setting in China
Designed by Wutopia Lab, Emerald Screen Pergola is a pavilion designed to inject ‘magical realism’ into the everyday, nodding to ancient Chinese practices
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
A Cancun retreat by Mexico’s Vieyra Estudio takes inspiration ‘from the ocean’
Casa Nube, a new Cancun retreat by Vieyra Estudio, merges sea, style and sustainability in a private residence defined by a series of pools and terraces
By Léa Teuscher Published