This lecture was given by Jorge Ambrosi and Gabriela Etchegaray on February 22nd 2021 via Zoom as part of the Architecture and Cultural Sustainability lecture series.

This lecture was given by Jorge Ambrosi and Gabriela Etchegaray on March 22nd 2021 via Zoom as part of the Architecture and Cultural Sustainability lecture series.

Patricia Morgado: 

Good afternoon, thank you all for being here. We are very excited to see such a large crowd for this lecture.

On behalf of the School of Architecture and the students from my publication class, particularly Jessica Hall and Miguel Castellanos who are studying the work of Ambrosi | Etchegaray and would be standing next to me if we were doing this in person, we are thrilled to introduce Jorge Ambrosi and Gabriela Etchegaray.

With the generous support of Paul and Holly Tesar, the Lectures on Architecture and Cultural Sustainability were established in 2015 in response to—and I quote Paul here– a need to “complement our focus on sustainability in the realms of matter and energy with an equivalent focus on sustainability of the cultural dimension of architecture, and on the potential overlaps between the two.”^[1] With this in mind, we invite scholars and practicing architects who, like Jorge and Gabriela, make efforts to sustain and to interpret cultural traditions by re-stating them in a “form that is appropriate to and relevant for our time.”^[2]

Concerned with the impact architecture has on culture, and our lives, for Ambrosi | Etchegaray innovation cannot take place without first recognizing and embracing the work of those preceding them (which in the case of Mexico dates to over 3,000 years). Careful consideration of memory, heritage, materiality, nature, light, and order, have led them to produce a beautiful and poetic body of work that adopts and reinterprets local approaches to site, as well as to formal organization used in Mexico for generations. It is these concepts that represent the heart of their work and their firm. 

Founded only 10 year ago, I think this is very interesting and shows the promise of their work in the future, Ambrosi | Etchegaray already has quite an impressive list of achievements. As a firm, they have been the recipients of the NY Architecture League’s Emerging Voices Award in 2015, and Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard in 2017, among numerous other awards. Individually, Gabriela was the recipient of the Architectural Record’s Moira Gemmill Prize for Emerging Architecture in 2016, and Jorge was recognized by the Academia Nacional de Arquitectura de Mexico for his outstanding professional work, just this past January.

Please welcome Jorge Ambrosi and Gabriela Etchegaray.

Gabriela 

We titled this presentation “(Bodies) at Place.” It’s something that we’ve been questioning, mainly in this time of confinement, we have gotten more conscious about our bodies, how we relate to one another, the space in which our body moves, what does it touch or don’t touch, and how they take place from a literal concern, within the relationship between architecture and bodies, to a strictly figurative one. 

When we think about taking a place, we refer to an event that occurs in a controlled or organized way. To take a place as an individual action, seems to open up a world of possibilities in order to understand the complexities of our interactions in a specific context. First of all, we must recognize that our human bodies are connected to other types of bodies, bodies that address different forms of form, [such] as infrastructure, landscape, communities, economies, among others. Such bodies act like threads that are related to one another, all interconnected at the same time. Second, and probably most importantly, we should understand that our bodies have the possibility of a greater reach that goes beyond the condition of our physical body. This means that our interconnected existence is actually a coexistence, where our actions have implications with multiple bodies. These previous premises require us to look further and at different scales. Only by acknowledging our extended existence we will be fully responsible for the actions we develop when we take the place.

Echoes of A Land – Mexican Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2018

With this in mind, and following the FREESPACE motto presented by Grafton Architects at the last Venice Biennale in 2018, we understood the concept of free space as all the conceivable possibilities at an undefined space, but then again defined by the land. We wanted to deepen our understanding at that Biennale, that we were appointed curators and designers of the pavilion, to understand the territory in our country, Mexico (Image 1). For that we used tools of representation where we sought to show a territory of contrasts, a territory where there were certain voids or free spaces that could only highlight the lack of long-term, or even short-term, compromises of the space we inhabit. A territory where the territorial incomprehension leads to areas with extreme poverty and natural disasters (Image 2), where the government’s absence does not design policies for protecting green areas, such as high-risk regions to be inhabited and those with almost no infrastructure. Through an investigation of Mexican anthropography the pavilion under the title “Echoes of a Land” developed through overlay of maps reflection at the scale of urbanizing and transforming the Mexican territory where the dichotomy between natural and environment, and anthropographic transformations are linked as well to one another (Image 3). 

The exhibition “Echoes of a Land” was based on the language of muralist art. This was a movement in Mexico essential to our history, that sought to mainly reactivate reconstruction processes and collective identities after the revolution. In order to rescue the discourse of identity, the research reveals the extent and relationship between the country’s urban and rural continuum. The reflections presented a series of projects in the center of the pavilion (Image 4); these projects were a requirement of the institution in charge. We decided to show them through the scale of intervention in relationship to a geography questioning the domain to other bodies with those that architecture intertwines in order to bring to light the contemporary challenges that are sometimes hidden behind architectural thesēs. We attempt to make a call to interdisciplinary actions, as well as to understand complex processes that work hand in hand with ecological and social dynamics. The section at the center of the pavilion (Image 5), suggested to link the two main murals that where the facades of the pavilion which played a contrasting perspective, one about the qualities and richness of a vast land, and the other showing the catastrophes caused by natural disasters and human negligence from the last Biennial to this Biennial. The section, however, goes from the east coast of the Mexican golf, to the West, where the main maritime port operates. Such a section alludes to the expedition of Alexander von Humboldt in the same region, an expedition that crossed the center of the country and that rebuilt and presented ecological treasure that was, that is generated by the neovolcanic axis. A land rich in water and species that gave birth mainly to the most significant human settlements of our territory that today happen to be the largest and main cities in the country of Mexico (Image 6).

The model and section, in combination with the drawing (Image 7), we wanted to show the diversity of the ecosystem as a central in the pavilion, both as an exercise of synthesis of different information that was relevant to understand the framed territory, and also as a way to eradicate the anthropocentrism. What we try to draw in this section is mainly all the ecosystems, the diversity of the plants, vegetation, animals, the flora, the fauna, things that sometimes the architecture overlooks when we’re designing. 

Research on the Border

After the Venice Biennial Exhibition we wanted to continue with this exercise of representation, because at the end what we were doing was using tools of architects to represent and evidence conditions and situations that we could present through our modes of operation. We wanted to continue with an exercise of representing and we turned the gaze to the borders of Mexico. At this exercise, we pretty much drew a series of maps, in order to understand this condition that has been always problematic, that we’re always confronting, complex in different approaches. 

The territory of Mexico, similarly to the US territory, is limited by the seas at the east and the west coordinates, where the water condition is what defines our geography. To the north to the south, the geopolitical borders are presented by a line that intends to separate the neighboring realities, but in fact it acts more as a start to a larger territory. The drawing of a line reflects on the different conditions that each side represents, acknowledging that neither of the political borders delimit the territory. We recognize that the political border does not describe the complexity of the conditions on the common ground where two or more countries meet.  The line is the abstract result of political and historical decisions that at some point result in arbitrary limits. The geopolitical border has been guided by physical obstacles, including rivers and topographic elevations (Image 8). To other extent, the tracing of the border has ignored the former inhabitants and nuances of the different regions. At the end, such lines carry political and symbolic meaning disconnected from the physical characteristics of the territory (Image 9). It certainly does not determine where the identity of one ends and the other begins. Instead of assuming a restrictive role as containment, the borders should be represented as an ecotone were natural eco-regions connect with other ecosystems and social groups, a place for hybridization, a place of connection, where different bodies and, as said before, other kinds of bodies, interact, exchange and combine. In fact, the border could become a place in its extent not a line, where different cultural, social, physical, geographic, environmental, and economic structures meet and complement each other. With this we understand that the word territory that we usually use in architecture, is a complex definition that can address different scales and relationships depending on the area of study and the approach. 

Círculo Mexicano

Going back to this present moment where our bodies have been limited within the space of our home. At the time we were asked, or even forced, to limit our activities within the domestic space, we have an opportunity, under these confinement conditions, to rethink the life we were living, the rhythm, the relationships, and so on. It has exposed the chains of consumption and the necessities of our interactions under a model of capitalism, situations that were no longer questioned on a daily basis are now the focus of our attention. We are convinced that there are ways of thinking that we still don’t know. Adrianne Rich presents in her book On Women Born that “thinking is an active, fluid, expansive process,” while understanding and knowledge “are recapitulation of past processes.” Today, we have tried to exercise other alternatives to demand new models of thought. The withdrawal of our exterior life has accelerated the lack of separation between the human and activities. Home, work, education, and play has become an undifferentiated continuum. The borders of each have been dissolved in the fluids of the domestic realm, while exposing our immediate urban context in its imbalances, its dislocations, and inequalities. These conditions awaken a greater awareness of the hyperlocal which reveals the importance of questioning the basic needs, even the essentials, in order to imagine a possible future in search of equality. The model of more through luxury and possessions must be pushed to reimagine the economic systems or even economic shared systems.

So, for the hotel, Círculo Mexicano, which was just inaugurated, we worked on the reuse [of a] Renaissance building and we aim to adapt to social, economic, and spatial circumstances (Image 10). The authorities only demanded that the original facade, and a huge wall that [separates] first two courtyards, be saved. We started by taking cues of the sites, ecclesiastical ties. Officially, this building belongs to the cathedral, it is just behind the cathedral at the city center, in Mexico. We wanted to question what luxury means right now and we wanted to respond with communal notions of silence, privacy, immediate contact with the elements and a rich austerity in textures (Image 11). The brick wall, the brick wall that divides the main courtyards into two courtyards, straddles openness and exclusivity with two large reserve patios (Image 12).

We aim that the rehabilitated building did the talking, revealing scars and beams, while strategically inserting new elements such as private internal smaller patios covered in pale cantera stone from Puebla (Image 13). [In the plan] you see the large two squares in the center and the smaller patios that we integrated (Image 14). Working in collaboration with local artisans and designers, we define the essential elements for this luxurious hotel in Mexico City’s historic center (Image 15). Under the understanding that we are all bodies interconnected and architecture is no different, we raise fundamental questions toward the discipline of architecture that fall in the notion of limit, typology, and program. We played around the typology of the hotel merged in the history of the house with a central courtyard typology. So instead of detaching different moments we worked with all its parts, creating a system of patios, increasing interiors and exteriors, mixing concepts of public and private, allowing us to think of the hotel as a continuous exterior environment (Image 16). Or, as an endless domestic landscape in this case defined by rooms, passive technologies, and objects where the luxury hotel is being redefined, where public and private are thresholds all along the exterior to its interior (Images 17 and 18). The room was understood as a blank canvas for the handcrafted materials where stone, steel, glass, [and] terrazos are merged with the original walls, freeing the space of unnecessary ornaments. Objects were defined as essential tools, as furniture and decoration at the same time, resembling the Shaker’s wooden work tradition.

If we question what the essential elements are in luxurious architecture, the courtyard was used as a system, an adjacent element in the definition of each room, as well as of the public restaurants and retails (Image 19). Subtracting functional parts along the building, the courtyard mediates the relationship between the public and private, connecting also with air, light, and becoming the extension of the view of the room. The possibility of such a relationship with an exterior space, and all that such a space provides, is what we thought as luxury.

Guayacán Pavillion (Casa Wabi)

Jorge:

Some reflections regarding the book The Ethics of Care of Carol Gilligan where she said that taking care of the body should always be in the beginning of oneself, but this, as she mentions, is selfish. Then, Gilligan proposes to have a sense of responsibility and to take care of others, relegating ourselves to the background. Even if that supposes self-sacrifice in exchange for the welfare of others, Gilligan’s final answer is more appropriate at this point than at any time: finding the balance between caring for oneself and caring for others. The reason for bringing this ideology is perhaps to read it in a different way, to reinterpret it to another scale where the one is the human race and the other is our relationship with other forms of life; in other words, the oneself here would be humanity, thus humanity would be the environment. 

I want to turn the lens to architecture again, architecture seen also as a body, understood as an embodiment. Then, we might start to rethink what does architecture touch and does not touch, what it relates to and where it withdraws from, because architecture should always be rethought, readdressed, to rethink preset architectural limits and urban classifications that were used to assure benefit in detriment of social rights even more in the lack of environmental rights. Perhaps, understanding architecture as a body could give us the possibility to see architecture caring for itself and also caring for others.  Through that we might give space to properly address other forms of living.

Some years ago we were invited to participate in a set of pavilions around Casa Wabi. Casa Wabi is an artistic cultural residence that is located on the Pacific coast of the state of Oaxaca, close to Puerto Escondido, and the main residence was designed by Tadao Ando. The set of pavilions, there was a clay pavilion that was designed by Alvaro Siza, there was also a chicken coop pavilion, designed by Kengo Kuma, and all the landscape around Casa Wabi was designed by Alberto Kalach. And recently, Solano Benítez, the next lecturer in your sequence, finished the compost pavilion.

In this cluster of pavilions, we were asked to design a pavilion for a specific tree that is called guayacán tree. Guayacán is an endangered species and it’s a tree found along the Mexican Pacific coast, mainly in hot climates. When we say that it’s an endangered species we’re not saying that it’s in risk of extinction, but a medium sized guayacán takes around 20 years to grow. Basically, what happens with these slow growing species is that if you start making use of them, you don’t have the time to regrow them, that’s why it’s protected. But to cultivate and work with these specific species in the laws of Mexico, it was necessary to establish a legal framework to obtain federal approval from the government. The project was framed within an Environmental Management Unit, a legal term called UMA, in Spanish Unidad de Manejo Ambiental, that gives you the permission and the allowance to cultivate and to work with the plant. After that we imagine architecture working as an agent mediating the relations between plants and humans interconnected with the soil and the plants exposed to the air and drastic weather. A space to nurture and observe the endangered specie of guayacán. The Guayacán Pavilion was thought of as a threshold, a space for mediation (Image 20). Inside it, plants are the first to take place. The plants in the project were kept at ground level, while human activity was pushed one meter below earth as an act of disarticulation Image 21). While such action gives a possibility to observe, touch, and care for the sprouts in a better position to do so. The depression on the land also concentrates the humidity that is emerging from the wet ground, creating an enhanced micro weather for the growing of the plants (Image 22). This threshold is marked by a flooded slab and a water deposit (Image 23). It’s a kind of fountain because it’s not a fountain, it’s just the expression of the water deposit that recognizes the intertwined relation of tree and water. The slab also provides the only place of shadow for the human workers and visitors (Image 24); we have to remember that in this part of the country, the main temperature during the day is about 85^oF. The water deposit and the slab work as the threshold to enter the pavilion, that is a place where the workers start working with the plants (Image 25). We call it a fountain because it’s just like a feast of the relation with water, and basically the rest of the space is just sun and air along the plantation base (Image 26). An empty space that evidences the transition between rains and droughts, where each place has tried to take care of those close to it (Images 27 and 28). Thus, we must extend our understanding of the others as well as our relationship to shared spaces.

Un lugar. Murales del territorio

How we have come to think or relate to our bodies or other bodies ought to open up our awareness. With that in mind, I would like to share with you this last project, one that reflects on spaces of confinements, on spaces of possibilities, and of promenades that invites the visitor to be aware of their body as it walks through them. The project offers a user and experiential response, consisting of activation of all the senses that accompany their movement. It is therefore an open exhibition. Open, in so far as it depends on the visitor’s own experience to make sense, and to be perceived in its entirety, in so far as it ends and closes interaction with the visitor. It is a place for each person, and it is a different place each time it is visited. To go through the installation, immerse in a succession of scales and voids, the vacuum and the large scale offered by the galleries, followed by the compression of the interior of the curved surfaces (Image 29), and this in turn is followed with the last void, limited orthogonal murals (Image 30). 

The exhibition Un lugar. Murales del territorio is an installation, in which we made use of the main pieces of the pavilion of Mexico at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2018, where on the one hand, with a desire to bring these representations to Mexico, and on the other hand, as an installation that invites a journey of introspection (Image 31). Once the curvature surfaces are accessed, the visitor becomes aware of their presence by its own reflection (image 32). At the moment, the subject can only look at himself in these mirrors and recognize himself as a wayfarer in the space between the curved and orthogonal surface. A space that emulates two phases of the human being, the rational and irrational, the first linked to Cartesian order and orthogonality, and the second ones, curved and bent to complexity (Image 33). The last threshold on the pavilion takes a visitor inside a contained space framed by the murals of the territory (Image 34). The two parallel murals delimit the orthogonal voids. Apparently the same, these two murals force the visitor to recognize the territory as their own, as part of themselves. In both, the territory of Mexico is naked for the visitor, and it does so through extruded orography and bathymetry (Image 35). Carved out of stone, the Mexican territory exhibited from materiality, more than from emptiness, showing its anthropomorphic nature through the tectonic dimension of the stone (Image 36). Therefore, all possible reflection on the territory is made starting from its geography and not its history, that is, the naked body of the land that it’s inhabited. In the opposite panel, there are carvings and empty fragments but only in those sections devastated by natural and anthropic forces evidencing, in a concrete and material way, the regions of extreme poverty, harmful transformations, or the inexorability of natural catastrophes that happened in the previous years. 

The exhibition attempts a journey towards the emission of a self-conscious subject in the geographical collectivity previously described by Humboldt: nature, climate, natural catastrophes, anthropomorphic wealth, and social and individual (Image 37). The objective knowledge of nature and its resources is intertwined with a subjective vision of social life. Since both dimensions are inseparable and exert permanent influence on one another. Thus, “A Place. Murals of Territory” is a serene journey from the individual to the collective.

Gabriela

Perhaps to conclude the reflections shared this morning, they are an invitation to think about the body and the bodies we inhabit, about the cause-effect of human impact on natural ecosystems, about the different scales that one body permeates into another. And it is also an invitation to break the limits of architecture, to comprehensively reprogram, reinterpret, and present typologies that give power and form on the political, the economical, and the environmental at large. With this in mind to be aware of the multiple scales on which our decisions can impact. 

Jorge:

We hope these reflections serve to embrace diversity when designing, that architecture can build ties of ethics and responsibility that annihilate archaic unquestioned patterns of thoughts, and that the focus in our practice is on building conditions that are rich in diversity and care for all species of bodies that hold life.

Finally, the last images that we added to the presentation are these images that were taken last week in the Guayacán Pavilion by the Casa Wabi organizers (image 39). And what we really love about seeing these images, and why we wanted to include them, is because it’s a place where the natural environment is starting to reclaim part of the intervention of the pavilion and start to really grow fast and wild beside the pavilion. It’s also a kind of conclusion of the last paragraph I just read, where the design is somehow trying to relate or communicate with environments. And the moment that the environment starts really speaking again and taking part of his place back, something happens that really starts to integrate everything (Image 40). So, we were really happy when we saw these images last week and we want to finish this brief conversation with [these images] (Image 41). 

Q&A

Your work recognizes context and natural forces to help create a balance between nature and the built environment. When using architecture to restore a more natural state of existence for life, what is your process to establish a harmonious relationship between nature and human life with a contemporary approach?

Jorge: 

That’s a tricky question because, obviously, when you try to think about the environment and think about architecture, probably, the best thing to do is not do anything, because if you want to be completely harmonious with the environment, I think, we need to stop constructing a lot of things. I will make an analogy here: it’s the same thing about food, because food is a really complex matter right now all around the world. To exist we need that, we have that necessity to create a relation with food that is healthier to the planet.  That doesn’t mean that to support the amount of people that now live on the planet is a healthier condition. But in architecture I do believe that it is somehow the same. We have a lot of necessities as societies, as humans, that are necessary for us to exist and to continue our evolution process here on this planet. So, we do understand that it is a matter of negotiation. For example, this project of the guayacán. We really like that at the end the [owners of Casa Wabi] commissioned us this specific pavilion. Previously they were thinking of a gallery or another kind of pavilion but, at the end when the idea of the guayacán started appearing as a possibility, we really liked that, because it’s a kind of project that instead of [requiring you to] create architecture that really starts to become something just to show of, it’s an architecture that really protects and enhances the species of the guayacán. And right now these guayacáns are growing on this line of beds and are distributed all along the Mexican coast and are being replanted by the government, by the people; if somebody is caught selling, or using these kind of trees, they are fined by the government, and normally the fines need to be paid by the replacing a lot of these specimens. It’s a way that this project is working more with nature than with humans. So these kinds of projects are in the middle ground.

But returning to the question, because I do believe that I opened it up a lot, [for] every project that we get in the office we make these kinds of questions, or try to make a negotiation of what each wants to really be built, and what things are necessary. And if we’re going to build something, how this building has a very conscious and strong relation with the land, or with the water, or with some other elements, trying to preserve and try to reduce the footprint of the architecture, to  the smallest as possible at least.

Gabriela

Adding to this response, I would think that, as written by Susan Sontag, there are still other forms of thinking, there is a thinking that we probably don’t know yet. I like to think that when we address contemporary issues, we’re thinking of building architectural realities. With this I mean that, instead of not doing anything, whatever we’re going to do or build, or also research and evidence–because we also believe that architecture has all the tools of representation and the possibilities to express and to make certain information that gets hidden in architecture and in construction evident. With this, I would like to invite everyone to address contemporary architecture through architectural realities. This means to press conflicts or urgency that affect typologies and societies at large.  We actually can do a lot and we actually can build a lot but knowing who is it [for] and why is it that we are building that, to be more critical when we’re actually suggesting anything.

About sites and limitations, what is the most difficult site you’ve worked with and what limitations did it create? What did the limitations give you in terms of creative ability?

Jorge: 

I would not say that it is the most complicated or difficult site, but we recently had a project that is kind of a challenge. In December, literally the 24th of December, one of our clients called us. The client is a huge mining company–it is the third largest mining company of the planet–and they asked us to participate in a remediation process in a piece of land in the north of Mexico, that is 35 hectares, that was previously, 100 years ago, something that in Spanish is jales [mine tailing], but it’s the residues of the of the mining process. These are huge pieces of land where all the contaminated deposits from the mining processes go out to the surface and start filling huge amounts of land. And in these kinds of places nothing grows, not a single tree. It’s a contaminated land, it’s very dusty, it goes to the air very easily and starts contaminating communities. They asked us to work with them in this remediation process. They gave us a budget that was completely ridiculous, and also gave us a frame of time of eight months to finish, not the project, the construction of the remediation project. Two weeks after that, we made an appointment with them on the site, with the huge machinery, and tractors, and things. Because they are a mining company, they have a lot of machinery, so they just put it on the land, put a hundred workers there, literally, saying “what do we do here, we have eight months, we need to start now.” For us there were two simple strategies. One was to eliminate the pollution by air, and that was to create the most quick and fast covering of the surface, so we make 20 centimeters covering of rocks with more organic material on the surface. And the second one was to prevent the contamination through the drainage, [because] when it rains that material goes to the ground.  So, we did a strategic hydrologic project where we confined and reshaped somehow the land to articulate the places where the floods run through with more solid materials, with rock, and with sediment containment that start retaining these materials and keeping it on the site. So, right now it’s under construction, we have been reshaping all the land through the last month. It was complex, because these are kind of questions that again, it’s something that has to enhance nature. It has already been damaged and there’s a possibility to do something good. We are not landscape architects, we are not hydrologists, we’re just architects trying to bring ideas to the table.

Gabriela

But we do work with an interdisciplinary approach, we understand that we were asked to work in this because of the way we can manage the larger team, understand, and through design approaches, direct different specialties that could be more specific in terms of: what is it that the organic soil needs to contain; how is it that landscape infrastructures needs to be done in order to have these possibility of being infrastructures today, but that at some point nature takes over these infrastructures and operates on its own. We’re the operator that is pulling or articulating all these threads. We’ve never done this before but it probably goes back to the first question, what are contemporary conditions that we could be doing? And it’s to take these kinds of opportunities in a very responsible and committed way. And also to take risks. If we’re doing the work through research and being critical, and with the responsibility that we are able to handle, by doing this, we have to explore and even if we fail in the effort of doing it we’re still learning. Like architecture it’s a continuum process and there [are] not final pieces and the last edits; I like to think that we’re all weaving or creating this work together, so whatever we tried to do to remediate someone will continue from there or take it over from that point. That’s definitely been a huge challenge.

I was also going to say that another challenge are these talks or presentations where we have to articulate what is it that we do on our daily basis, because we’re so immersed in the work that is so, sometimes forget to go back to the work and reflect on what is it that we’re learning.  Also, these invitations that we really enjoy and take them seriously as another exercise of rethinking and articulating the line of thought, or of work, or of questions. Those are also tough exercises because we like to think that architecture is only what gets built, but it’s everything that we’re thinking with the projection of being built or not.

Scaling down just a little bit, rather than landscape back to the building scale, what were the challenges with working with a 19th century building for Círculo Mexicano, and what was the process like working with the parts of the structure that you had to preserve?

Jorge

I think that in that particular project, something that we really loved to do, is not our relationship with the building, but our relationship through the institution that preserves the building, and from there to the building. Because, obviously the institution of preservation in Mexico is a huge institution, it’s called the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia. In Mexico, we have a lot of history of previous [periods], not just colonial buildings, but also pre-Hispanic buildings. So, it’s a really heavy institution, it has a lot of presence all around the country, and it has a lot of power also, so you have to deal with them. But to go with them, and leave them behind just from the side of the institution, and the heaviness of that, and start talking with them, with the people that really have a lot of knowledge about these historic buildings, and trying to have these conversations. For example, there was a lot of conversation that, in my perspective, as an architect this wall doesn’t have value and these are my reasons why this wall doesn’t have value. But they put on the table different arguments that for them, as an institution, and for what they preserve and what they represent, it’s important to preserve them. And it’s not just a no, but it’s a no with some arguments. That process was really beautiful for us because, again, there was a learning process in it, because we have a really reduced mind in the way we approach to historic buildings for in the moment you start talking with them you learn a lot, and you start hearing some arguments that make a lot of sense, and that’s the reason why you should preserve that kind of history. It’s a way to understand a different history, to understand how differently you see just a brick wall that is not a beautiful wall, but it’s important to have it. So, I think that was the challenge.

Gabriela

I remember the first time we visited the space, we said “imagine we should get rid of that wall and to actually have like this long patio that connects everything.” And we were really keen on getting rid of that wall because it’s a wall of different materials and it’s not materials that we cannot find today, it’s brick. So, we were really keen into getting rid of that wall, but then going back to the question of what does this limit add? It adds a lot, because then, our focus withdraws from the idea of the huge patio and it goes more into creating stories. And from then we try to move on to think what are the things that are intangible within preserving a space. And with that we talk more about doing something with the patio, and the idea of the typology of a patio, then why not instead of creating this huge patio, let’s create other smaller patios, so that every time you circulate through the building you get a sense into this typology, not only through the typology of the central courtyard, but now that typology of a new courtyard within the main typology of the courtyard. We ended up transcending the idea of interacting or intervening in the patio through providing other patios. And that’s something that we ended up working a lot, how to change the idea of a typology, of the limits of the typology and of the program.  We usually understand a hotel with a certain notion of what the program should add, and to play with those concepts that we’re usually working in architecture, how to rethink typology, to rethink limits, and to rethink the program that we sometimes think are established.

Your choice of materials in these projects is beautiful.  Could you elaborate on the process of working with materials and how you go about selecting materials to work with?

Gabriela:

Well, we’ve always thought about materiality as a field of study and probably something parallel to architecture. Going back to the idea of stories, the material has its own story. I’m going to explain this with an example. We did a pavilion, well, we call it a pavilion, but it was a mezcal factory, and we designed the whole project with brick. We thought of the project with brick because we saw brick in the context and we thought it was a warm and a nice material and something that also gets burned in the process similar to how the mezcal gets burned, and it was the right material for this building. Then during the construction of the mezcal pavilion, when we started to do the excavations for the foundations, [we found] all the earth from distilled mezcal. The owners of the space, a family that lives in Matatlán, a really small town that pretty much dedicates their lives to producing mezcal, the whole town, so they said “what is it that we’re going to do with the earth?” And we were, “well it’s clear that it’s no longer useful, it has a lot of mezcal materials and particles, so it’s not an earth that we can use for the landscape.” And they were very concerned with what the earth already carried, the centuries of distilling the beverage and the heritage was already in that earth. 

So we stopped the construction, and it was a period of uncertainty with us, and then at the end we ended up using this earth, we did this thick rammed earth walls that frames the main courtyard of this space. We learned a lot in terms of heritage, we [are] more used to getting rid of things that no longer serve the purpose, we are more familiarized with getting rid of things and putting the value back to the earth that carries memories and stories. So the idea of reusing this earth that has been there for centuries, it gave us a lesson, where do we put the value, or why is it that we do when we think we approach materiality. So our whole idea of using the brick as an element that has been burned, similar to the process of the mezcal, was just a story that we were adding to the project, but it was more rich to use the earth that was already there. So, the materiality of the pavilion at the end, wasn’t really something that we decided at first, it was something that was built in the process.

I think materiality in terms of things, we usually put our decisions more in structure. And that the structure of the building is the one that stands the most, and then materials are something that enrich that history, or that works in relation with the structure, or something, as in this project, that adds to the stories, or the richness of a legacy. And maybe that’s our approach. We’re also interested in making the materials work, not just to be added as a facade and as an element of temperature or warmness to the building, but also something that we make the materials work or sustain on their own to add to the whole structure.

I’m very excited that you showed the Guayacán project because it’s one of my favorite ones.  I think that in this one there’s this blurring between architecture and landscape, something that I have seen in other of your projects, some of your houses in particular. Even in projects within Mexico City. So, from an urban setting to even a setting that is rural I see that blurring. Having read a bit about your work and this idea of looking at what has been done prior to you; I wanted to see if you thought that understanding pre-Hispanic architecture and their approach to site and material has, in some ways, informed your work or your sensibility.

Jorge: 

I think we could say that pre-Hispanic architecture in our experience is really present in the influence of the work that we do. In the early years of practice we used to have a lot of references, basically, most of the projects of pre-Hispanic buildings that we have visited, that we have studied, that we have reviewed its placements, its relations with the context. So it’s really, really present, despite the materiality. Recently, maybe we haven’t used that reference much more because somehow we have realized that it’s already inside us, it’s already in a way of thinking. We always look back to some of the architecture that we do, and they look like some kind of  ruins in some kind of a way because how the weather and the  vegetation is taking [over] them. So, I think there’s something inside it that is very much embedded in the process that we’re thinking about. But I think it’s always present, somehow the heaviness [weight] of that heritage of Mexican architecture is really impossible to erase. And not just because of the existing pre-Hispanic architecture that we have in the country, but also because that architecture has influenced not just ours, but huge generations of architects, thinkers, writers, painters, so we see that influence everywhere. Every time that we go to the National University in Mexico City, which is a modern project of very different architects, you always have that image of pre-Hispanic architecture influencing modern architecture. It’s a kind of continuum. Obviously, we have that really, really embedded in all of our process. For example, it’s really strange that in pre-Hispanic architecture to have presence of interior spaces, for example, and there are really few chambers that are preserved. But the few ones that are preserved, or the few contained spaces that could be understood more like interior spaces, they’re always in our table of discussion. So, every time we’re doing a project we bring them to the table and say “oh it’s like this space that it’s the…” We have a favorite, one that is the courtyards of Mitla that are really strange spaces, really narrow spaces, and we love them, and every time that we can we put them on the table, and we always try to do something like the patios of Mitla because they are beautiful. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a building, or if it’s a house, or if it’s a park, we want to do something with the patios of Mitla. And it’s like that, it’s always there and we really felt really grateful that we have that heritage in our practice.

On the other end of the spectrum, you showed in the hotel project, the railing that you referenced shaker craft. Are you involved in designing even the smallest scale, like the chair on the wall, for a project like that?

Jorge:

No. Something that we did when we were working with Círculo Mexicano, we tried to take a step back and try to do architecture, like a framework or just a canvas so that other specialists could get into the process. But somehow we start to collaborate with them in the process and, for example, all the chairs and everything that was placed on the walls, we work with La Metropolitana, an incredible young team.

Gabriela:

Well our age, super young

Jorge:

And a successful company, and the work is beautiful and we were really lucky to work with them. But they understand our approach and we have a lot of talks with them and we managed to do a really, really good collaboration.

Gabriela:

Especially on this project that we visited a lot of hotels, and sometimes it’s like architects do the architecture and then the interior designers arrive and they provide a different environment or atmosphere to the space. So, with the clients we addressed that the architecture was already the interior design, and for example, the beds were part of the floor, the floor elevates from the zero level to one feet. And then the wall extrudes to provide this possibility of the side bed table. We suggested that through architecture everything would get integrated, and even the furniture or the ornaments would have to work within the relationship of the space. We had this idea that we didn’t want any ordinary chair, not  like to bring a designer’s chair, so we suggested to work with this firm, that it’s called La Metropolitana, and pretty much they designed the chair, we just said, we want a chair with  these characteristics and the hotel  is re-questioning the idea of luxury so if we’re going to hang something we’d rather hang the chair than a huge painting. And they  really understood everything, and they even suggested other additions like a candle element that is also hung in these [wood] elements of the wall. So there’s always a candle that the people in the hotel light it with a match. It’s really re-questioning what are the essentials and how objects, or ornaments could also be thought of as luxury in terms of like an ornament that is also used. So, the chair is hung, or the candles, or even an umbrella that ‘s part of the whole setting. Even the television it’s , where the television goes, or the closets. Everything tries to be part, or complement the whole space.

Jorge:

Something that was really interesting in the process is that we bring to the table reflections, for example, the ones brought from the question on luxury from Pier Vittorio Aureli’s book of Less is Enough. And from there we have that reference of the image of the ‘Co-op Zimmer’ by Hannes Meyer that it’s this really beautiful image of a small room that has this hanging chair, but something really architectural. So we bring to the table these architectural ideas and architectural history reflections and from there they took that, and that’s why it was a really incredible collaboration. They put on the table the shaker theme and how there’s this kind of a religious sect that has a hand craft of woodwork that it’s really beautiful and how they use these furniture that it’s kind of utilitarian for their religious practices, but also for the use of the space and they hang it on the roof. So everything starts to get mixed from the architectural reflections, and books that we have read and other things, and that was really beautiful.

Gabriela: 

And what happened, the same with the terrazos, we wanted something and then the artisan that works with the terrazos suggested an additional stone in it, and it made sense. So it’s always a collaboration, where we set the mood and the main intentions, and then we choose with whom to collaborate in order to enrich those ideas.

What was the driving force that inspired the mining company’s interest in reclaiming the land? Was it economic pressure, public pressure, government pressure?

Gabriela:

All of the above.

Jorge:

The part of the office that we worked with is the Office for Sustainable Development. We have been working with them since maybe eight years now, so there is a long history with them. One thing that it’s incredible is that this mining company has a lot of resources, but a lot of resources is really, really, really, a lot of resources. But also, the project that we have working with them they had to remind us, all the benefits that we get from mining. For example, to the remind us that that we cannot have phones or computers, that we cannot be having this zoom interview if mining does not exist, so everything is connected to that. But to remind us as an architect how all this technology and everything that we work with today in the contemporary life is making all this damage, also. And this company has a lot of budget dedicated to try to reduce the damage, or to try to make this kind of remediation. Something that is interesting is that these residues is not [from] a mine that it’s from them, it’s a mine that is closed from the last 80 years. It was an American mine that was just left there, but it’s in a community that it’s close to them. Most mining companies have these remediation budgets but they decide to invest money in something that it’s not a damaged from them, just to benefit a community. And obviously in these kind of projects there’s a lot of ways to analyze them because it’s to check boxes in political terms, it’s to check boxes for a lot of medals that they can hang in their portfolios, but I do believe that that doesn’t matter, because the motive at the end is how the team that is working below is trying to make things in the right way. And if there’s budget there to make remediation, let’s use that budget to make remediation, let’s work with that and try to solve those kind of clues. 

One of the jales, the largest of the world, maybe, is in one of their mines that is in Cananea–you can see it from space, it’s huge the amount of damage that they do–and they’re already started planning the close of that project, that will be in five years. And when they invite us to this one, that is not part of the of the project of their mining damages, the other one is, and we’re starting to have conversations with them of what are we going to do with that. Because, this one of the 35 hectares is really nothing compared to the huge problem that you will have in five years. And they already have millions, and millions, and millions of dollars already prepared to do that process of remediation because it’s an obligation to have the concession have a mining, you have to have that budget and you can to prove it to the government that you have it saved, so you can when you finish takes the exploitation, you do the remediation. To start just thinking of what will happen in those five years is incredible to have that and to see it in front and maybe there’s a lot of things that you can do.

Gabriela

In a more optimistic way, the fact that we’re working with this landscape that eventually the information, not that we’re going to do the new remediation, but  this information could  set certain decisions is what we are committed to providing or doing a file or something more elaborated in order to serve to avoid certain decisions or  to question how this operates. Obviously we’re not going to change anything in terms of the mine company, but we could  raise those questions, and raise those possibilities, and because it’s just paperwork, we can suggest as much as we want there for the future operation and maybe at some point this permeates. It’s about what we said before, Jorge was saying, they do check boxes with which medals they can hang. But it’s also about knowing that everyone one of us it’s  leaving a footprint in this planet, how is it that we  leave the less big footprint, or try to be more conscious with our own footprint in the ways we live. And we really like this frase, as I already said before, to actually rethink the unthinkable or the unknown when we approach architecture. I’m not sure if it’s our responsibility also, but it’s our field of operation, that uncertainty and that unknownness it’s something that we’re always working with, so how do we use it in our advantage to remediate, because we’re all extracting a lot of resources, or taking advantage of the world we live in.

Anyway, thank you a lot for these conversations and thank you for all the questions.

Patricia Morgado:

I just wanted to thank you, gracias, for sharing your work, and also for this wonderful conversation. I think this question and answer part of the lecture has been extremely rich and fantastic for our students and for our professional community.  So, muchas gracias.

David Hill: 

 I would like to add my thanks Jorge and Gabriela. Thank you so much for joining us today from afar.

We’ve enjoyed learning a lot more about your work, and I agree with Patricia that the question and answer period has been really remarkable. I also want to thank Patricia for all the work that you’ve done to make this lecture possible, and of course, the series within a series.

And last but not least, it’s just a great joy to see Paul Tesar here with us. Thank you, Paul for joining us, thank you so much for providing for the school and this lecture series, and thank you all for attending today.

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