Architects respond to excess and demolition at Mexico City art week reuse exhibition
Fifteen international architecture studios have created installations from reused building materials and other found objects for an exhibition at artspace Laguna during Mexico City art week.
Located fittingly in Laguna, a factory that was transformed into a space for artists by architecture studio Productora, the Reuse: Architectures of Almost Nothing exhibition featured installations made founds objects such as windshields, tarps, barrels, and even a complete automobile.
It "brings together an international group of practices that explore adaptive reuse and low-cost construction as critical positions in response to excess and demolition," according to Laguna.
The exhibition was curated by Laguna's curatorial director María Muñoz and New York-based architect and educator Edgar Rodríguez and based off Rodríguez's essay Almost Nothing, which lays out a theoretical call for reuse, preservation and redefinition.
Otherwise, the curators said they did not foist many constraints on the participating architects.
"We asked them to design what we're calling an architectural accessory," Rodríguez told Dezeen. "There were no constraints."
The majority of the works involved took a similar approach. They took "one object from the world and then resignified it through its redeployment," said Rodríguez.
Most of the exhibition was arranged on the second level of the lofty former factory, with two installations on the ground floor and two on the rooftop.
On the ground floor, a full car blocked off by a metal railing to create a bench by Sam Chermayeff Office sits next to Laguna's miniature cafe, while Berlin-based studio B+ created an artful installation of hanging fabric and stacked rocks in an indoor ground-level exhibition space.
Mexico studio Ex-Soup, which has gained a lot of attention in recent years, created a dome from the windshields of Volkswagen Beetles in collaboration with Spanish studio Parabase.
Chilean studio Fail used an aggregate of found material to create a long table top supported by elements reused from bookshelves, with a light protruding at one end.
Suspended from the rafters was a large metal frame by Equipo de 322A, recontexualised with lights to become a chandelier.
Japanese studio Bangkok Tokyo took barrels, tubing, and brick, suspended them on the thing metal legs – in reference to a Japanese dining style where food is offered on toothpicks, thus elevating the objects in two senses.
Other objects on this main exhibition floor included a shelter by TodoEverything Estudio made from a tarp and ratchet straps and a series of local buildings mocked up in miniature by Switzerland's Bessire Winter.
On the rooftop, Salazarsequeromedina created a billboard-like installation of steel and tyres with the word REUSO suspended at the top, acting as a sort of beacon for the exhibition in general.
Elsewhere, 8000 Agency created an array of blue motels of various debris objects, which popped against the red tile of the roof.
For Rodríguez, the exhibition was unified by the clarity of construction of many of the pieces, where the parts can be seen while the whole, reconstructed object is clear.
"They highlight the particle, the element, the part," he said.
"And I think that attitude unites them. You can really read each element and each part that constitutes them."
Other participating studios included Davidson Rafailidis, APRDELESP, ANY, Pihlmann Architects and 51N4E. Emilio Pérez carried out the graphic design.
Mexico City art week takes full advantage of the city's architectural legacy, with an exhibition hosted in iconic buildings, such as Sabine Marcelis's collaboration with CC-Tapis in ahouse by architect Agustín Hernández.
Lanza Atelier, designers of this year's Serpentine Pavilion, put on a show of architectural furniture at AGO Projects.
The photography is by Arturo Arrieta and Samara Makdissy.
Reuse is on show at Laguna from 3 to 8 February. For more global exhibitions in architecture and design, visit Dezeen Events Guide.
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