Spaces in Spaces, LIGA
Mexico City, Mexico
2014
Exhibition as guest studio in the 14th edition of Liga-Espacio para Arquitectura in Mexico City. A reflection on space, multiscalarity, matter and life as a collection of everyday events.
The binational practice MAPA employs a strategy to make the gallery space itself present and tangible by means of lattice of wooden posts. Recalling a hypostyle hall, this distribution of contiguous elements creates an intensified experience of the space, generating orthogonal and diagonal views through the obstacles.
Each of these vertical columns has also been cut into and houses a scale model of a scene from everyday life. This assembly of small spaces within the space presents architecture as a discipline in which material and life come together.
The visitor’s exploration activates the space, creating personal encounters between the individual and the activities represented, as well as a fragmented reading of the visitor in the space—a recurring strategy in MAPA’s work.
Taken as a whole, the multiple everyday scenes and the mathematical repetition of the wooden posts generate a symbiosis between life and material, between individual scenes and the collective formed by the polis, and between the particular and the generic.
LIGA opened its doors in May 2011 as an avant-garde and pioneering proposal in Mexico, establishing itself as an exhibition platform focused on promoting the exchange of ideas and research on contemporary architecture, focusing on the emerging practice of Latin America. It is a meeting space for the creation of community between professionals and interested parties through its exhibition projects and conferences. Founded by the architecture studio PRODUCTORA in collaboration with Ruth Estévez.
Project team: Luciano Andrades, Matías Carballal, Rochelle Castro, Andres Gobba, Mauricio Lopez, Silvio Machado, Diego Morera, Elisa de Sierra, Daniel Espinoza, Alexis Arbelo, Pablo Courreges, Emilliano Lago, Aldo Lanzi, Isabella Madureira, Maurício Muller, Camilla Pereira.
Organization: Liga - Espacio para Arquitectura, DF
Curatorial Texts: Angelo Bucci y Diego Capandeguy
Photography: Luis Gallardo