Archinect - The Building of Thought

(Not so new) News: My thesis.

2011-11-30T23:48:57-05:00

Hey there! It's been quite a while since I posted an entry to this blog.
So much so that I am now graduated from architecture. I would like to tell you about my thesis.

I presented a dissertation on the possibilities of installation art as a medium for social experimentation. This research explored the relevance of installation art, site-specific art and other related strategies, in contemporary architectural practice. I argue for the need of tools to address social conditions in space, and the potential of introducing these tools from art.

The dissertation is structured in three parts. First, I examine philosophical views of space as a social phenomenon, and compare them to the architectural conception of space set forth during Modernism. This evidences the absence of a profound understanding of the social dimension of space in architectural strategies and mechanisms.

The second part consists of an extensive analysis of spatial manifestations in art, guided by the developm...

MUAC - UNAM's new museum of contemporary art

2009-08-28T21:13:44-04:00

Hey there! It's been quite a while, so I figured I should talk about what I was up to last semester. I had no studio. Instead, I had electives, and did an internship (of sorts) at UNAM's new museum of contemporary art.
The electives I took were Philosophy and Architecture, Urban Renewal, Recycling of Urban-Architectural Structures, and Architecture and Media.

Now this new museum opened last November, and it's developing quite impressively. The building is by mexican architect Teodoro González de León and took about two years to complete. If you ask me, I don't like it at all...

This is the official web site, and you can check some of the original renders here.
I KNOW, resemblance to a certain japanese museum is no coincidence.

This building was very controversial, because it is quite aggressive to context (70's mexican brutalism buildings), was very expensive, and the starchitect was chosen single-handedly. So uncommon in our profession, right?

The first exhibitions included w...

Arquine Congress @ Mexico City

2009-03-18T02:35:04-04:00

Hey! I know I've been away for quite a while. I wanted to post about this great congress we had last week. I'll write about my life and school further on...

There was this congress last week, organised by this magazine called Arquine (www.arquine.com), which is quite good and is distributed in many countries in Latin America. It was a three-day congress and it focused on the relationships between architecture and art. It was very good, we had the following lecturers:

First Day:
Aaron Betsky
Monika Sosnowska
Ascan Mergenthaler (from Herzog & De Meuron)
Ben Aranda (from Aranda/Lash)
David Adjaye

Second Day:
James Turrell
Paola Antonelli (Architecture and Design Curator at MoMA)
Pezo von Ellrichshausen
Enric Ruiz Geli

Third Day:
Emilio Tuñón (From Mansilla + Tuñón)
Gabriel Orozco (a very well-known mexican artist)
Teodoro González de León
Niels Peter Flint
Mirko Zardini

I personally loved Betsky (who doesn't), and in general it was really interesting, how each one of ...

Bamboo Paraboloids

2008-10-14T19:02:30-04:00

Hey there!
I've been gone for a while, but I wanted to share with you these pics I took today.
As part of a seminar/workshop about sustainability and building with bamboo, three bamboo paraboloids were built at the main courtyard (these will be used for a project in Veracruz, near the Gulf of Mexico).

This is the bamboo, a native species called guadua angustifolia.

It's real thick!

A simple joint.

Looking good...

One ready, two to go...

There!
All three of them done in about 5 hours.

PS:
They joined them yesterday!!!

My semester so far

2008-09-24T20:48:00-04:00

Hi there!
Ok, I have a confession to make...
I have no studio this semester.

I know, I know, how could I commit such a crime, how is it possible to have a semester without studio, etc.

The fact is that I have been doing great in the studios for 3 years now, but not that great in the other subjects. I was beginning to fall a bit behind with the obligatory subjects, so I really wanted to catch up, and maybe raise my grades a bit.

I also wanted to take a break from projects, as I began to feel I was only producing stuff automatically; I really felt I needed to take some distance from that.

So right now I'm only taking six subjects (yeah, only six: in third semester I had eleven), I'm taking all of the mandatory subjects left for me. Which is good because then come all electives, which are very nice!

Maybe I and some friends will help a teacher of ours in a competition for a tower in Dubai, but that's a story I'll be posting later as it develops...

Sooo the subjects I'm taking r...

AA Summer School

2008-09-11T22:09:02-04:00

Hey there!
Ok so september 15 is the anniversary of Independece here in Mexico, so we have a weekend off!! I'm thinking of going to the beach, let's see what comes up...

I would like to share with you what I did this summer. This last summer I went to the AA Summer School. It was really awesome.
The central theme was what is going to happen with cities, or how will cities come to an end? So we focused on London and imagined catastrophic scenarios and thought about how the city and architecture would be like in the future.

So we split up into units and each of them had a more specific agenda. I worked with a sound artist, a film artist and a landscape-architect-turned-sound-artist. It was very interesting, as they showed us how the sonic environment is much more important than we architects think. Obviously, the city is very loud and noisy, but we just have become used to it.

We first learned to handle different types of microphones, such as contact and binaural mics, as well as...

Some pics of UNAM

2008-09-06T22:06:06-04:00

Here you go, some photos of UNAM and the Faculty of Architecture.

Central Library:

The Rector's building:

Central Esplanade:

Faculty of Science:

Central Library again:

Faculty of Architecture:

The Building of Thought

2008-09-02T19:32:49-04:00

Hello there!

As this is my first entry, I should start from the beginning. I'm Gabriel, 22, studying 4th year of architecture at the Faculty of Architecture, UNAM, Mexico City.

I think it is quite a good school, although it could use some more resources (there are about 600 students in each year, and it's a public school; you do the math...) and maybe some update on contemporary architectural thinking.

The architecture program takes 5 yrs (10 semesters). You have the studio, so to speak, which includes building, research, and for the first years drawing. Then you have the mandatory subjects (history, theory, structural systems, urban and environmental design, etc). And then, from the 3rd year on, you get electives (and there are plenty of options).

Appart from that you have to do social service at some point, and during the final year you do a professional practice. The final year is really the thesis project year.

So the Faculty is divided into 16 ateliers (or workshops, if...