The Arquine Conference emerges in response to a growing demand to disseminate, reflect on and exchange experiences at a national and international level. From the outset it was conceived as a showcase for the most outstanding new concepts, theories, ideas, projects and built works. In previous years the conference has established itself as an event that transcends national boundaries and opens a window onto the creative universe of architecture in Latin America. As an occasion to reflect on their foundations, the conference turns the historic centre of Mexico City into a hub for design and architecture. Speakers at previous conferences have included designers, architects and critics such as: Zaha Hadid, Sou Fujimoto, Alejandro Zaera-Polo, Bjarke Ingels, Winy Maas | MVRDV, Terence Riley, Carme Pinós, Aaron Betsky, Thomas Heatherwick, RCR Arquitectes–Aranda, Pigem i Vilalta, Wiel Arets, Peter Eisenman, Benedetta Tagliabue, Deyan Sudjic, Alejandro Aravena and Humberto and Fernando Campana.
The Metropolitan Theater is this year's conference venue. More than a series of talks, the Arquine Conference seeks to be an experience, an exchange of positions and projects from different perspectives, partaken by professionals, students and others interested in architectural culture. The days before and after the conference are filled with intense cultural activities that complement the architectural foundation, thus redefining the narrow line that separates it from other disciplines and generating points of intersection and construction in space.
Arquine first emerged 15 years ago as a quarterly magazine. Since then it has established itself as the leading multi-platform provider of cultural content relating to architecture in Latin America. Each year it organizes an international conference on architecture, a competition, a masters course (in association with the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and the Universidad Iberoamericana), while producing radio and television programs (in association with Canal 22) and on-line content, as well as publishing over 20 books per year on architecture, art, design and the city.
Architects could never explain space. When we think about space, we have only looked at its containers. As if space itself is invisible.
—Rem Koolhaas
History has granted architecture the role of dividing up space. It manifests itself in providing lodging and orienting humankind, who inhabits this fragmented whole we call space and which is interwoven with time at a tacit and essential level.
We live in space, in these spaces, in these cities, in these fields, in these corridors, in these gardens. It is plain to see. And yet, it is not possible to quantify space or give shape to it: it is extension and connection, fact and certainty through time and movement. Space may be travelled through and narrated, experienced and actuated. Space contains and is contained, situates and signifies.
The problem isn't so much to find out how we have reached this point, but simply to recognize that we have reached it, that we are here. There isn't one space, a beautiful space round about, a beautiful space all around us, there's a whole lot of small bits of space…
—George Perec
Speakers:
David Chipperfield | David Chipperfield Architects
David Chipperfield (London, 1953) graduated from the Architectural Association in 1977. He founded his practice in 1985, and it currently has offices in London, Berlin, Milan and Shanghai. His work is notable for cultural infrastructure projects such as the River & Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames, the Neues Museum in Berlin, the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, the Museum of Modern Literature in Marbach, the Design Museum in London, the Turner Contemporary in Kent and the Museo Fundación/Colección Jumex in Mexico City. In 2011 he won the Mies van der Rohe Prize and in 2012 he curated the 13th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale | Common Ground.
Yoshiharu Tsukamoto | Atelier Bow Wow
Yoshiharu Tsukamoto (Kanagawa, 1965) studied at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the Paris School of Architecture. In 1992 he set up his studio in Tokyo in association with Momoyo Kaijima (Tokyo, 1969). Together, as Atelier Bow Wow, they have won acclaim for their domestic and cultural architecture based on research and careful analysis, exploring the conditions for architecture in terms of its urban context, with projects including Sway House, Bokutei, Tower Machiya, Global Center, Split Machiya, BMW Guggenheim Lab, Miyashita Park and Izu Book Café.
Hans Ulrich Obrist | Serpentine Gallery
Hans Ulrich Obrist (Zürich, 1968) is a curator, critic and contemporary art historian. The co-director of the Serpentine Gallery in London, since 1991 he has curated over 250 exhibitions, and contributed to over 200 books and publications, including Rem Koolhaas. Conversations with Hans Ulrich Obrist, A Brief History of Curating, Project Japan: Metabolism Talks with Rem Koolhaas, Ai Wei Wei Speaks, along with two volumes of his selected interviews. In 2011, Obrist was awarded both the Bard College Award for Curatorial Excellence and the Swiss Institute Honoree Award.
Denise Scott Brown | Venturi Scott Brown and Associates
Denise Scott Brown (Nkana, 1931) a graduate of the Architectural Association in London, is an urbanist and professor who is well-known for her contributions to theoretical research into architecture and the city. With her husband and collaborator, Robert Venturi she embarked on a critique of modern architecture (Venturi Scott Brown Associates) that led them to develop alternative strategies for urban design in the 1960s and 1970s. Their book Learning from Las Vegas explored symbolism in architecture and its perception and legibility.
Saskia Sassen
Saskia Sassen (The Hague, 1949) graduated from Colombia University as a sociologist specializing in urban planning. She is currently visiting professor at the London School of Economics. She grained worldwide recognition for her book The Global City (1991), the first of eleven she has published to date. Her research focuses on the social, economic and political dimensions of globalization, immigration, global cities (cities and terrorism), new technologies and the changes in the liberal nation state resulting from current global conditions.
Roman Delugan | Delugan Meissl Associated Architects
Roman Delugan (Merano, 1963) is a graduate of the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. In 1993 he founded Delugan Meissl with Elke Meissl (Austria), which in 2004 became Delugan Meissl Associated Architects. His work is based on avoiding reducing architecture to a hermetic language of connections with its surroundings on the basis of rigorous processes to address the presence and perceptions of users, breaking with the conventional order of sequences and connections. Recent notable projects include the Eye Film Institute in Amsterdam and the Festival Hall in Tyrol, Austria.
Michel Rojkind | rojkindarquitectos
Michel Rojkind (Mexico City, 1969) founded rojkindarquitectos in 2002, now in partnership with Gerardo Salinas (Mexico City, 1968), with the aim of seeking new directions in architectural practice. He was selected as one New York's Emerging Voices, named by the magazine Negocios ProMéxico as one of 50 Mexican Names on the Global Creative Scene and by the magazine Wallpaper as one of the 150 creatives who have had an impact on the world in the last 15 years. His work includes the Nestlé Museum of Chocolate in Toluca, the Nestlé Laboratories in Queretaro and the National Cinematheque of the 21st Century in Mexico City.
Kersten Geers | OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen
Kersten Geers (Ghent, 1975) established his practice together with David Van Severen (Ghent, 1978) in 2002. Both are graduates of the University of Ghent and subsequently of the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid. Geers worked at firms such as Maxwan and Neutelings Riedijk, and currently teaches at the University of Ghent and at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio. His projects include Summer House, Bridge, XPO, Computer Shop and After de Party for the Belgian Pavilion at the 2008 International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale.
Alfredo Brillembourg | Urban-Think Tank
Alfredo Brillembourg (New York, 1961) graduated from Columbia University in 1984 and the Universidad Central de Venezuela in 1992. With Humbert Klumpner (Salzburg, 1965) he founded Urban-Think Tank (U-TT), based in Caracas. Their work is based on the theory and practice of architecture and urban planning in the global context, with a focus on informal city developments. Projects in Caracas include the Metro Cable, the Complejo Cementerio Católico and the FAVA School of autistic children. In 2012 they won the Golden Lion at the 13th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale for the controversial Torre de David/Gran Horizonte installation.
Peter Greenaway
Peter Greenaway (Newport, 1942) is a filmmaker and audiovisual artist. Influenced by Renaissance and Baroque art, he studied at Walthamstow College of Art where he specialized in painting and sculpture. His most outstanding films include The Falls (1988), The Draughtsman's Contract (1982), A Zed & Two Noughts (1985), The Belly of an Architect (1987), Drowning by Numbers (1988), and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989). Greenaway has a restless attitude with regard to the failures and opportunities of cinema, and his works delve into the artistic exploration of the relationship between human beings, audiovisual media and space.
Andrés Jaque
Andrés Jaque (Madrid, 1971) graduated from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid in 1998, and was awarded the Tessenow Stipendiat from the Alfred Toepfer Stiftung FVS the same year, enabling him to move to Berlin and Dresden as a resident researcher with the foundation until 2000. That year he set up the studio Andrés Jaque Arquitectos. His work has been shown at the Venice Biennale and the Gwangju Biennale, as well as the Schweizerisches Architekturmuseum in Basel, the Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine in Paris, and the Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, IVAM. This year he exhibited Phantom. Mies as Rendered Society at the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion in Barcelona.
Manuel Delgado
Manuel Delgado (Barcelona, 1956) is a Catalan anthropologist and writer with a BA in Art History and PhD in Anthropology from the Universidad de Barcelona. He is a member of the research group on the Ethnography of Public Spaces at the Catalan Institute of Anthropology. He was awarded the Anagram Essay Prize for his book The Political Animal, which examines the organization of society in relation to socio-spatial relationships.
Paolo Portoghesi
Paolo Portoghesi (Rome, 1931) is one of the leading experts on the Roman Baroque and the work of Borromini. A critic, architect and professor at "La Sapienza" University in Roma with a chair in Geoarchitecture, Portoghesi built the Rome Central Mosque, restored a village near Pisa, Treja, and the churches of the Virgin of Peace in Terni and of the Holy Family in Salerno. His books include Borromini: architettura come linguaggio (1967), Roma del Rinascimento (1971), After modern architecture (1982) and Nature and architecture (2000).
Arquine Convoca./ Conference No.14
SPACE
Teatro Metropólitan
Av Independencia 90, Mexico City