Among the distinguishing features of the work of Fernanda Canales (Mexico City, 1974) is the way she has continually combined the practice of architect and designer with that of architectural critic and curator, exploring in particular the nature of Mexican design. Having trained with Toyo Ito in Tokyo and Ignasi de Solà-Morales in Barcelona, she seems to translate the disruptive and innovative approach of the former with the capacity of the latter to sink the roots of design into the depths of history and culture.

It would therefore be a mistake to attempt to read her expressive language as the umpteenth native interpretation of the themes inscribed by universal modernity. The work of Fernanda Canales moves more in parallel with respect to these two polarities: all of her architecture can thus be observed indifferently as local or international, without the former affirmation containing vernacular certainties, or the latter generic asepsis.

Casa Bruma in the Valle de Bravo, not far from Mexico City (2017), for example, evokes recollections of some of the cornerstones of living such as Casa Bunker and La Maddalena by Cini Boeri in 1967 or Seijo TownHouses in Tokyo by Kazuyo Sejima in 2008. In all three projects, the deconstruction of the “mother” unit of the traditional house generates a new idea of open living, but while in rough concrete Casa Bruma retains a massive force belonging to Sardinian nuraghe as much as to pre-Columbian architecture, from Sejima it has absorbed the interpretation of the house as a small city and family as a variable community.

Already in 2012, with the design of the Elena Garro Cultural Centre at Coyoacán, Canales demonstrated a remarkable capacity to articulate history and stories with great agility, bringing out the essence without flattening it. The extension of a villa from the early 20th century presents itself on the main elevation as a heroic cornice in cantilevered concrete, that recalls the wonder of an interior as protected as it is exposed, behind a simple large continuous element of glazing.