Experimental devices and Common trades 

The early projects have resulted from my research of informal architecture in the different cities where I have lived, Lima, Tijuana and now Mexico City/San Francisco. I learned from the self-constructed "informal" city that there are different kinds of mobile architecture, which I have described as “changeable,” “incremental,” and “accumulative,” design. All of them are forms of built self-organization and together comprise around 50% of the built environment of many Latin American cities. My research has led to production of a diverse family of mobile devices, accumulative constructions and systemic approaches.

This experience was later applied to further investigation of the mining regions of Peru that, in my opinion, share with the contentious areas of the informal city of Lima the revelation of historical territorial and social disputes associated with land tenure policies, collective rights, migration, and the great struggles of class and labor. That is why my recent research projects investigate the transformation of the landscape of the Andes by the extractive mining industry and the social conflict that this economy generates. 

How to create projects that challenge the economic dependence of formal globalized economies—meaning that in one way or another they are dependent on extractive, unsustainable and inequitable systems—within the disciplines of art and design? My answer has been to create research projects that study “common trades” of urban and rural communities to register, experiment and co-produce, with knowledge of local craftsmen contemporary designs and processes, to generate a small chain of knowledge around those histories. By “common trades” I mean the trades people who make the common things used every day, such as glaziers, carpenters, and metal workers whose skills are commonly utilized but underecognized.

From this experience the long term project Oficios Comunes, Metabolismo Urbano de Saberes / Common Trades, Urban Metabolism of Knowledge emerged and together with it different projects that study the material culture and the local knowledge of urban, rural and marginalized communities of makers.

Furniture / Mobiles / Muebles

The furniture and urban mobile devices, such as carts, benches and chairs utilize popular construction languages to define their forms, such as a wheelbarrow, taco stands and others. Exploring mobility, temporality, and change, these pieces are often designed to intervene in the public space as well as exist in public and private settings.

Some of the furniture pieces presented in this section were designed as part of systems developed in exhibition architectures which have been individually evolved and transformed.