Museography habitable architectural furniture

Museography habitable architectural furniture

Museographies, as habitable architectural furnishings, serve as architectural exhibition platforms that, in the form of islands, occupy the center of the room. They feature the construction of a central museographic entity that can have its own dynamics and engage in various ways with the surrounding walls of the space, also helping us to break free from our dependence on the walls. This allows for the creation of a central imagery without relying on the walls.

Continuous vitrine museography

Continuous vitrine museography

Pedestal Base Museography

Pedestal Base Museography

Central Table Museography

Central Table Museography

Network tables Museographies

Network tables Museographies

They are museographies outside the wall that take place on tables and islands as habitable platforms and information topographies.

Visual Graphic Museography

Visual Graphic Museography

Vertical Wall Museografy

Vertical Wall Museografy

Common Knowledge Museography

Common Knowledge Museography

Common trades and anthropology of knowledge

Loitering Performative Museography

Loitering Performative Museography

Mobile devices to active phenomena

Furniture: Mobile, movable, traveling, moving. Contrary to a property or real state, a building is immovable, it does not move – it is a property. The city is built of real buildings but also of tables, chairs, bookcases, movable flower pots, which furnish the interiors of houses and buildings, as well as the exteriors of streets, squares and sidewalks of our Latin American cities, turning the streets into temporary kitchens, shops, dance halls or open-air markets. They micro-construct the city every day in the morning and de-construct it every night using elements that can move, furniture.

Museography of Being

Museography of Being

Vitrine Museography

Vitrine Museography

Modular assembly museography

Modular assembly museography

Museographies to reuse or just use and throw away?

Hanging Museography

Hanging Museography

Sound habitat museography.

Sound habitat museography.

Museography as sculpture

Museography as sculpture

Mechanic Museographies to interact

Mechanic Museographies to interact

¿How to exhibit documents in Art Museums?

Building Scale Museography

Building Scale Museography

Museografies in Collective and Pedagagical processes

Museografies in Collective and Pedagagical processes

Museographies in collective and pedagogical processes

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Common Trades, Urban Metabolism of Knowledge, L.A. Version

2017 /

Common Knowledge Museography /

/

Common Trades, Urban Metabolism of Knowledge, L.A. Version presents a series of research and design projects that study trades ubiquitous in specific urban and rural centers. Started in Mexico City in 2014, it continued in 2015 in Cuzco, Peru. With this residency and exhibition, the project moves North to Los Angeles, with a focus on the making of food vendor carts, trailers, and food trucks that are characteristic of Mexican and Latino street food culture in this city.

I often walk without pre-established ideas to attempt to understand the city through the lens of its trades, found along the way, focusing finally on the makers whose trade seems most to describe the dynamics of the city in their work; as if that particular craft contains the DNA of the whole city. The three case studies of common trades presented here follow parallel approaches. Each begins with being in a place, walking in streets and fields, engaging with other makers and inhabitants – both long-established settlers and new arrivals.

While common trades in Mexico City are most associated with informal street vending, and trades in the Cuzco region of the Andes with wood working with eucalyptus, Los Angeles has long been associated with its vibrant Mexican and Latino street food culture, which started long ago in the mid-19th century when the tamale wagon, the predecessor of today’s taco truck, was feeding a newly assimilated majority Mexican and Anglo population. Common Trades L.A. presents a new video, created in collaboration with Miguel Buenrostro, that registers a week of work in the Martinez Carts metal workshop in East Los Angeles. Makers of a variety of systems, from carts, to trailers, to taco trucks Martinez Carts provides the city with vital, mobile, urban infrastructure. This common trade has generated resourceful and innovative construction systems that support informal, marginalized, and low-income communities in their bid for economic stability and legal status.

Giacomo Castagnola

This exhibition is possible thanks to the collaboration of Erick López and Cristobal Garcia (Germen Estudio), Miguel Buenrostro, Esteban Germán, Andrea Bowers, Juan Martinez and his welding crew (Martinez Carts), J. Salomé Meza (TA Signs), Taco truck “La Chicanita” and Rudy Espinoza (Leadership for Urban Renewal Network).

Funding comes from California Arts Council: Artist Activating Communities and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.  Giacomo Castagnola: Common Trades, Urban Metabolism of Knowledge, L.A. Version is organized by Irene Tsatsos, Director of Exhibition Programs/Chief Curator.

Miguel Buenrostro, Still image from the video.

Enlaces relacionados

Germen Estudio is a museum exhibition design firm specializing in creating a wide variety of exhibitions, ranging from modern and contemporary art exhibitions to anthropology, material culture, and archival displays, as well as historical exhibitions exploring economic processes or community narratives.

With over 10 years of experience, we have worked for numerous public and private museums in Mexico and abroad, offering expertise in the following areas:

- Comprehensive exhibition design for museums

- Coordination of exhibition content in collaboration with researchers, curators, and artists

- Production and construction of exhibition projects

- Installation of artworks in the museum until project completion

Our museographies function as diverse systems that allow for change, reuse, and growth, tailored to the aesthetic and budgetary needs of each museum project, aiming to create a comprehensive experience where exhibited works, visitor interaction, museum furniture, and architecture converge to generate a unique museum experience.

In 2019, our firm was awarded the Covarrubias Prize for Best Museographic Work by the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), recognizing our excellence in museum design and exhibition implementation.

Giacomo Castagnola received his Master of Science in Art, Culture and Technology (SMACT) from the School of Architecture and Planning of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2013, and holds a degree in architecture and urbanism from Ricardo Palma University (URP) in Lima Peru. Originally from Lima, Peru, for seven years (2003-2010) he lived and worked in the Tijuana / San Diego border region where he established Germen, an architectural and design studio, to investigate the self-organized "informal" city that composes up to 40% of the urban and growing infrastructure of many Latin American cities. Currently, Castagnola works in Mexico City in architecture for exhibitions and museographies that explore new ways of displaying archives of art and material culture.

Logo Germen

Founder

Giacomo Castagnola

Arquitectos

Erik López
Cristóbal García

Past Collaborators

Fernando J Limón — San Diego, CA
Fernando Becerra — San Diego, CA
Carlos A. Augusto Paz — Tijuana, MX