The projects conceived in my studio, started with the will of creating spaces from which I could reflect, research, and act in different fields of contemporary culture. From the beginning I have never conceived architecture just as a specialization, but architecture as a wider vision of understanding and questioning the environment that surrounds us, in which every project can enrich itself through diverse views and disciplines.


 

 The work created in my studio doesn’t start only from architecture but is nourished by different sources: cinema, music, dance, painting, or literature are, in many occasions, what give guidelines to my spaces.

For me every project has always been a constant search, I don’t have a predetermined system or repeat a former project, but in each new project I want to be able to discover and experiment new possibilities. In this way each project has a special character that opens me diverse possibilities to do the next one. Each project is a window that opens and drives me to another.

Iván Juárez, Barcelona, 2009

  

Endless. landscape observatory.

Site- specific intervention at the Joya Honda crater. Desert of México (Tropic of Cancer)

Ser el desierto es ser la vida que no cesa de seguir adelante.
El desierto no es el vacío sino el esfuerzo denodado, la
paciencia infinita, el gozo de lo poco y lo breve
 

A few kilometers south of Tropic of Cancer, in the desert of San Luis Potosí, Mexico, is located  the Joya Honda volcano, which is a large elliptical crater (800 x 1,200 m), excavated more than 200 meters below the pre-volcanic surface. A Quaternary maar of unusual type that was formed about 1.1 million years ago, from the interaction of groundwater with rapidly ascending intraplate-type basanitic magma in which the local aquifer characteristics controlled the style of eruption and the nature of its deposits.

Conceived to provide a place for self-reflection, the site specific intervention, endless, consists on an approach to the landscape context of Joya Honda crater, in which the notion of time and temporality constitutes the essence of the work. An observatory- piece that emerges from the landscape to define a new  relation of human beings with their intimate perception of the desert. An introspective piece to reflect about the empty immensity of the landscape: earth, sky, silence, loneliness, endless.

The intervention, proposed as an interactive and sensitive piece that explores the natural environment through the personal experience, is related to its surroundings through diverse scales and visual levels. One hand, the observatory-piece invites towards a contextual approach to the place, towards the fixation of the moment facing the perception of the wide landscape, and on the other hand, establishes a more approximately scaled relationship at the ground level, in which people can recognize and observe in detail the textures and colorful layers of the inner side walls of the volcano crater and observe in detail each one of different types of desert species.

The project was made by Iván Juárez .  x-studio,  with the support of Fund for Culture and Arts Program, San Luis Potosí, Mexico.

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Ivan Juarez,  architect, landscape architect and artist. He is a member of the National System of Art Creators through the Mexican National Fund for Culture and the Arts (FONCA). He is founder of x-studio in Mexico, after acting as co-director at ex-studio in Barcelona. His projects explore the relationship between art and function; integrating the disciplines of architecture, design, sculpture and installation. He has developed a wide variety of projects in different countries in which he investigates and experiments with new ways of relating space with society.

He has developed numerous projects (architecture, urban projects, site specific interventions, landscape interventions,  set designs, exhibitions, outfit) in different countries such as  Italy (Tuscanny and Sicily), Senegal, Austria, Switzerland, France, Greece, Spain (Barcelona, Madrid, Huesca, Bilbao), Portugal and Mexico, which he has conceived them in reason and function of its physical context and could not be generated in other place than in the one of their conception and realization.

His projects in which he investigates and experiment with new ways of relating space with society—explore the relationship between art and function, integrating the disciplines of architecture, design, sculpture, and installation. In this context, he has developed numerous projects at different scales, from large to small buildings, from objects to city and landscape interventions.

He  has built projects in different countries such as Italy (Tuscany, Sicily and Sardinia), Senegal, Austria (Vienna), Spain (Barcelona, Madrid, Huesca, Bilbao and Zaragoza), Portugal, Switzerland (Lausanne), Taiwan (Taipei) and Mexico, conceiving each project in reason and function of its physical context and they could not be generated in any other place than the one of their conception and realization.

He has been selected as one of top 10 emerging design firms in the Architectural Records Design Vanguard Award. His work has garnered different awards including: Design Vanguard Emerging Designers. selected by Architectural Record magazine;  Young Architects Award given by The Architectural League of New York,  AR award for Emerging Architects given by The Architectural Review in London , the New Generation Award, contractworld, Hannover, Germany, The Young Architects Prize, given by the College of Architects in Barcelona and the National Grant for Mexican Young Architects.

He has been guest lecturer and guest professor at different international institutes such as at the Architectural League of New York, at the Royal Institute of British Architects, at the Architekturzentrum Vienna,  at  the College of Architects of Catalonia in Barcelona and at the International University of Catalonia.

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Published on: June 15, 2011
Cite: "ENDLESS. landscape observatory" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/endless-landscape-observatory> ISSN 1139-6415
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