Rozana Montiel winner of the Emerging Architecture of the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize 2018
13/04/2018.
MCHAP.emerge 2018 [Chicago] USA
metalocus, INÉS LALUETA
metalocus, INÉS LALUETA
The MCHAP.emerge 2018 award for emerging architecture announced their four finalists last month by this year's MCHAP Jury, comprised of Ricky Burdett CBE (London), Jose Castillo, (Mexico City), Ron Henderson (Chicago), Rodrigo Pérez de Arce (Santiago), and Claire Weisz (New York).
Public square. Common-Unity by Rozana Montiel Estudio de Arquitectura and Alin V. Wallach. Photograph © Sandra PérezNieto
Playground. Common-Unity by Rozana Montiel Estudio de Arquitectura and Alin V. Wallach. Photograph © Jaime Navarro
Library. Common-Unity by Rozana Montiel Estudio de Arquitectura and Alin V. Wallach. Photograph © Sandra PérezNieto
Public square. Common-Unity by Rozana Montiel Estudio de Arquitectura and Alin V. Wallach. Photograph © Sandra PérezNieto
Axonometric. Common-Unity by Rozana Montiel Estudio de Arquitectura and Alin V. WallachAxonometric. Common-Unity by Rozana Montiel Estudio de Arquitectura and Alin V. Wallach
Detailed sector. Common-Unity by Rozana Montiel Estudio de Arquitectura and Alin V. Wallach
Floor plan with four courtyards. Common-Unity by Rozana Montiel Estudio de Arquitectura and Alin V. Wallach
Yesterday, April 12th, the recipient of the 2018 MCHAP.emerge Prize was announced and the winner is the architectural studio of Rozana Montiel Saucedo awarded by the IIT Architecture, with its project Common Unity in San Pablo Xalpa, Mexico City.
With the project of Rozana Montiel, Mexico repeats for the second consecutive edition the winner of the Emerging Architecture Award, betting on projects that are committed to social problems.
With the project of Rozana Montiel, Mexico repeats for the second consecutive edition the winner of the Emerging Architecture Award, betting on projects that are committed to social problems.
Fences, railings and more fences. This project designs a specific, impactful and elegant solution to their demise. This public space intervention by all measure is a success. A former storage room is now a library, people care for the space daily, older persons play chess and between free WiFi and various classes allowed the shelters and open spaces to improve the economic value of the apartments doubled.
Clair Weisz.
The rehabilitation and recovery of the project's public space had an immediate impact on the safety of the area, activating a space that had been empty for decades. The space is unified by a square that seems to float on the ground, composed of permeable areas for existing trees and concrete areas that form bridges under the shade of light steel structures that provide shade while blending in among the trees. These gestures generate a feeling of spaciousness while offering places for small gatherings and individual activities. This urban design is as much about the resulting public space and the programs that did not exist before as it is about the design of a social process—all in a single project.
Description of project by Rozana Montiel Estudio de Arquitectura
In Mexico City, housing complexes are massive and more than 25% of the Mexican population lives in housing units: they are cities in their own right. Residents have a problem with social integration because they lack adequate public spaces. So, housing blocks are notorious for the barriers owners mount to define their homes' boundaries. COMMON-UNITY is an intervention done in the San Pablo Xalpa housing unit, which has approximately 7,000 inhabitants and is located in the north part of Mexico City. Contrary to belief, the use of barriers and fences increases feelings insecurity: protection becomes an obstacle.
When we arrived at Xalpa everything was gated, every single square was privatized, and of course, these bars could not be championed. The gates were to a certain extent “untouchable.” The barriers mounted by owners to define their limits, fragmented the landscape into passageways and corridors that pushed social life out of common areas. In fact, most of the neighbors did not even know each other.
We worked around the barriers created by the inhabitants in order to make them permeable, democratic and meaningful. One of our design strategies to reclaim privatized spaces for public use was to shift the vertical (railing, walls, gates, enclosures) which separate and divide for the horizontal (roof, shelter, floors, passageway) that connects, reunites, and encourages community interaction. The horizontal became more than just a roof: by expanding the program of potential activities in common areas through compact multi-functional structures, our COMMON-UNITY project gathered the community under the same roof.
The design of the new space spoke for itself: people willingly gave up 90% of the barriers. Rehabilitating public space restored the community’s use of it, transforming the UNIT into COMMON-UNITY. The recovered public space in Xalpa became an extension of each apartment, while it remained free to the public. The real-estate value of the apartments doubled: the apartments surrounding the rehabilitated areas acquired the added value of community life. Safety was achieved through design. Our intervention was aimed at placemaking: by expanding the program from the perspective of its temporal and multifunctional uses, we transformed the space into a place with identity and character. Placemaking is about understanding architecture as a social construction too.
More information
Estudio de Arquitectura. Rozana Montiel
Rozana Montiel Estudio de Arquitectura focuses on architectural design, artistic re-conceptualizations of space and urban space works on various projects at different scales and strata ranging from the city to the book, the artifact, and other micro-objects. His research areas include housing, public space and urban mobility.
Montiel is an architect from the Universidad Iberoamericana (Mexico City, 1998) with a Master's Degree in Architecture, Criticism and Project from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia UPC (Barcelona, 2000). She recently won the "Overall Award" and the first place in the "Moving" category at the Archmarathon Awards in Miami. In 2017, she was also awarded the Moira Gemmill Award by The Architectural Review in London; and was selected by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Jumex Foundation for Contemporary Art for an artistic research residency at the Bellagio Center, Como, Italy. In 2016, she was nominated for the Schelling Architecture Prize by the Schelling Foundation, Karlsruhe, Germany; and was winner of the Emerging Voices Award granted by The Architectural League of New York, as well as, first place in the category Best Architectural Intervention of the Year in the CDMX Awards. She has been twice winner of the National Art Creators System Grant granted by the FONCA (2009, 2013); and the Young Creators FONCA Scholarship (2002). And in 2007, she received the Sustainable Construction Grant from the Holcim Foundation.
Her interdisciplinary work has been published in well-known architecture magazines, as well as exhibited in Mexico, Spain, France, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and China. She has also presented his projects in several editions of the Biennales of Venice, Sao Paulo, Rotterdam and Lima. In 2016, it was presented at the Venice Biennale with the collaborative project of social participation Walk the Line. In 2017, she was selected by the Mexican magazine Who as one of the 50 characters that transform Mexico.
Montiel is a member of the Editorial Board of Arquine Architecture Magazine; she has given lectures, courses and architecture seminars at prestigious universities around the world. She recently gave a lecture at Columbia GSAPP to inaugurate the cycle of extraordinary chairs of the Spring Semester 2018; and this year she will teach an architecture workshop in collaboration with Derek Dellekamp at Cornell University.
Montiel is an architect from the Universidad Iberoamericana (Mexico City, 1998) with a Master's Degree in Architecture, Criticism and Project from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia UPC (Barcelona, 2000). She recently won the "Overall Award" and the first place in the "Moving" category at the Archmarathon Awards in Miami. In 2017, she was also awarded the Moira Gemmill Award by The Architectural Review in London; and was selected by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Jumex Foundation for Contemporary Art for an artistic research residency at the Bellagio Center, Como, Italy. In 2016, she was nominated for the Schelling Architecture Prize by the Schelling Foundation, Karlsruhe, Germany; and was winner of the Emerging Voices Award granted by The Architectural League of New York, as well as, first place in the category Best Architectural Intervention of the Year in the CDMX Awards. She has been twice winner of the National Art Creators System Grant granted by the FONCA (2009, 2013); and the Young Creators FONCA Scholarship (2002). And in 2007, she received the Sustainable Construction Grant from the Holcim Foundation.
Her interdisciplinary work has been published in well-known architecture magazines, as well as exhibited in Mexico, Spain, France, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and China. She has also presented his projects in several editions of the Biennales of Venice, Sao Paulo, Rotterdam and Lima. In 2016, it was presented at the Venice Biennale with the collaborative project of social participation Walk the Line. In 2017, she was selected by the Mexican magazine Who as one of the 50 characters that transform Mexico.
Montiel is a member of the Editorial Board of Arquine Architecture Magazine; she has given lectures, courses and architecture seminars at prestigious universities around the world. She recently gave a lecture at Columbia GSAPP to inaugurate the cycle of extraordinary chairs of the Spring Semester 2018; and this year she will teach an architecture workshop in collaboration with Derek Dellekamp at Cornell University.
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