AGENCIA Presentation

The idea for this project called AGENCIA started as an impulsive reaction from my part to talk about systemic discrediting to architecture and architects. It was ignited as some of you might remember by my letter about the cancellation of the Mexico City new airport. I started to think about why these things happen beyond the obvious political and economic problems, which I think we as architects are guilty for a lot of it, but this lack of agency is important to talk about.

As a follow up to my Facebook letter, I started to contact some architects in Mexico to talk about this issue, some of them didn’t respond, some declined but some actually did and I started a series of conversation about all this, followed by group ZOOM meetings with young architects and students in different parts of Mexico.  We are still working on having more of these types of conversations to get a better idea of the context.

So, we decided to modestly open up a vessel for communication, which we believe is a good way to start addressing the problem of agency in architecture. This project is not  only for architects, my goal is that everyone will have access to it and learn more about what architects do, think and worry about. Most people especially in Latin-America think that architects are a luxury, an expense that you can do without and that architects just bring negotiable beauty to the project. There is nothing more false than that; however do people know what else we can do?  

 It is important in times like this to find ways to communicate, to talk about topics you don’t normally see in publications, topics about architecture education and practice. This project is not about showcasing projects, but about, conversations, interviews and points of view.

This project is in a partnership with Alfonso Arias, a young Mexican architect, as the other editor. I would like to give special thanks to Isaac Michan, GPX Architects and Sergio Roldán for their enormous support for this project.