Design for humankind
It can be seen in traditional savoir-faire expressed through contemporary creations, fair-trade practices and sustainable objects. In Mexico City, the 2018 World Design Capital®, a new generation of artisans has found true creative freedom. Here’s a workshop tour.
Better design means better quality of life,” asserts Carla Sofía Elizundia, 30, a dynamic spokesper- son for the design group behind Design Week in Mexico City — an October event that has been held annually since 2009. It’s thanks to the work of this same group — which catalyses interactions between the applied arts and other disciplines, as well as between different countries — that the city was chosen to be World Design Capital® for the year 2018, giving special emphasis to projects hav- ing positive social impact. “Mexico City is a megalopolis with two faces,” the young woman explains. “It has very contemporary spaces that are fully rooted in today’s world. But it also has dilapidated neighbourhoods, where social design has a huge role to play.” By social design, she means ethical, solidarity-based, equitable production that is focussed on the needs of the inhabitants: “We’re seeing a new generation of designers emerge, those who are aware of craftsmanship’s crucial legacy,” continues Ms Elizundia. “We firmly believe that this legacy is a strength.” Now freed from malinchismo — a tendency to prefer anything that comes from abroad, which has long inhibited the country’s cultural development –, today’s designers represent the new face of Mexican pride.
Alan Favero
TALLER LU’UM
Wooden furniture, weavings bearing Aztec designs, beaded tree branches: Taller Lu’um in the San Rafael district, not far from the city’s historic downtown, is truly an Aladdin’s cave. Alan Favero’s interior design studio, founded in 2011, contains a vast array of works combining contemporary culture with ancient techniques. “I’ve always cared about the skilled handicrafts of indigenous peoples: I started a human-rights film festival in 2007 and, in 2009, I joined forces with a women’s group to form a civil association to promote their work. It became clear to me that the creative potential these craftspeople have was truly priceless, irreplaceable; since then, I’ve continued to help them manufacture and distribute their creations on a larger scale. We want to promote Mexican production by differentiating our work from that of foreign countries, offering something other than the kind of cheap, soulless junk that is infesting the world. With local materials and beautiful design, I’m sure we can give China a run for its money.”
Marisol Centeno
BI YUU
In 2012, when Marisol Centeno, 32, founded Bi Yuu, she had set out to develop a quality rug brand that was both innovative and socially responsible. Now she’s working with big names like Adidas and her rugs can be seen in some of the capital’s most popular places, like the Pujol Restaurant. “Handicrafts are a very important part of Mexican culture, but those skills are now threatened by globalisation. I opened Bi Yuu with the intention of showing that traditional know-how should be a source of innovation. And I was convinced that we could make profitable articles while practicing corporate social responsibility and solidarity. There are graphics on our website showing our calculations of Bi Yuu’s social impact: jobs created, families benefited, young people’s renewed interest in crafts, etc. We want to encourage a new generation of artisans who are autonomous and in touch with the times.”
Max Almeida and Lucila Torres
ESTUDIO ÄCO.
They live in a small, high-ceilinged studio flat near the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where they studied industrial design. To save space, the couple made their own desks, tables and shelves to the exact dimensions they needed. In 2017, Lucila Torres, 31, and Max Almeida, 32, won the Inedito Award at Mexico City’s Design Week for their attractive, economical ceramic nest heaters. “Our intention with Estudio äCo. is to draw greater attention to collective, collaborative works to help bridge the gap between traditional craftsmanship and the contemporary world. We want to revive Mexican identity by producing articles that embody our history, are handsome and in keeping with the times, are functional, made from local materials, and affordable for everyone. That’s what we did with the ceramic nest heater. The money we’ll make selling it in Mexico City will give us what we need to go to Chiapas to teach the locals there how to make copies of the heater out of local clay. This will help them reduce their wood consumption and carbon emissions.”
Renata Fenton
ISLA URBANA
At Isla Urbana, tucked away in the neighbourhood of Coyoacán, young designer Renata Fenton tells us about her project to collect rainwater to limit the impact of droughts. “We suffer from lack of water in Mexico City, even though, paradoxically, it rains a lot. In the rainy season, there tends to be much more precipitation in southern parts of the city”. Aware that rain could supply at least 50% of the population’s needs, Isla Urbana installs home rooftop systems to recover and filter natural rain runoff. “Since 2009, we’ve installed our systems on 7,000 buildings. My job as a designer is to build containers out of sturdy, solid, functional, good-quality, low-maintenance materials. And to have them remain inexpensive, if possible.”
“ We need to make people feel good in public spaces ”
Karime Tosca and Daniel Olvera
NEKO
Their studio in the Condesa district is blessed with bay windows overlooking a large swath of the city. Karime Tosca and Daniel Olvera, both 37, specialise in urban design. “When we founded Neko in 2005, we were already committed to sustainability issues. We were using local, non-polluting recyclable or recyclable materials, but the people of Mexico City didn’t really grasp these concepts yet, and we hardly mentioned them in our Neko brochures. Then the city government gave us a contract to do a signage project in Chapultepec Park, followed by other projects in public spaces. That was when we discovered that there was no cohesion in the street-furniture design, be it benches or bike parks. As we worked on these projects, we came to understand how important these public spaces are, especially in a megalopolis of 20 million people like Mexico City. Our responsibility as designers is to make people feel good in these public spaces by implementing ergonomic, attractive, ecological projects, ones that are colourful, too, since we Mexicans have colour in our genes!”_
