AMBROSI | ETCHEGARAY lecture

With a belief that there is “strength to be found in silence,” AMBROSI | ETCHEGARAY designs in harmony with nature and with continuity between the past and present. Gabriela Etchegaray and Jorge Ambrosi founded their Mexico City-based firm in 2011. Particularly adept at the control and manipulation of light and shadows, they pair natural and machine-made materials in elegant form-making.

Their Emerging Voices lecture is organized by six guiding principles of their practice: remembrance, order, materiality, light, nature, and heritage. Ambrosi and Etchegaray present one project to illustrate each principle, beginning with the renovation of a dilapidated building in Mexico City into four apartments organized around an interior patio, carving out space for light and vegetation. Three additional residential projects — Edificio Alfonso Reyes, Casa EM, and Casa Tepoztlán — illustrate the fluency between interior and exterior, structured procession between spaces, and series of void spaces that are characteristic of the firm’s work. The Spa Querétaro offers an intimate, relaxing interior in which separation of spaces is created by small gardens and movable glass partitions that isolate areas using light rather than walls. The Palenque Matatlán is a house for three generations combined with a family-run mezcal production plant that uses the soil excavated for the sunken oven and distillation spaces to build rammed earth walls. Blending nature and architecture, the firm draws equally from industrial architecture and ruins to create expressive, evocative spaces.

Recorded: March 26, 2015

AMBROSI | ETCHEGARAY was recognized at the 2014 IX Bienal Iberoamericana for the Edificio Alfonso Reyes. The firm participated in the exhibition (con)secuencias formales at MEXTRÓPOLI 2014, an international architecture festival in Mexico City; the 2013 Latin American Architecture Biennale in Pamplona, Spain; and the traveling exhibition 21 Young Mexican Architects in 2012. Ambrosi received his architecture degree from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Etchegaray holds degrees in architecture, urban design, and environmental design from Universidad Iberoamericana and Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. Both partners have taught at Universidad Iberoamericana.