FF - Distance Edition: Rozana Montiel

The League’s monthly First Friday series has shifted to a new online format and other days of the week. Each event explores design practices in New York City and beyond that operate in multiple roles—coupling architecture with initiatives including design advocacy, fabrication research, and community engagement.

Rozana Montiel Estudio de Arquitectura is a Mexico City practice that focuses on “architectural design, artistic reconceptualizations of space, and the public domain.” The studio’s interdisciplinary team works on projects that range “from the city to the micro-object, artifacts, and books.” Through an economy of means, its designs transform existing conditions by activating and strengthening people’s relationships to place.

The presentation focused on the studio’s recent projects, including:

• Encinos House, a wooden house in the oak woods of Valle de Bravo, Mexico, whose modularity and fragmentation allows for the preservation of trees. In collaboration with Claudia Rodriguez.
• PILARES, an innovation center with spaces for culture, education, and sports commissioned by the government of Mexico City in Iztapalapa. The project is made of a series of volumes and patios connected by light metallic elements.
• Construye tu casa, or Build your own home, a program commissioned by FOVISSSTE (The Housing Fund of the Institute of Security and Social Services of State Workers) to provide low-cost, replicable housing in the Yucatán Peninsula and assist people in constructing their own home. In collaboration with Dellekamp Schleich Architects.

The program was moderated by design writer and critic Thomas de Monchaux. His writings can be found at n+1, The New Yorker, and Places, where he is the inaugural 2021 critic-in-residence for architecture. He teaches at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation.