Meet The Booming Design Practice That's Transforming Mexico City
Meet The Booming Design Practice That's Transforming Mexico City
Architect Fernando Romero tells us what fuels his creative vision, from rapid prototyping to Mayan culture.
Avenida Chapultepec by FR-EE is a linear park slated for Mexico City.
Mexico City–based architect Fernando Romero’s most recent project isn’t a building, but a scintillating orb made from thousands of custom-cut crystals. Illuminated from within, El Sol, as it’s named, features a tessellated surface composed of triangular prisms—a nod to the pyramids that were so meaningful to Aztec and Mayan culture. There’s an aural element to the piece, too: a soundtrack of acoustic waves produced by the sun, which astronomers at the University of Birmingham have recorded since the 1970s. The piece throws light around a room and gives off a disco ball vibe that's fitting, since Swarovski commissioned it for the tradeshow-cum-social-event Design Miami.
El Sol is a microcosm of Romero’s body of work; it's modern, technologically rigorous, in dialog with history, and infused with flash. The young architect—he is 44 years old—founded FR-EE, Fernando Romero Enterprise, in 2000 and opened a New York City office in 2010. A protege of Rem Koolhaas—Romero worked at OMA for three years—the architect bears some similarity to his mentor in that his structures are radical, iconoclastic, dictated by function and use, aggressively modern, and never short of rhetoric.
Many of Romero’s designs are conceptual or yet-to-be-built, but he was catapulted into the spotlight by the Museo Soumaya, a private art museum completed in 2011 and his crowning achievement to date. Named after Romero’s wife, Soumaya Slim, and bankrolled by his father in law, telecommunications billionaire Carlos Slim (who was the richest man in the world from 2010 to 2013), the museum is an engineering marvel with an asymmetric, torqued structure clad in metallic tiles.
Over the past few years, Romero has been steadily remaking—or reimagining—the Mexico City's architectural fabric, adding another chapter to the city's rich design legacy. 20 million people a year visit Plaza Mariana, the public space surrounding the Basilica of Guadalupe that the firm designed in 2009, and he's at work on Plaza Carso, a massive mixed-use master plan due to be finished in 2017. In 2014 his design for the Mexico City Aquarium opened, and he's created a number of sculptural tower proposals and concepts as well, like the Archivo design museum.
More:
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3055412/meet-the-booming-design-practice-thats-transforming-mexico-city
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Come closer! Come see more of Romero's work!
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https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1226&bih=568&q=Fernando+Romero+Mexico+City+architecture&oq=Fernando+Romero+Mexico+City+architecture&gs_l=img.12...794.16514.0.22173.29.4.0.25.25.0.170.600.0j4.4.0....0...1ac.1.64.img..0.13.239.45Y_TqwsxWU
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at least as currently envisioned by astrophysicists and cosmologists, which resembles a horn with a wide mouth (Big Bang at the narrow end or mouthpiece of the horn, then the tube gradually expanding outward to the enlarged end of the horn, where the sound emerges--our era--thence, presumably, to infinity). Romero's "horn" has a gentle twist to it, and--who knows?--art may predict science, as it so often has done, and the Universe is actually a twisty horn.
Illustration of the Universe:
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=
%253F1390327569&imgrefurl=http://www.space.com/24309-shape-of-the-universe.html&h=416&w=575&tbnid=wfBicffYf4gq0M:&docid=-wGq-LNBYGaD3M&ei=y42fVtngJ5fGjwPnzYbgDA&tbm=isch&ved=0ahUKEwiZ8oLLwbjKAhUX42MKHeemAcwQMwgyKAAwAA
The Soumaya Museum is spectacular. I'm not crazy about spectacular architecture of this kind (I prefer small, intimate, homey spaces) but Soumaya is very inventive within this monumental style. Some of his twists and curves are astonishing.
I don't like the Big Bang either (something not right about that theory), but I can't build a museum nor theorize anything but a fanciful Universe, say, in which the neurons of our brains are stars, or one in which little tiny faeries hold everything together and tinkle with laughter at their own cleverness, so who am I to criticize?
Thanks for posting, Judi!
Have noticed big public buildings seem to bring out the maniac in current architects quite often!
Have never seen the image you posted above. It is intriguing, really attracts further thought.
I did love Romero's aqueduct in the middle of the street, reminding everyone that the Aztecs actually had their amazing canals they created to bring water to the city from the mountains very skillfully, successfully. I loved his elevated walkway, as well. I think that would add a wonderful graciousness to a large city. I was knocked out by that.
It's fun considering your ideas of a fanciful Universe. I have heard since the '70's that some scientists started thinking along lines of a radically different view along lines you mention, as in one great thought, very personalized. That would be worth the trip, I would think.
On edit:
Just looked for more photos on his ideas for Avenida Chapultepec. Discovered the aqueduct is a real object right now. Didn't know. He has ideas for transforming the area, of course:
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Wow!
Do you recall ever seeing photos of an elevated train track in New York City, which has been converted to a walking space and garden area, too? Love these ideas. They could go a long way in lifting the spirit of city dwellers, couldn't they?
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Certainly a lot better than the former view! [/center]