Mexican firm wins Young Architects award at New York’s MoMA

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Pedro y Juana

is an architectural firm in Mexico. This year, it won the Young Architects award at the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) . Their team is led by Ana Paula Ruiz Galindo and Mecky Reuss .

“We are everyone and nobody,” said Ana Paula. “The author of each project dilutes a little bit among everyone participating in the company. Great part of our discipline depends on the collaboration with many other professions involved in the production of culture,” added Reuss.

After majoring in architecture at Mexico’s Ibero-American University (Ibero) , Ruiz Galindo moved to Los Angeles to do a master’s at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, where she met Dutch architect Mecky Reuss , who would later become the founding partner of Pedro y Juana.

One of the group’s most famous creation is the Hellmut table (a table that can be turned into a bench), designed for the inauguration of the Jumex Museum in Mexico City. The architects also presented an installation called “ From the Tropics with Love ” at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) . The project consisted of an urban garden with 221 flowerpots and lamps that subverts the reality of the city’s cold weather.

In the framework of the 2016 Chicago Architecture Biennial , Pedro y Juana was also in charge of redesigning Randolph Square at Chicago’s Cultural Center.

Pedro y Juana goes well beyond the production of buildings. Through their work, they seek to contribute to society and a culture that is given “through political acts and not in an empty space.” They are very much interested in space and what happens therein. That is why they decided to start designing furniture. “Architecture is the construction of any object that affects the space surrounding it,” stated Ruiz Galindo.

The architects decided to move to Mexico City, and though there are not that many big projects in store, certainly not as many as in other large cities, the Mexican capital has offered them two dimensions to develop their creativity: Industrial construction and artisanal projects.

Young Architects was founded by the MoMA and the MoMA PS1 in New York . The program offers an opportunity for young talents to present innovative projects in architecture. Each year, the winners must design and build a temporary installation at the PS1. The installation must provide shade, a resting place for visitors, and drinkable water.

Pedro y Juana’s winning project is called Hórama Rama . It consists of a cyclorama such as the one used by Europeans in the 19th century, meant to view landscapes from faraway lands as well as historic events that could be reproduced in a building through a continuous image.

The image chosen was created as a collage of sorts and inspired by the jungles of southern Mexico. The structure is 29 meters in diameter and 11 meters tall.

Pedro y Juana is now working on a new project to refurbish a building on 42 Turin street in the Juárez neighborhood of Mexico City . The building has been declared a cultural heritage site.