Pedro & Juana

Eight years ago, a small corner of a building on Insurgentes Avenue, in Mexico City, became the first space in Latin America dedicated to exhibiting architecture. Since then, the ideas and affections awoken by LIGA have been many: showing and reflecting on the work of Latin American architects and researchers, establishing connections between the different practices and building an ever-expanding archive of the region’s young studios and creators, recognizing common qualities that establish dialogues with their own contexts, yet without looking for a unifying style or making generalizations. LIGA is a space with a collective head that expands and duplicates itself on the basis of numerous collaborations. It is through the creation of affinities (institutional, personal and community-based) that the structures which really support our work emerge.

On September 19, 2017, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck Mexico City, and damaged our small gallery space. This event helped us rethink our task as a space dedicated to architecture in a city scarred by repeated and radical geographical, political and social transformations. Over the course of the past year, we have moved from one place in the city to another, until we found our new home in the Colonia Doctores, one of the most emblematic neighborhoods of Mexico City.

In this new stage, LIGA continues with its projects dedicated to the work of Latin American architects and urbanists, and also introduces projects that includes researchers, writers, curators and academics who make use of our platform as a starting point for their investigations and ideas. We want LIGA to become a tool for change, enabling conversations between local institutions and government, academia and residents, grounded in both theoretical and practical methods.

We are inaugurating our new venue with Trajectories of a Panel, by Chilean researches Pedro Alonso and Hugo Palmarola. This is a project that brings together almost a decade of research into the construction models of social housing in Chile, linking technological, architectural and design processes with political and cultural history. In March 2019, we’ll exhibit a project by Mexican firm Pedro & Juana. The Horizon is Ours! is an installation revolving around the relationship between culture and nature underlying the mechanism of the diorama.