reyes

if ever méxicocity decides to go back to the days of monster projects and city-head-architects, my pick would go to pedro reyes.


this young quirky nerdy bearded fellow is probably my favorite contemporary mexican architect, especially because he isn't really an architect. "he perceives buildings as skeletons in which we live and interact." i love this simple, neat, and open definition. his work is just as simple, neat and open.


he's behind the most astounding building project for mexico city in recent years (by now it's pretty clear that it will never actually be built): the parque vertical, or vertical park, set for one of the city's amazing and much over-looked modernist ruins, the "torre insignia" or "torre banobras", designed as the iconic building of mario pani's 1964 tlatelolco housing megaproject.


the tower has remained empty since it was abandoned after suffering structural damage after the tragic 1985 earthquake (a couple of pani's housing megablocks didn't withstand, and dozens of people died amidst the rubble leftover from the authoritarian mexican developmentalist state's dreams of modernist grandeur.


his work also includes a pink moebius strip acapulco style woven plastic chair.


the carpenter center recently showed a retrospective of his work.