Gru.a is an architecture office based in Rio de Janeiro, founded in 2013 by Caio Calafate and Pedro Varella. Their practice sits at the intersection of architecture and art, exploring how spaces, structures, and material gestures can acquire new readings beyond their function. Their architectural work, art installations, and exhibition designs are assertive assemblages where the tectonic and the conceptual find a precise balance.
Spanish Architecture Festival (FAE) 2025
September 4–5 · Mexico City
This September, Mexico City will become the epicenter of Spanish-language architecture with the 2025 edition of the Spanish Architecture Festival, an international gathering celebrating contemporary thought and practice.
Over two days, key voices in global architecture will gather at iconic sites of Mexican modern heritage to tour, inhabit, and reflect upon them through shared experience.
A curated architectural experience.
Designed as an intimate gathering, the Festival offers close access to its international guests: direct conversations, guided tours of Modern Movement works, and moments of connection where dialogue transcends the professional.
It is not just about talking about architecture, but about inhabiting it, exploring it in company, and sharing it through experience.
The program is framed by an exclusive multi-course meal prepared by chef Miguel Sánchez Navarro—creator of CARDO—accompanied by cocktails, with transportation included to facilitate the experience.
Venues
September 4 – Los Manantiales, Xochimilco
The first day will take place at the iconic Los Manantiales, a work by Félix Candela nestled among the canals of Xochimilco. This reinforced concrete shell—one of the architect's most emblematic structures—stands as a symbol of 20th-century structural experimentation and formal beauty.
September 5 – Bacardí Plant, Tultitlán
The second day moves to the Bacardí Plant in the State of Mexico, an exceptional enclave that brings together two key works of the Modern Movement: the bottling plant designed by Félix Candela and the office building designed by Mies van der Rohe. A setting where industrial architecture becomes a manifesto.
International Guests
FAE 2025 will bring together essential voices in contemporary architecture to share their trajectories, processes, and visions:
● Ryue Nishizawa (SANAA, Japan)
2010 Pritzker Prize laureate, co-founder of SANAA, and author of iconic works such as the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art and the Teshima Art Museum.
● Jimenez Lai (Bureau Spectacular, USA)
Architect and artist recognized for experimental installations and a narrative approach that rethinks how we inhabit space.
● Cristina Díaz Moreno and Efrén García Grinda (Amid.cero9, Spain)
Founders of the influential Madrid-based studio and professors at institutions such as Harvard, Princeton, and the University of Applied Arts Vienna.
● Mauricio Rocha (Taller Mauricio Rocha, Mexico)
Winner of the 2023 Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize, author of works such as the Anahuacalli Museum expansion and the San Pablo Academic and Cultural Center.
Mexican architect Gabriela Carrillo has forged a distinguished and passionate career centered on the city, the territory, and diversity. Her widely recognized work—initially in collaboration with Mauricio Rocha and subsequently leading her own studio—has become a benchmark for contemporary architecture in Mexico. Her projects manifest global demands, as she constantly strives to recognize the values inherent in the territory and create spaces that elevate their inhabitants. Gabriela Carrillo stands at the intersection of architectural practice, theory, and research. Her approach is oriented toward the everyday, adopting a versatile and dynamic practice that allows her to maintain a balance between her work and personal life.
For the past ten years, the MEXTRÓPOLI Architecture and City Festival has established itself as an event that promotes a space to think about, celebrate, and reflect on the city through architecture. The festival brings together specialists, students, citizens, public officials, artists, journalists, and more for a gathering across various locations and through diverse activities, aiming to delve into, discuss, and enjoy one of humanity's greatest inventions: cities.
The Banco Nacional de México, through Fomento Cultural Citibanamex, and the Fundación Sordo Madaleno invite you to the panel discussion "Art and Design in Architecture," part of the public program accompanying the exhibition "Urban Transformation: Sordo Madaleno Arquitectos."
The Banco Nacional de México, through Fomento Cultural Citibanamex, and the Sordo Madaleno Foundation invite you to the book presentation of "Transformación urbana. Sordo Madaleno Arquitectos," as part of the public program surrounding the exhibition of the same name.
LIGA 37: Juan Campanini and Josefina Sposito.
On the Other Side. Facade on Dr. Erazo Street
The concept is DISRUPTIA, a unique event aimed at showcasing the latest in technology—including artificial intelligence, immersive installations, augmented reality, the metaverse, neuroarchitecture, NFTs, and blockchain—to explore how these advancements will impact the lighting and architecture industries.
From June 28 to July 2, 2026, Barcelona will host the UIA World Congress of Architects 2026, becoming a true international open laboratory for architecture that will attract more than 10,000 professionals, representatives of the academic community, and students from around the world to discuss the future of the planet and the role of architecture in the most urgent and necessary upcoming transitions.
LIGA Space for Architecture presents the exhibition Unidad Vecinal by Departamento del Distrito, a Mexican/American firm founded by Francisco Quiñones and Nathan Friedman in 2017, whose practice spans architecture, curatorial work, and academia. From an expanded view of the discipline, their work explores the multiple relationships between subjects, objects, technologies, and politics, articulating spatial investigations that connect diverse scales, temporalities, and geographies. Free from formal or cultural prejudices, Departamento del Distrito creates colorful and provocative architecture that combines precise craftsmanship with commercial and industrial components such as printed curtains, LED signage, plastic tarps, steel scaffolding, solar panels, and folding chairs. Their critical and situated approach champions design as a tool for imagining alternative and collective futures.
What can it mean to live collectively? Unidad Vecinal rethinks the traditional domestic space by introducing a flexible architecture that, rather than simply being inhabited, invites continuous activation. Conceived as a mutable stage within the LIGA space, the installation proposes an alternative to the traditional domestic prototype—a device that transforms collectively. Through various uses—rest, work, gathering—it seeks to test other forms of community. During the exhibition, the installation will be activated by an extensive public program that will include everything from talks and film screenings to gatherings for leisure and rest. These activities aim to explore and challenge the boundaries between the intimate and the common, the performative and the habitable, the individual and the collective. All activities will be announced on social media and will be free and open to the public.
Casa Wabi Sabino presents "Tendedero" by Brenda Isabel Pérez and Israel Espin, a site-specific installation. This work intervenes in the imagery of the domestic clothesline, converting it into a walkable aesthetic experience and transforming an everyday object into a tool for collective critique and reflection.
For the past eleven years, MEXTRÓPOLI has served as a space for reflecting on the city through architecture, bringing together specialists, students, citizens, public officials, artists, and journalists. The festival fosters the analysis and enjoyment of cities, one of humanity's greatest inventions.
“A Compendium of Rammed Earth and the Women Within It” is an editorial publication that, from a feminist perspective, positions earth as a creative element that, as it interacts with the body, deepens the intimate relationship with a material that serves as both an enabler and a witness.
The World Design Capital CDMX 2018 program will kick off with the International Design Forum, taking place on March 5 and 6 at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, under the theme "The Future of Our Cities: A Social Approach to the Challenges of the First Urban Century."
