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.
