Mexico City: The Latest Architecture and News

WOHA's first exhibition in Latin America, Garden City Mega City: WOHA's Urban Ecosystems presents over two decades of WOHA's international designs. With its inauguration at the Museum of the City of Mexico during the MEXTRÓPOLI International Festival of Architecture and City, the exhibition proposes the introduction of biodiversity and lively public spaces into vertical, climate-sensitive highrises within megalopolises.

The exhibition features sixteen intricate architectural models, an immersive video installation and large-scale drawings and images that show WOHA's proposals for vertical communities in the tropical megacities. PLANE-SITE documented the exhibition's opening along with the points of view of various MEXTRÓPOLI contributors and city officials.

After being chosen as the winning city to be designated as the World Design Capital for 2018, Mexico City has revealed the theme of the year-long program of events and installations: Socially Responsible Design.

The announcement was made this week by Design Week Mexico, the country’s leading platform for design and architecture, at the 56th edition of the Salone del Mobile Milan, in collaboration with Abitare magazine.

As part of the MEXTRÓPOLI festival in Mexico City early last month, Singapore-based firm WOHA debuted their first exhibition in the Latin America, GARDEN CITY MEGA CITY. WOHA's architecture introduces biodiversity into public spaces, turning high-rise courtyards and hallways into teeming community assets. In this exhibition, the architects show how their work has addressed both climate change and the social challenges that occur as a result of rapid (upward) urban development.

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The Harvard University Graduate School of Design in Massachusetts has announced the winners of the Richard Rogers Fellowship 2017. Launched in October 2016, the Fellowship seeks to act as an international platform assembling experts and practitioners from a broad range of disciplines, using the built environment to positively impact on the quality of human life. The six inaugural Fellows, selected from 200 applicants worldwide, will undertake three months of research at the Wimbledon House, a Grade II listed residence in London gifted to the School by world-renowned British architect Richard Rogers.

Contrary to some beliefs, climate change is not simply some unidentifiable threat perpetually on the horizon, but a phenomenon that has already had real impact on real world places. To illustrate the effects of our changing environment, the New York Times has launched a new multi-media series called “Changing Climate, Changing Cities,” written by architecture critic Michael Kimmelman, that aims to expose how climate change is “challenging the world’s urban centers.

The first installment takes a look Mexico City, where environmental issues that have already wreaked havoc for centuries, such as water shortage and ground subsidence, are beginning to see their effects multiplied by the city’s changing climate. The piece explains the root of these problems, and their effect of an already fragile infrastructure and social fabric.

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