Building dreams

AS: I believe that for a long time, Europe was probably where all eyes were focused in terms of art and creation. Then, the United States became also a prominent area along with other regions developing new technologies and tendencies. Internationally, people are now looking to emerging countries for new perspectives on architecture, cuisine, music, and art. I believe Mexico is one of these hotspots. In terms of architecture and design, many young studios are emerging as it has become easier to start your practice and have exposure without many resources, a formal office, or employees. A creative, competitive and interesting scene of projects and ideas is growing online. 

LO: During the pandemic, Mexico never closed. Many digital nomads came to Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Oaxaca and started living here. This phenomenon brought a lot of interesting people who have contributed to the cultural sector: artists, architects, creative people, and more. Combined with social media, this boom of activities began. 

AS: Also here in Mexico, we have very skilled construction workers. It's very easy and satisfying to be involved in the entire process of a project, starting from the design phase. At mog+, in some projects we also handle the construction, and now we are also doing interior design. In Mexico, we can collaborate with construction workers directly. Architects don't need to have a degree in engineering to build. We enjoy working as a team and being involved in all stages of the project.

Foundations of friendship

AM: Polo (Leopoldo) and I had been friends since childhood. Then there was Diego, our former partner, who was also our classmate at university. It all started when I worked with Polo on a  project, which was my grandmother's house on a family ranch. At the same time, Diego invited me to design another house for one of his family members. The three of us joined and that’s why the name of our office was MO+G at the time, derived from the first letters of our surnames.

Then, my uncle commissioned us a house that became our first project together. It was very informal at first, we tested ourselves through that initial project and realised we worked very well together, which led us to formalise the collaboration. This was when we were still students, back in 2012. That project, named Casa Pinar, was a milestone and became very popular, being published in Taschen and some magazines. That project led us to another commission, Casa Eucaliptos: a friend of Diego who  had just been married and wanted us to design a small house within a limited budget. That project taught us many important skills. 

LO: In 2014, we met José Noe Suro, a famous ceramist, who commissioned us to design his new ceramic studio and headquarters. That project was selected to be displayed at the Architecture Biennale of Jalisco. These three projects, Casa Pinar, Casa Eucaliptos, and Cerámica Suro, are some of the most appreciated of the early days of our practice.

AM: At the beginning, it was just the three of us in a small office with no employees. One of us was drawing plans in AutoCAD, another was on the construction site, and the third was handling the accounts. We started to develop more projects, mostly in the countryside, and began to grow gradually, step by step. In 2015, we decided to move to the office where we are located today, and had  a team of about 15 architects and engineers involved in the construction. In 2018, Diego, our former partner, decided to pursue his independent path, working with his family. 

Rustic roots, modern designs

AS: Our office is located near colonia Seattle. This place represents us and influences the way we work, design, and conceive our projects. It is a house with a garden and many trees. In this neighbourhood, the roads are made of stone, giving it a very rustic and peaceful atmosphere. You can hear lots of birds and the sounds of nature. As you enter the one-story house, you can immediately feel the vibe, as if you were out of the city. The facade of the office has a reddish patina. Upon entering, you find yourself in a small garden in which Polo, Andrés, and Diego started planting gradually. Today there's still a very special maguey, who after about ten years is dying, making us realise time passed. As you walk through the studio, you notice stones, pieces and books scattered around the place, we enjoy gathering objects with a past. The main door is one very old made of wood. If you look around, you'll see that the ceiling has many plants growing into the space, as we are letting nature come into the office. The whole office, which feels more like a home, opens up a lot to the exterior. We are a small team, so everybody is involved in the whole process of the project. We also have  different ages, so each one of us contributes something different. I think we reach a good balance of creativity, experience, ideas, and organisation.

When you go through the workshop, you enter a big terrace. Here, there’s a big table with equipales, Mexican chairs, one of our favourites. From here, you look out to the garden, which is for me the best part of the office, the floor shows its age because it has some patina. The same goes for the walls, which show also the season we are in. There are a lot of shadows. On the floor, we have what we call cicatrices, scars, instead of covering up the passage of time, we decided to embrace it, like kintsugi done in stone on the floor. Many objects are scattered around the garden, which are part of the collection of taller adjunto, which is our new project, it is like a sister to mog+ focused in detail and interior design, enriching our proposals and it also incorporates one of our passions which is collecting furniture and objects with a past. 

Crafting culture through collaboration

AM: We started very young, and we did some projects, but we always looked at what was around us. We learned by doing. We have always looked at the countryside and the vernacular architecture of Mexico, the colonial architecture, the haciendas, and the ranchos. We started with those kinds of interests, and now, about ten years after we started, we are reflecting on our work and have noticed that our practice is very influenced by some of these concepts.

LO:  When you start to build here in Mexico, you are often surrounded by experienced artisans: we call them maestros. It's a colloquial term. We learned a lot of new things from them. The solution is sometimes spontaneous; it is not planned because the place or the site where the project is taking place demands that. You have to employ a lot of local materials that you sometimes find on-site, and by working with the maestros, you learn how to do that, making some decisions on-site. This is becoming a very natural process in our practice.

AS: This approach brings something very enriching. Someone who just designs and never gets involved in the construction will never know how things are actually done. This way of working gives us a lot of attention to detail, to the space, and to the real feel of the place because we are involved in the construction and with the people who get things done. So, we understand how a wall is built. We not only want the wall to look like something; we think about how it is going to be built, and this brings something very special to the office. We work together with the people who are making the project come alive. We see value in imperfection and in improvisation, like in the unexpected. It's also part of Mexican culture. We see a lot of beauty in things that probably didn't result as planned. Maybe one material responded differently than expected. The colour changed due to the climate. We tend to embrace those imperfections instead of being very rigid and trying to be a perfect practice with a very systematic approach.

Timeless tradition meets modernity

LO: We love the past, the tradition, the history, the material of the site, and the people involved in it. It is our way of embracing sustainability. This way of working brings a vernacular aspect to our projects, which is increasingly evident in our work. We don't want to lose this practice. We want to respect it and showcase it through our projects.

AM: Recently, we celebrated ten years of our practice and wanted to put all these ideas and keywords on paper. I think it can give you a very good understanding of our practice. We are closely related to vernacular Mexican architecture, and traditional techniques have been present in all the work in the studio. We want to keep doing that, and even more, with greater emphasis. As Polo said, the sustainable practices we are looking to are not just the new ones or those involving new technological achievements. We are not ignoring them, of course; we want to incorporate them as well. However, we are also focusing on the old ones, like the way you use natural light, how light responds to the use of certain materials, and how you can create a very pleasant thermal environment with just the materials. Mexico has a lot of tradition in this area and a lot of experienced practices that respect the natural environment. We want to look towards these traditions, combine them, and innovate. We want to propose something new.

MF: Innovation through something authentic. We like to investigate the history, the site, and the materials. Something very characteristic of mog+ is the ranch in the countryside of Mexico. We don't want to create places that look incredibly clean, organised, or symmetrical. We like textures, and we like the smells and sounds of a place. It's like in that space of our office, after the garden, where you feel like you want to read a book or drink a mezcal. We want to recreate those types of atmospheres.

AS: We appreciate life in the countryside all over the world. People in the countryside have a slower pace of life. They enjoy the small things, the outdoors, and the experience and feel-like brought by a place or space. We want to bring that into every context. When we develop a project in the city, we want people to feel as if  they are not in the city. Whether it is a commercial, industrial, or any other type of project, we intend to incorporate practices from the countryside into any context. As Polo says, we invite you to read, rest, or have a conversation on a terrace, sitting in some equipales, or to have the rain pouring inside your house because you have a patio. It's about bringing the essence of the countryside into any context.

Heaviness and light

AM: We have one project which is a house in the countryside. It's named Casa El Divisadero. We like it a lot because this house is inspired by the stone walls or “lienzos” that you see throughout the Mexican countryside. This house is located in a place with a lot of stone, so we decided to build with it. The walls are very heavy, and the ceiling is light, contrasting with the weight of the walls. This house also has some stables. We think this project embodies all the concepts we have been talking about. 

LO: This project is composed of three principal areas: the private, the social and the stables. These areas form three rectangular volumes located between three large trees originally found in the site: two Jacarandas , and one Tepehuaje. The stables and the social area are separated but oriented towards the main view, Cerro Viejo, whilst the private area is rotated to the southwest for more privacy and to benefit from another hillside view. All three buildings are scaled to “accommodate” a rider on a large horse. We have a very good video of this project with a horse inside in our webpage which was a finalist in Simon Architecture Prize 2020 filmed by Alejandro A. Del Castillo. Forde Visser wrote about El Divisadero for the Openhouse issue N°17 and mentioned how there was something almost cinematic about this project, not just because it would look great on film but mainly because of its attention to the narratives of lives, both human and equine, that will be shared there.

She also spoke about how this house made her think of the word querencia, which she understands as a deep and enduring sense of home, and I’m going to read some of her words which we find very interesting: “Not to dominate the landscape in the way building on ridgetops does, but to find that spot from which one can feel strong and safe within the land. The site’s hollow, the magic of arboreal triangulation, the “animal” power of scale, the stone quarried from this earth and invested with human labor, and a respect for how time passes both through the building materials (steel that will rust) and is sequenced into the construction timeline (starting with the stable to work out ideas) all invest El Divisadero with querencia.”

From stables to studios

AS: Something very special in the office is that we are incorporating espacios creativos (creative spaces) into our weekly routine. These are times when we can all take a break from our regular work to engage in extra activities, such as reading or investigating something of interest. For example, we have an ongoing investigation about horses and their relation to architecture, which is currently on standby. These creative spaces allow any of us to start a project on something new. Alongside these espacios creativos with our new project taller adjunto, we aim to explore different materials and engage hands-on with various projects. We want to conduct different activities here in the office to foster our creativity. For instance, we plan to invite a ceramist friend to conduct a ceramics workshop and we are working on a book soon to be published. We want to be involved in other practices so that our architectural proposals are richer, more tangible, and more in touch with our hands, bodies, and nature.