The Spring 2021 AAD Praxis Program is now running!

2021 AADP Program

JANUARY 2021

Luis Enrique Flores + Armida Fernández

Introducción
Estudio ALA es un estudio de diseño y arquitectura establecido en Guadalajara, México en 2012, dirigido por los arquitectos Luis Enrique Flores y Armida Fernández. Luis Enrique Flores egresado de la UDG (Universidad de Guadalajara), con un master MLA I AP Master in Landscape Architecture en Harvard Graduate School of Design y Armida Fernández se formó como diseñadora industrial antes de pasar a la arquitectura, egresada del ITESM Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, con un MDes Master in Design Studies en la concentración de Risk and Resilience en Harvard Garduate School of Design. El estudio aborda cada proyecto desde una perspectiva multidisciplinaria buscando generar experiencias entre las personas y el espacio a través de los sentidos. Su trabajo se caracteriza por la atemporalidad y la expresividad material. Algunos de los proyectos del estudio se han desarrollado en Pharr-TX-EU, Pescadero- BCS, Querétaro, Puerto Escondido-Oaxaca, Punta Mita- Nayarit, Jiquilpan- Michoacan, Autlán de Navarro- Jal, Arandas- Jal y Guadalajara-Jal.

Su trabajo ha sido seleccionado para exhibirse en el Pabellón Mexicano de la 16a Bienal de Venecia en 2018 y reconocido por el Instituto de Tecnología de Illinois en Chicago para el Premio de Arquitectura Mies Crown Hall 2016, y publicado en medios nacionales e internacionales, entre ellos Frame, Domus, Dezeen, Harvard GSD y Arquine: Arquitecturas Mexicanas, Lo mejor del siglo XXI en Mexico.

The challenge
The agriculture industry in the 1970 ́s started to use plastic in greenhouses. They became less expensive, easier to produce and construct. As Easterling mentions, the green houses are the cruises of the tourist world “They have made the agricultural industry, into a mobile territory, – it is not only a formula for the growth of plants but also for the growth of urbanism”. 1

Seasonal farmworkers navigate between two places from their place of origin and the camp. This migration has increased through time. While the population in Mexico has increased 2.5 times in 46 years, the seasonal farmworkers population increased 5 times. They migrate due to insufficient labor opportunities in their place of origin: Oaxaca, Chiapas, Tabasco, Veracruz, Guerrero, Hi- dalgo, Michoacán.

According to Easterling, the requirements for high-tech Agricultural industry territories are loca- tion (sunshine), laws (relaxed trade agreements), loyalties of nations, geologic conditions, atmos- pheric conditions, climatic conditions and cheap labor which many times produces immigrant la- bor. As a result, a “formation Index” is created resulting in climate change, global wage scales, transportation, and labor migration patterns. Agriculture companies are in constant transfor- mation. How can this typology be seen in constant transition? How can be design a master pro- gram rather than a master plan? Farming it, that reacts to time and adaptation. A community that shares geographic space, understands space as an ongoing motion, share similar rhythms, feel- ings and reasons to move.

Through understanding the language of farmworker human mobility patterns, the aim is to identify needs and factors of this flow. To analyze the different fragments that construct the territory of multiple flows that dominate the itineraries of this population in movement. Addressing the rela- tionship between the farm laborers, the living space, the landscape and the land could become a major agent of social and spatial transformation towards seasonal farmworkers resilience.

1 Easterling, Keller. “Tomato World,” Praxis 4: Landscapes (2002): 117–123.