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This article is part of our series profiling the Architectural League of New York’s 2024 Emerging Voices laureates and appears in the March/April issue of The Architectural League of New York. one. The full list of winners can be found here.
Mexican duo Luis Enrique Flores and Armida Fernandez founded Estudio ALA in 2012 in Guadalajara, Mexico. “Our approach is less about design type and more about prototyping—a sequence of events rather than a collection of things,” they said in a statement. .
The pair view each project as a multi-layered collection, each made up of different cultural, social, traditional and economic factors that come together to form a “cultural collage”. To identify the layers, the studio’s research process began with Flores and Fernandez traveling to each project location. By talking to locals and paying attention to materiality and cultural practices, they ensured the result was a unique and site-specific project.
The heritage of craftsmanship is tangible in Estudio ALA’s work that bridges industrial and rural contexts – an heirloom from the founder’s upbringing in Guadalajara, a growing metropolis influenced by traditional religion and the influence of Aboriginal culture, and enjoys a high reputation for handcraftsmanship. The designer’s collaborations with tequila and mezcal factories in Jalisco and Michoacán are examples of cultural collage combined with this emotion. “Industrial manufacturing has an ancient tradition,” Flores told one. In Tequila Centinela Chapel, the company embraces the religious traditions of Jalisco and draws inspiration from missionary spaces. The combination of tequila by-products and humble local materials connects the structure to the site’s heritage and enhances it.
The cultural collage is animated by the duo’s appreciation of local and Aboriginal materiality. Their projects document traditions across Mexico: the use of adobe bricks in the Centinela church in Jalisco; the vernacular timber architecture of a winery in Michoacán; and the palm roofs of their Baja California hotel plan. Every material application respects ancestral roots and reinvents modern sensibilities.
“In this complex world, creating a space for reflection is complicated,” Fernandez said. “This is a field where we question who we are, what we do, and where we want to go.”
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