Research & Editorial Design 2023

Diez casitas desplegadas

This research project was awarded Honorable Mention and the Manuel Garibay Award. Following its completion, I was invited by my thesis advisor to join the History Research Studio as a teaching assistant. The research was conducted over the course of one year with the aim of understanding the social, cultural, and spatial conditions that have led residents of Isla Mujeres to self-build and incrementally expand their homes through informal processes.

The work was grounded in extensive field research. Over the course of a year, I visited ten homes to document the stories of ten families, exploring how their houses had evolved across generations and the reasons behind their continuous transformation. The research combined interviews, architectural surveys, photographic documentation, analytical diagrams, and family genealogies to build a deeper understanding of the relationship between housing, memory, and everyday life.

The research ultimately invites a reconsideration of the assumptions surrounding self-built housing and the role of architects within the country's urban realities. It advocates for a practice grounded in active listening, opening the door to more thoughtful, honest, and context-responsive architectural proposals shaped by the lived experiences of their inhabitants.

The outcome was a deeply intimate publication that reveals not only the complexity of building on an island, but also how the home becomes the most tangible expression of history, heritage, and the lives of those who inhabit it.

Houses emerge as a way of reading the territory. They reveal people's priorities, aspirations, and living conditions, while also reflecting the political, economic, and social dynamics that shape their everyday lives.

The research included interviews with key representatives from the Isla Mujeres municipality, including officials responsible for economic development and tourism, the island's official historian, and public service managers overseeing waste collection, water, and electricity infrastructure. In addition, cadastral maps were obtained, and aerial drone imagery was captured to develop a broader and more accurate understanding of the territory.