BETON MACHINE : FAMILY OF FORMS​

September, 2015

 

 

BETON MACHINE : FAMILY OF FORMS is an exhibition of works created by the Architectural Association of London, Visiting Schools program during their time at an experimental cement workshop in Las Pozas, Mexico, as well as a video collaboration by MARSO artist Daniela Libertad.

 

The program took place August 2015 and brought together architects and artists from Mexico, Japan, the United Kingdom, Italy, Switzerland, Norway, Iran, Turkey, Peru, Argentina, and the United States, to experiment with molds and forms, both positive and negative shapes.

 

Starting in Mexico City, participants of the AAVS first considered constructions of a sculptural nature: covering pre-Hispanic monumentalism alongside examples of the modernist, abstract projects led by Mathias Goeritz in Mexico. The students later moved onto Las Pozas, Jardín Surrealista – a surrealist concrete garden built over the course of three decades by the eccentric Englishman, Edward James in Xilitla, San Luis Potosí. At Las Pozas, the AAVS realized dissections and detailed studies of the molds and techniques used by James and his collaborators. These studies established the basis for their later experiments on the sculptural qualities of concrete. 

 

A calculated communion with nature, a project without scale, and the adoption of rudimentary, primitive techniques form the central tenets of the production processes involved in the creation of these forms.