DINNER PARTY - An Installation
Chair
Architectural Association
Summer School in Latin America
Naso Vargas and Maite Garcia-Lascurain
Date
July 2026
Collaborators
All Participants of the Programm
Rooted in the AA’s tradition of experimental architectural education, the programme took Mexico City as both context and classroom. Through urban explorations, collective research, and conversations with architects and artists, students investigated the contradictions, rhythms and unexpected forms of ingenuity embedded in everyday urban life.
The programme culminated in a collective installation - or a dinner party - designed and built with students: a spatial response distilled from three weeks of observing, recording and interpreting the city. Rather than representing Mexico City literally, the project translates recurring urban conditions into space, drawing particularly on moments of compression and decompression; the oscillation between the sensory intensity of the streets and the unexpected moments of calm that punctuate them.
The installation also draws from the surprising beauty of industrial materials found in tianguis and informal constructions, where utility, improvisation and resourcefulness become an aesthetic language of their own. At its core, the project celebrates a distinctly Mexican culture of making: the ability to improvise, assemble from almost nothing, and approach uncertainty with an optimistic "¿y si sí?" embracing experimentation over perfection.
The result is both installation and gathering: a constellation of objects, rituals and shared encounters enveloped by a translucent skin. Less an exhibition than an invitation, it creates a space to sit together, observe, converse and, for a brief moment, inhabit the city differently.
Provecho.