The eco-aesthetics of Pedregal and constructive botany in the megacity of Mexico

Arte Abierto presents in Drifts of Art and Architecture, The eco-aesthetics of Pedregal and constructive botany in the megacity of Mexico.

This talk explores the urban-natural and artistic-architectural relationship of the Pedregal de San Ángel Ecological Reserve (REPSA), a unique reserve in the world that is located within Ciudad Universitaria and that protects an extraordinary fund of biodiversity stressed by the current unsustainable development of the mega-city of Mexico.

Thanks to the fact that it is a place where the city, wild vegetation and volcanic rock remaining from the eruption of the Xitle volcano coexist, it has functioned as a didactic enclave that has been a source and inspiration for works of contemporary art such as STRATUM by Luis Carrera-Maul (MUCA Campus, 2022) or Modthern Nature by Gabriela Galván (Arte Abierto, 2023). It has also been the setting for imagining a new type of architecture that leaves only a minimal ecological footprint: constructive botany; a model made by the German architect Hannes Schwertfeger, who introduced it to Mexico in 2022, in a workshop given at UNAM.

This Drift reflects on how architecture, art and nature find points of confluence to think about our environmental responsibility as current inhabitants of the basin of Mexico and the world.

Peter Krieger is a PhD in Art History from the University of Hamburg, Germany, a researcher at the Institute for Aesthetic Research and a professor at UNAM's Postgraduate Architecture and Art History. He has conducted research and publications on the aesthetics, history, theory, ecology, and political iconography of architecture, cities, and landscapes. He is currently working on a book about the Pedregal de San Ángel Ecological Reserve. From 2004 to 2012 he was vice president of the International Committee for the History of Art (CIHA / UNESCO) and from 2010 to 2018 member of the Outdoor Advertising Commission, Ministry of Development and Housing, Government of Mexico City. During 2016 and 2017 he was Visiting Professor at the Universities of Hamburg / Aby Warburg, Tübingen and Regensburg Universities.

Juan José Kochen is an architect and editor. He studied Architecture at the Faculty of Architecture of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Journalism at the Carlos Septién García School of Journalism and a master's degree in Analysis, Theory and History of Architecture at UNAM. He wrote for the newspaper Reforma, was editor of Arquine, consultant to the General Sub-directorate of Sustainability and Technology of Infonavit, fellow of the National Council of Science and Technology (Conacyt), of the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and of the Young Creators Program of the National Fund for Culture and the Arts (FONCA) on two occasions. He is the author of Utopia as a model, a professor at the Universidad Iberoamericana and director of the ICA Foundation.

— Arte Abierto