Cano Vera incorporates poetry in its architectural works

This text is a part of our sequence of profiles on The Architectural League of New York’s 2024 Rising Voices winners printed within the March/April problem of AN. The total record of winners will be discovered right here.

Cano Vera Arquitectura is a Mexico Metropolis–primarily based studio led by Juan Carlos Cano, Paloma Vera, and Fermin Andrade the place everybody wears a number of hats. Throughout enterprise hours, the agency designs social housing, infrastructure, and cultural tasks all through Mexico, with an emphasis on underserved neighborhoods. However interspersed all through the day and into the night time, Cano runs a publishing home, MaNgOs de HaCHa, that produces poetry, movie criticism, and biographical works, whereas Vera helps edit Arquine, a world-renowned structure publication positioned in CDMX.

Previous to practising structure, Cano earned a grasp’s diploma in literature principle, an accomplishment, he instructed AN, that he places to make use of in his apply. “I attempt to incorporate poetry within the architectural work,” Cano stated, “not in a literal approach, however slightly we attempt to discover sure essences of the structure that create sure sorts of poetry, which could be very troublesome to do if you’re doing company work.”

Since 2007, designers at Cano Vera have been mentored by Oscar Hagerman, a well-known architect and educator revered for his work with Mexico’s Indigenous communities. Cano instructed AN that Hagerman has been an influential voice in a handful of Cano Vera’s tasks, together with the College of the Surroundings campus in Acatitlán which teaches college students about sustainable agricultural practices. In 2020, when Cano Vera was employed to remodel Mexico’s former presidential palace right into a public constructing, Hagerman was additionally there to assist the agency’s management alongside the way in which.

Utopia Estrella is one among Cano Vera’s ongoing tasks that demonstrates the studio’s dedication to weaving collectively themes of design excellence, nature, and poetry. In jap Mexico Metropolis, Cano Vera remodeled a former landfill right into a wetland and in addition designed an adjoining group middle. At this time, the challenge serves one of many poorest quarters of Mexico Metropolis. “Designing public works in Mexico will be chaotic and fairly tense,” Cano stated. “However we’re very on this work. We’re dedicated to doing public buildings.”