LIGA 41: Departamento del Distrito (Mex)

Unidad Vecinal

BACK

Foto: Arturo Arrieta

LIGA 41: Departamento del Distrito (Mex)

Unidad Vecinal

LIGA 41: Unidad Vecinal (Mex), Departamento del Distrito

June – October, 2025

Departamento del Distrito is a Mexican-American office founded by Francisco Quiñones and Nathan Friedman in 2017, whose practice operates at the intersection of architecture, curatorial work, and academia. From an expanded vision of the discipline, their work explores the multiple relationships between subjects, objects, technologies, and politics, articulating spatial inquiries that connect diverse scales, temporalities, and geographies. Without formal or cultural prejudices, Departamento del Distrito delivers colorful and quirky architectural assemblages that combine precise fabrication with off-the-shelf commercial and industrial components like patterned curtains, LED signage, plastic tarps, steel scaffolding, solar panels, and foldable chairs. Their critical and situated approach sees design as a tool to imagine alternative and collective futures.

What can it mean to live collectively? Unidad Vecinal rethinks the traditional domestic space by introducing a flexible architecture that, rather than being merely inhabited, is meant to be continuously activated. Conceived as a mutable stage within LIGA’s gallery, the installation proposes an alternative to conventional domestic prototypes—a device shaped through collective transformation. Through varied uses—rest, work, gathering—it seeks to rehearse other forms of community. Throughout the exhibition, the installation will be activated by an extensive public program including talks, film screenings, and playful gatherings for leisure and rest. These activities explore and challenge the boundaries between the intimate and the shared, the performative and the inhabitable, the individual and the collective. All activities will be announced on social media and are free and open to the public.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of: Cuprum-Eurovent, Arturo Arrieta, MARQ, Laguna, Marlo Dogs, Fiction Practice, Berel, and Panel Rey.

Photos: Arturo Arrieta