Architecture commonly makes people think of physical construction, in the process of which an idea is materialized. But what happens before such a physical manifestation? How are the underlying ideas constructed? In other words, what is the material of ideas?

These questions are the basis of Cuban architecture office Infraestudio’s exhibition “En tu Mente” (In your Mind) at LIGA in Mexico City. Despite its small scope, the show captures a spirit among the works that opens the field of imagination and interpretation, consciously and unconsciously, when thinking about the ideas that shape architectural thinking and its experience.

The first work, a jumble of written ideas on paper, seems to invite visitors to pick up a sheet and take it home, just as we would do with an idea we liked and save for later when it can be used. The show presents a dichotomy of poetic ideals and contradictions whose results are similar, but their interpretation is not. A plan made from words not lines; words that come together and extend each other in the collective imagination. A window looks both ways: out and in at us. A bridge unconsciously separates what surrounds it. A secret look, judgment, interest or complicity. The fragile tension between two close bodies, as close to chaos as to peace in the blink of an eye.

All of these works might seem peculiarly obvious at first glance, but, as with ideas in architecture, interpretation is the last step in the creative process. This last step is the one that determines the life or death of an idea, its success or its failure, its use or its disuse. The last approach can be used for this show, due to the singular sensation of seeing nothing but seeing too much at the same time, maybe too many pieces for such a restricted space? Are we seeing overthought pieces or is it just that we are looking beyond the big picture? But isn’t this how ideas coexist? In complementation and contradiction, always in a process of creation/interpretation.

mrc.