Portfolio | Lisboa 7

The latest issue of Uncube Magazine, No. 23, is devoted to Mexico City. Mimi Zeiger contributes an article on emerging practices that includes the work of AT103, designers of the fascinating housing project Lisboa 7. As she writes,

In the 2013 book Architecture Does (Not) Matter, AT103 chronicle their housing project Lisboa 7 through photographs, analytical drawings, and essays. It is an ode to the concrete block, and an investigation into how reducing architecture to fundamentals allowed the firm to radically reinterpret housing. Their scheme breaks down the massing into six narrow buildings, each honeycombed with courtyards and windows for maximum light and ventilation. “Form follows strategy”, Pardo quips. The blocks were left bare to reduce the cost of the enlarged exterior envelope.

I had the pleasure of touring Lisboa 7 with Francisco Pardo (above) while I was in Mexico City, and I took these photos. What struck me the most, as a visitor from Brooklyn, was the slicing and dicing of the open space on a narrow lot, reorienting most of the apartments to internal lightwells rather than windows only at the front and back of the lot. I’m all too familiar with the brownstone pattern here, and too few architects have attempted to rethink the 20 by 50 multifamily block. I also appreciated the way AT103 allowed for a much broader range of apartment size, from studio to three-bedroom, by creating modules that could be combined up and down and sideways. This seemed to be a recognition of the informal patterns one sees in older apartment buildings, made modular by necessity. It is also an idea raised by Jeanne Gang’s team in MoMA’s 2012 Foreclosed exhibition, anticipating the range of housing choices we need over time all happening in a single place.

If you’d like to know more, check out Architecture Does (Not) Matter and more photos at ArchDaily.

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