Architectural Democracy in MEXICO
The workshop held at UNAM, on the department of CIDI (Industrial Design) from 6th – 10th June 2016, by Pedro Aibéo of the Aalto University, Finland, is the follow up of stage 1 of the CIDI Research Development Plan (RDP) delineated and approved on 17th September 2015. It is an ongoing cooperation between UNAM and the “Architectural Democracy” (ArcDem) research of Aalto University, with the financial support of FinnCEAL and FGECI.
The main goal of CIDI’s RDP is to improve the research competences at the Industrial Design Department of UNAM in a multidisciplinary approach by using the UNAM campus as the binding element between different expertise involving both practice and research. For the Research on “Architectural Democracy” led by Pedro Aibéo, this cooperation is an important testing ground for the hypotheses needed to be tested. The core reasoning for positioning this project work within CIDI is to provide a combination and unique space for cross-disciplinary work and its on-going development. This model includes specific flexible relationships between project, research and learning. It is critical that this type of platform be based within CIDI providing a platform that is flexible enough to support and maintain a diverse range of activities and research across the department.
CIDI is embedded within the Architectural Department and within a unique campus which mimics a small scale city and is famous for its autonomous status. This provides great potential to go deeper and test these matters and develop cross-disciplinary research with a strong societal impact. We see great potential in trying to do so along the current trend of Internet of Things (IoT), the maker’s movement (3D home printing), open source and the smart city policies. These are changing the way we do industrial design and architecture. Objects can now be designed and mass produced at home and our homes are now living machines, networked with ever more blurred definitions of usages. The small scale of our everyday life objects are now connected to the grand urban scale. The butterfly effect is now ever more present; the empowerment of citizens to create and design from their homes is changing cities and redefining the definition of well being.