Baumer Lecture Series, Juan Herreros & Fernanda Canales

“From Walls to Communities”

In this lecture, Fernanda will showcase her latest built work in Mexico. She will present projects completed in the past 10 years, focusing on different programs and scales, and addressing the collective implications of individual buildings. She will speak about the challenges of working in cities where 70% of buildings are informal, and where the usefulness of an architect is rarely acknowledged, demanding to explore new ways of relating people, buildings, and the environment. Canales will explain how every project leads to further research. For example, how the project for a family home turns into the study of the ideas behind the concept of dwelling and the impact of houses in cities, and how that becomes an excuse to expand the relationship between planning and inhabiting. Fernanda will focus on projects in border cities in the Sonora desert that deal with public space, scarcity of resources, and the need to create a sense of appropriation and identity.

Fernanda Canales

Fernanda Canales is an architect based in Mexico City focused on designing better relations between buildings, people, and the environment. She has been recognized by The New York Times as one of the 10 female figures changing the landscape of leadership in the world and her firm was named one of the world’s 100 Best Architecture Firms by Domus magazine.

Canales holds a PhD in architecture from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid, an MA from the Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña in Barcelona, and has developed her practice since she received her BA from Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City in 1997.

Her work ranges from the creation of cultural buildings, private projects, and research to interventions in public spaces and furniture design. She is the author of the books Mi House Your City (Verlag der Buchhandlung Walter König, 2024), Shared Structures, Private Space (Actar 2020), and Architecture in Mexico 1900–2010 (Arquine, 2013). Her work has been exhibited at The Royal Academy of Arts in London, the ifa-Gallery in Stuttgart, and the Venice Biennale, among other institutions.

Canales has been visiting faculty at the Politecnico di Milano (Spring 2023), Harvard University GSD (Fall 2022), Princeton School of Architecture (Fall 2021) and was the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professor of Architectural Design at Yale School of Architecture (Fall 2019), as well as a guest speaker at MIT, the Architectural Association in London, Columbia University in New York, and Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape, among other universities.

Fernanda Canales’s work has been recognized and supported by various international institutions, including the Emerging Voices Award from The Architectural League of New York (2018), the Research Graham Foundation Grant (2022), and the Career Award in Mexico (2014, Colegio de Arquitectos de México).

In recent years her work has focused on social housing projects and civic buildings in Mexico and has participated in cultural programs such as the VDL Studio House Residency in Los Angeles in 2023.

Juan Herreros

Juan Herreros is an architect with 40 years of practice, the Chair Professor of Architectural Design at the Madrid School of Architecture, and Senior Professor of Professional Practice at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation of Columbia University in New York. In addition, he has developed his teaching and research activity in institutions such as Princeton University, the Architectural Association of London, the EPF of Architecture of Lausanne, the IIT of Chicago, and the Aalto University of Helsinki, among others. He has participated as a juror in competitions, awards, and biennials, and has been a member of editorial boards of specialized journals and expert committees related to architectural education.

In 1984 he founded Abalos&Herreros, in 1999 LMI (Liga Multimedia Internacional), in 2006 Herreros Arquitectos, and in 2014 estudioHerreros consolidating a global, multidisciplinary, and committed practice that embraces its founder’s professional, teaching and research activity. His accomplishments span all scales, being his main field of action highly complex projects that require the coordination of transdisciplinary experts and developing technologies. His carrier has been widely awarded, published, and exhibited, including MoMA in New York, the IIT and Syracuse Universities in the US, ICO museum in Madrid, Arc en Reve in Bourdeaux, the Centro de la Imagen de La Virreina in Barcelona, the StudioX in Rio de Janeiro, and the Spanish, Latin American, Venice and Istanbul biennials on different occasions.

The main built projects completed by estudioHerreros are the Munch Museum and the Trosten Sauna in Oslo, the Ágora-Bogotá events center, the Costa del Este Office Tower and the Coastal Parks in Panama City, the Communication Hut in Gwangju, South Korea, the reconfiguration of the public areas of the Malba Museum in Buenos Aires, and important residential complexes in Marseille, Oslo, and Casablanca. In Spain, their most recent projects include the Solo Collection in Madrid, the CarrerasMúgica contemporary art gallery in Bilbao and the Caracol Building in Barcelona. Estudio Herreros has currently projects under construction like the high-speed train station in Santiago de Compostela, the ecological quartier Gulia in Bucharest, the new MALBA Museum in Buenos Aires, the Alkar Museum in Bilbao, and the Solo CSV multiformat event center in Madrid, and other projects in the design step in Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Romania and Uruguay.

His most relevant publications include “Lambda Files: the process of design and construction of the Munch Museum” (Spector, Leipzig, 2023), Technology & Type (AV, Madrid, 2021), Textos Críticos (Asimétricas, Madrid, 2019), Critical Practice (TC, Valencia, 2019), Dialogue Architecture (La Oficina, Madrid, 2013), Housing and Public Space in the XXI Century (Actar, Barcelona, 2008), and Palaces for Fun (LMI, Madrid, 2000); and, in collaboration with I. Ábalos, the books Tower & Office (MIT Press, Cambridge, 2003) and Le Corbusier- Skyscrapers (Madrid, 1988), among many others.

Among the distinctions awarded, Juan Herreros holds the International Fellowship of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA); the BIA honorable distinction of the city of Bilbao, the A+ Career Achievement Award; the ICON-Design, AD and Fuera de Serie Awards in the Architecture categories; the Medal of Arts of the city of San Lorenzo de El Escorial and the title of Architect of the World from the Architects Association of Lima; and has a nomination for the Architecture Medal of the Academy of Arts and Letters of the USA and another for the United States Artists Prize.

The Baumer Series invites prominent researchers and practitioners of architecture, landscape architecture, and city and regional planning to present their work and to engage subjects both topical and enduring.