“The Aesthetics of Hope” investigates architecture made outside the boundaries of official culture through the investigation of the self-built tiny chapels of the unregulated settlements of Mexico City and the SketchUp 3D Warehouse.
Wunderkammer #1. © Andrés Souto.
Jury
Andy Bow
Alex de Rijke
Kent Jackson (Chair)
John-Paul Nunes
This project explores the methods and processes in which popular culture appropriates and interprets official architecture and speculates on how these might evolve and give way to a new style in architecture.
Through the investigation of the self-built tiny chapels of the unregulated settlements of Mexico City and the SketchUp 3D Warehouse, the project reveals the influences between the material languages of self-building, popular culture, and technology. Each mode of making has been influenced, codependent, and coproduced by the other.
The project proposes a third basilica: The Newest Basilica of Guadalupe lives inside the SketchUp 3D Warehouse and is available to view and download for free. It has been designed through the arrangement of some of the most downloaded and popular architectural elements of the 3D Warehouse. Through the use of film (El Grand Tour) and social media (YouTube and YouTube channels), the project tries to legitimize this new typology of religious space and demonstrate construction techniques that might aid for the interpretation and appropriation of the building.
The newest Basilica of Guadalupe. © Andrés Souto.
Unfired clay chapels. © Andrés Souto.
The SketchUp 3D Warehouse. © Andrés Souto.
From digital to eternal. © Andrés Souto.
Wunderkammer #2. © Andrés Souto.
The ruins of representation: Styrofoam model of the newest Basilica of Guadalupe. © Andrés Souto.
The aesthetics of hope. © Andrés Souto.
Andrés Souto
Royal College of Art
School of Architecture
is a qualified architect currently working in Mexico City. He runs his own art, architecture, and architectural research practice and holds a teaching position in the Universidad Iberoamericana where he runs an architectural design studio. Souto hopes to use his award to visit parts of his home country he does not know yet as well as parts of South America where examples of his research can be studied firsthand.
