Abel Perles/PRODUCTORA: Series of Detours

This event will also be livestreamed on YouTube.

The Architecture Department welcomes founding partner of Mexico City based studio, PRODUCTORA, Abel Perles.

For his talk, Perles will present Series of Detours. As a starting point, our architecture always tries to resume itself into one single gesture: one simple set of rules that can orchestrate a building. The main goal in our architecture is to establish a fruitful clash between our personal interests (our own stubborn will) and the will of the assignment (this is the latent possibilities embedded into the site, context, program, budget, client, etc.). Only when we can establish here an intense and meaningful relationship of conflict, then a new, unknown and surprising set of architectonic axioms can arise. Since we believe that the key to resolve a problem cannot be found within the material of the puzzle itself, we use our own interests and playful try-outs as a trick to focus on something completely outside the real problem, and so - through a detour - to come up with a fresh and powerful solution to the problem (although maybe not always the most logical one). 

Perles is one of the four partners of PRODUCTORA, the architectural studio founded in 2006. The studio's work is distinguished by an interest in distinct geometries, the production of clearly legible projects with limited gestures and the search for timeless buildings. PRODUCTORA has been awarded by the Architectural League of New York with the Young Architects Forum (2007) and the Emerging Voices (2013). Its work has been presented in the Architectural Biennials of Venice (2008, 2012, and 2018) and in the Chicago Architecture Biennial (2015, 2017), and has been featured at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (2009) and in the National Art Museum of China in Beijing (2015, 2017). Among the many publications of the office, their first feature by Arquine (2010) and their issue of 2G Architecture Magazine (2014) stand out. Their book, Being the Mountain, was the result of research initiated after winning the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize for Emerging Practice at the Illinois Institute of Technology. The studio has developed a wide variety of designs in Mexico and abroad, from residential projects to public buildings and corporate spaces.

If you require any accessibility accommodation, such as live captioning, audio description, or a sign language interpreter, please email news@design.upenn.edu to let us know what you need. Please note, we require at least 48 hours’ notice. If you register within 48 hours of this event, we won’t be able to secure the appropriate accommodations.