For the past two weeks we have been warming up and understanding the main objectives and necessary preparations for this year0s visit to El20. Presentations, logistics and assigments are being held in parallel between our Finnish partners and the students in Claudia’s class in Mexico City.
This year’s main project is a versitile cooking and dinning area attended by the women of the community to offer meals to the primary school children and tourists, with the possibility to be used as a gathering center for the members of the community. Everyone is avid to present a tangible proposal to El20 (or at least a prototype 😅). Some of the proposals we started working around this week is a recipe book of their traditional mayan dishes and local ingredients, the evaluation of the real or apparental necessity of a fridge, and the adaptation of a functional wood stove alligned to their manners and is safe to use.
Understanding the depth and situation of El20 has taken about 6 presential hours and more individual research hours. New questions have emerged, and more research needs to be made. One of the characteristics that we all agree on is that designers have to make informed decisions, not just create apparent material solutions, but to work from the real context of the systems and anticipate the impact their solutions will have in it.
Another interesting phenomenon that we are experimenting is the interdisciplinary collaboration. In the Mexico’s City group we have known each other for almost a year now, and since we are a very small group we have a broad knowledge of each other background and interest but this have always manifested in our individual investigations. Last session we brainstormed on what our ideas were for El20, individual interests and strengths. So much more can be done if each one of us bring out our best abilities and capabilities. It will be interesting to continue witnessing this generations approach and contributions to El20.
By: Pamela Garduño
Action Lab Mexico 