Beauty as a Social Right: Rozana Montiel on Finding a Solution Rather than Becoming the Problem

By Kate Mazade

Rozana Montiel is the director and founder of Rozana Montiel Estudio de Arquitectura (REA), a Mexico City-based studio focused on design, artist reconceptualizations of space, and the public domain. The nine-person practice ranges from micro-objects like books and artifacts to structures and cities. REA believes that beauty is a social right and seeks to generate quality spaces with multiple temporal narratives.

In her interview with Kate Mazade, Rozana talks about finding the overlaps between art and architecture, taking a stance with a design, and finding opportunities to act and make an impact on the world around you.

KM: How did you first become interested in architecture?

RM: Since I was very small, I had an interest in design and space. When I was nine I asked my parents if I could design my own room. At that time it was the place where all my friends wanted to gather and spend time. As in Virginia Woolf’s book, it was a room of one’s own.

My parents were art collectors. They collected Latin American paintings mostly from Mexican artists. We were always going to museums so I had a very close relationship with art. My father was the one who suggested to me, "Why don't you study architecture?" It's a broader way of thinking.

Since I was fifteen, I spent many vacations in a white house with a big palapa at the beach. That's also one of the reasons that I decided to study architecture. It was designed by Diego Villaseñor, a Mexican architect that knows very well how to read the site and has a very conscious way of relating with nature.

I studied at Universidad Iberoamericana, a private university in Mexico City. When I finished, I realized there were some blank spaces I wanted to fill so I went to look for—more art, theory and critical thinking. I went to Barcelona to study Architectural Theory and Criticism in the Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya UPC. It made a lot of sense with what I was looking for. It was a life changer. The seminars were called Anatomy of the enigma, Irrationality of the analysis etc. I was doing research, reading as many books as I could and going to the movies three times per week.

Common Unity. Photo by Sandra Pereznieto.

Can you walk me through your career and what you've done since school?

When I was finishing architecture, I decided to make my thesis in a different way. At that time, they asked you for an architectonic project with structure, installations, costs, and a complete executive project. I had been doing that for eight semesters, it was boring for me to repeat the same, so I did a theoretical thesis.

I changed the format that was required to a square format, I did it all without capital letters, It was called "+ x -" towards a voluntary simplicity. I was studying music, literature, art, and cinema. I struggled for a long time for my teacher to let me do it that way. At a very early stage of my career, I saw the importance of working with other disciplines and I realized I always wanted to do research and relate architecture with art.

At the end the thesis won different prizes and an award in Barcelona, after I came back to Mexico and decided to work on my own. I started my own practice, because I couldn't find one that was doing more things than just architectonic projects in a very conventional way. I opened my office in a room in the back of an artist's studio with some friends. We started by remodeling our families houses. Parallel to this, I started teaching a seminar about the relation of architecture with art, color, body, space, light and materiality. It was really fun.

At that time, I wanted to move and live on my own, so I applied for a grant from the Mexican government called FONCA. This grant is given each year to 100 young creators from all disciplines—architecture, cinema, sculpture, painting, music, choreography, writing—where you develop for a year the project you submitted. I won it and it was also a life changer.

Part of the grant was to travel during that year three times to different states of Mexico with all the 100 creators and the tutors of each discipline. For four days you would interact with all of them. I was relating very closely with many disciplines and learning from all artists.

Every time I came back from those trips I was really inspired and believed that my way to do architecture was in the intersection with these disciplines.

“I believe that once architecture becomes ethical, aesthetical, and practical, it can really solve concrete problems urgent in the world today.”

— Rozana Montiel

I love the overlap between art and architecture and how the disciplines interact. What would you say is kind of the core mission of your practice?

One of the main ideas is that we learn by doing. I'm really interested in transforming reality with an active gaze, being able to see things in a different way to look closer. We not only see with our eyes, but also with our skin. The optic and the haptic. I really like to interact with dancers that work with their bodies moving through space.

We have been working on a manifesto with 13 statements that summarize all of our principles, and it's organic—it keeps growing. Taking a stand is one of the points of the manifesto. How can we reflect, and how do we commit as architects? I think that we have a responsibility to act upon our ideas and to activate all the spaces that we do according to that.

We assume beauty as a basic right, understanding how to dignify spaces for everyone. In Mexico, we have a huge contrast between poor and rich, and it's very polarized. How can we work on both sides?

What impact do you want to have on Mexico City and the world with your work?

We need to think about what we really need to design and why, and then, when we're going to build something, to really find a way of transforming things.

The research and the exhibitions help me do that in a faster way. Many times, projects can take five years or more, and when you present in an exhibition, something has to go faster. When we show these, it's a way of introducing critical thinking or a reflection on what we do.

I believe that once architecture becomes ethical, aesthetical, and practical, it can really solve concrete problems urgent in the world today. For example, I did an installation that was last year in Versailles called "Stand up for the Seas." We were talking about the pollution of the oceans, and the fishing gear that is the most polluting element.

We have this problem. What can we do as architects? Why don't we transform these fishing nets that are left in the oceans harming a lot of species into something else? We transformed them into a micro plastic floor—into a useful material. How can we, as architects, find a solution rather than becoming a problem, even if it's really simple? If materials are really polluting, transform them into a resource.

Stand Up for the Seas. Photo by Sandra Pereznieto.

That's amazing. What are some of your biggest career challenges?

One big challenge has been being a mother and continuing working in architecture—finding a balance between family and doing architecture. I'm still trying to find that balance. It's been difficult. I wanted to be a mother because I wanted to spend time with my daughter, so I have to manage my time.

It's also balancing all these creative things like books and exhibitions, with trying to manage the administrative part, this has been really difficult for me. I always want to be on the creative side.

Another challenge is struggling with clients—institutions, communities, private clients—and trying to understand their needs. I've always tried to give more to the architecture, try to go a step ahead.

Trying to find projects that I'm interested in is a big challenge. Architecture is a long career, and you have to have a lot of patience to keep going in difficult moments. Architecture is like a roller coaster. It goes up and down all the time, and it's not very stable. I have been trying to find that balance in stability—sometimes you have a lot of projects and sometimes you have less, but you have to keep an office going.

On the other side of that, what are some of your biggest career highlights?

I have been working with my own practice since 2001. For the next few years, I was remodeling houses for friends and family and doing small projects. A big highlight in my career was working on the Pilgrim’s Route project in 2010, understanding a bigger scale - the territory and the landscape - and collaborating with architects from all over the world.

In 2015, I started collaborating with the Institute of the National Housing Fund for Workers (Infonavit) invited by Carlos Zedillo who by the time was Head of the Research Center of Sustainable Development (CIDS). He did an amazing job changing many policies of the institution and working with many interesting architects, so I worked on around 15 projects, some were research and some were built. Here I started working with the rehabilitation of public space in housing units. We interacted with communities, with very simple low cost structures we managed to transform the perception of the inhabitants by changing the idea of a vertical line that separates and divides (walls, fences, gates) to a horizontal line that reunites and gathers (roof, common ground, bridge). We transform space into place, placemaking has been a highlight in our public space projects.

“Women have woven since early times. Today I weave relationships and social networks. At the studio we weave and interconnect projects of different scales and layers to create a positive impact with the landscape, with the context and the communities.”

— Rozana Montiel

Who do you admire? Who inspires you?

There are many women who have inspired me—and not only in the field of architecture. When I was younger, I was really inspired by the artist Remedios Varo who was a Spanish painter who came from exile to Mexico. She painted these amazing surrealist paintings in the 40s-60s with artifacts that created fictional worlds. We had a painting of her at home and it inspired me every day.

The architect Lina Bo Bardi has been a real inspiration—her drawings, everything that she thought about architecture, going from modern to an artisanal way of doing things, looking into communities.

Currently, I have been researching Nahui Olin. She was an artist, painter, activist, poet, muse, professor, and model. She was progressive and avant garde and fought for women's rights.

Our office is in her former house, a brick townhouse. It was by coincidence that I found this space, and I love when serendipity happens. On the first floor is where we develop the architectonic projects, and the second floor is a laboratory of ideas and experimentation, where we do research, design exhibitions and books.Nahui Olin was a multidisciplinary artist and we follow this way of interconnecting with disciplines and people.

Do you have any advice for women starting their careers in architecture or design?

You have to really keep up. Don't lose track of this idea because many times we think it's impossible. After twenty years, there have been many moments that I want to just give up and start something else. But there's something that keeps me going— a very deep and big passion for what I do and for the studio I have built. For having a creative mind that never stops.

Remembering that even if you're a mother, you can balance life and architecture. You find ways to make time and space for everything.

I often think about the concept of weaving. Women have woven since early times. Today I weave relationships and social networks. At the studio we weave and interconnect projects of different scales and layers to create a positive impact with the landscape, with the context and the communities.

I would finally recommend that in order to move forward you have to act. Don’t wait for a commission to come but go out and look for opportunities to put in action, even if it is very small it can have a great impact. This is the way to start.