Nierika

The housing is located at the north of Guadalajara.
It is estimated to have around 2.500 inhabitants, living in 1.024 apartments, distributed in 66 similar towers.
It was built by the Infonavit in the early 80’s, and today represents one of the several stigmatized areas of the city, due to the explicit drug dealing problem.

The neighbors tells us that the Municipality has never allocated economic resources to it’s maintenance.
Our perception is that of an abandoned place, with a very complex living dynamic, but with a lot of possibilities to work in order to reverse this dynamic, creating a new usage memory among the neighbors and create appropriation.

In the wixárika universe, everything is related, everything and everyone is in constant communication.
People, plants, animals, the Sun, the air, water, the earth … all together we are part of the same universe, full of links that unite us with each other.

That is why, for this concept of Community, by the strength of community bonds to understand the world and by geographical proximity, we have chosen the Wixárika people as inspiration for our work.

It is the transgenerational mirror of the Wixaricas. A place where different times adjoin. An amalgam of energy that prolongs the wisdom of the ancestors in the following generations, and guiding them to build the future.

«The niérika allows the wixaritari to put order in their daily life, to live in unity in a world in which, otherwise, it would be chaotic and unpredictable. It also allows them to relate the present with the past, and, for this reason, it allows them to live with awareness of their history and know that they are the ones who will design their own future» (Luz Chapela)

FUI, SOY, SERÉ (I was, I am, I will be), represents the strength of the identity of the Mexican people. The richness of his past, the firmness to keep him alive in the present and the knowledge that in the hands of the people of today is keeping his identity beating in the future.

The process has been developed together with the Department of Culture of Guadalajara, that took the challenge of activate the area through «Cultura Itinerante» activities, «Arte sin Paredes» and «Festival Sucede». The goal was to settle a more open social fabric, capable of embrace outside incentives, and prepare the community for the upcoming project. Our first contact with the neighbors was through one of the surveys that let us to study the context of the area and create two design options. After that, both design options were presented to the neighbors, so that they could vote. They finally chose Nierika. The last stage was the execution, and also was conceived collaboratively. Six unemployed neighbors were instructed to work in heights, and then hired to work with us. As Nierika, we felt the work and it’s development like a transgenerational mirror. A place built on bridges between different social realities working together. This way of building cities should be a model today, in order to develop the society of the future.