MAGNIFICA DESOLACION
Competition | LIGA-Mexico City

Site: Mexico City
Project: 2024
Team: Guillermo Sánchez Cárdenas, Kevin Santus, 

‒ “Beautiful view! Isn’t that something! Magnificent sight out here.” exclaimed Armstrong.
 ‒ “Magnificent desolation.” Aldrin replied.  

Magnifica Desolacion reflects on construction as an implicit act of belief. In territories where provisional solutions become permanent, the pursuit of stable and definitive forms often exposes fragility rather than strength, as noted by Smiljan Radic in Frágil Fortuna. The title recalls the exchange between Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon, framing a condition suspended between awe and vulnerability. As Elena Poniatowska suggests, rooftops are towers of silence where everyday traces, sounds, and memories accumulate.
The practice positions itself between Italy and Mexico, within the academic contexts of Politecnico di Milano and EPFL Lausanne, combining architectural research, exhibition making, and writing. Its work explores a dialogue between architectural technique and artistic poetics across European and Latin American cultures, leading to the construction of temporary pavilions and critical contributions to international platforms.
Starting from Radic’s reading of everyday constructions made through reuse, the project investigates Latin American cities in search of “monuments for all situations”. Walking through these urban landscapes reveals exposed steel rebars emerging from rooftops, commonly known as “rods of hope”. Embedded in domestic life, these unfinished elements support spontaneous uses and silently narrate possible futures.
Observed without romanticism, they become physical evidence of a deep housing crisis shaped by self construction. Present across cities in Mexico and beyond, they operate as domestic and collective monuments carrying aspirations and memory. Through scaled reproductions and spatial installations, the exhibition transforms these rebars into supports, shelters, and everyday devices. Inspired by Lygia Clark and Leon Battista Alberti, the project embraces scarcity as a condition for transformation, revealing in architectural incompleteness a shared landscape of hope, loss, and magnificent desolation.