ignacio g. galán
[ igg - office for architecture ]

New York / Madrid
igg@ignaciogalan.com
Instagram / facebook

 

Design and Construction of a residential and performance space. With Future Projects, and Jesse McCormik

New York  (USA) / 2020-21, built

From Domesticity to Hospitality is a renovation of a former hat factory in a late 19th Century building in Brooklyn. Countering the tendency towards normative domesticities characterizing the renovation of former industrial spaces in New York, this project keeps the impetus of earlier loft occupations by facilitating different forms of hospitality through artistic performances and other public events that the owner organizes, using his house as a stage. Key references for his work, from Vito Acconci and Sophie Calle, systematically disturbed the boundaries between domestic and public and challenged conventional ideologies of property and ownership. Our project learns from those references and other contemporary projects that subvert the hierarchies between host and guest, including Sandi Hilal’s project Living Room which, in her understanding, provide “a different sociopolitical meaning to the act of hospitality.”

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  • About Open or Close

    [igg - office for architecture] is a design and research office based in New York City and led by Ignacio G. Galán, PhD. Our work focuses on architecture's role in the articulation of society through design projects, research, and pedagogical endeavors. The designs of the office have been awarded in competitions including the First Prize for the New Velodrome in Medellín and are part of the permanent collection of the Pompidou Center. 

    We operate through diverse media and platforms and are continuously informed by different kinds of conversations and collaborations. Galán's research has led to the production of several publications and exhibitions including the installation Cinecittá Occupata for the 2014 Venice Biennale and the exhibitions Your Restroom is a Battleground and The Restroom Pavillion for the 2021 Venice Biennale. Together with the After Belonging Agency, Galán was the Chief Curator of the 2016 Oslo Architecture Triennale. He is also a member of the research project Radical Pedagogies and has co-curated its exhibition at the 2013 Lisbon Architecture Triennale and at the 2014 Venice Biennale, where it was awarded a Special Mention of the jury. He is one of the editors of the eponymous volume (MIT Press, 2022).

    Additionally, Galán is an architecture historian working on the intersection of architecture, politics, and media, with a particular focus on nationalism, colonialism, migration, and access.

    You can visit his faculty profile here.

  • Statement Open or Close

    We understand architecture as a key agent participating in the articulation of society. 

    We explore the ways in which architecture contributes to the definition of new ways of being together.

    We are concerned with architecture's relation to cultural transfers, material networks, and diverse forms of population transience. 

    We are additionally interested in the objects, media technologies, and institutions transforming architecture's individual occupations, its collective operations, and its diverse types of mobilization. 

    We are interested in architecture's capacity to mediate social pursuits for access, diversity, and assistance.

    These emphases lead the work of the office and continuously challenge our methods of analysis and our design practice.