Mi Casa, Your Casa / Public Art Installation

Mi Casa, Your Casa continues creating community and now reactivates public spaces keeping social distancing.

As we are slowly going back to the streets, we have the need to create and discover better ways of reintegration to our social life, reignite meaningful connections, enjoy family and friends and share new ideas. Mi Casa Your Casa has proved the timeless essence of connection, since its beginning it was set to activate a new relationship between the High Museum of Atlanta and its neighborhood, not only transforming the public space but building a bond between the community surrounding it. After being in Atlanta, the installation became itinerary and was placed in several museums, streets and public parks in different cities and countries. At a certain moment it also worked as a relief becoming a temporary refuge for some families that lost their homes during the earthquake of 2017 in Mexico.

This installation activates public spaces through emotional and playful design, it shows the value of human interaction, the tendency to socialize is behind and the core of the project. Shaping integrated communities is a major task that needs to be tackled with imagination, an open mind, and most importantly, a co-creative and playful spirit. We chose the most basic shape or pictogram recognizable by all audiences, one that will relate to the idea of warmth, comfort, safety, & welcoming. Because of its shape, the installation has the possibility to be reconfigured in the multiple scenarios and be able to host multiple activities but considering the recommended distance.

The essential principle of activation, we create that which enables us to inhabit, to play, to make music together, to observe ourselves and each other, to learn, to celebrate; to live and experience the world in unique, whole and valuable new ways.

Designing the future means bringing ideas into action.

Mi Casa Your Casa is a strong and subtle symbol in a geometric shape that will allow us to build a unique iconic piece, one that creates a continuous dialogue with audiences and capable of continuous changes and mutations. A living canvas…

Mi Casa Your Casa 2.0 / Seaport Boston, USA

Developed in collaboration with Creos (as partner and tour producer) and Serge Maheu (Lightning and Interactive Conception) for Seaport Boston. The installation consisted of 16 units and was opened to public from January 15th until March 14th 2021.

Mi Casa Your Casa / Alameda Central, Mexico City

Mi Casa, Your Casa / High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

As part of a two-year initiative to activate the Sifly Piazza and engage the community in the vibrant campus of the Woodruff Arts Center designed by Renzo Piano, the High Museum of Art unveiled an ambitious interactive design installation entitled Mi Casa, Your Casa, conceptualized and created by contemporary Mexican designers-in-residence Héctor Esrawe and Ignacio Cadena. Mi Casa, Your Casa was a site-specific installation that invited the community to actively participate in the life of the entire Woodruff Arts Center campus through recreation, social interaction, performances, and art-making activities. Mi Casa, Your Casa was a welcoming space where visitors played, created and relaxed. Hammocks, swings, easels, bins of chalk, and buckets of bubble water, among other elements, offered daytime “playtime” options. The Woodruff divisions (Alliance Theatre, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Arts for Learning) utilized the installation for performances, youth education and more. The High also collaborated with artists and performers from across the Atlanta arts spectrum to enliven the space. These highly unique and original collaborations allowed visitors to experience some of Atlanta’s most compelling artists in exciting new combinations as they explored new territory and branched out in fresh and unexpected directions to bring the Piazza to life with art.

The installation featured 40 three-dimensional open frames in the shape of a house, The houses formed a blank canvas for community engagement and activity in a basic- straight foreword- form recognizable and relatable to all ages and cultures: The home, a simple metaphor of warmth and welcoming. Mi Casa, Your Casa was inspired by the lively street markets – “mercados” – of Latin America where human connections are made every day. The chromatic quality of the object responded to the red color painted steel structures that house each merchant and to design intention of creating high contrast against the white purity of Richard Mier’s and Renzo Piano’s Architecture. The installation design objectives aspired to intrigue, invite, activate, build connections, blur boundaries, engage with the community, amaze, wonder, travel, mutate, bring joy, build identity and a sense of belonging. Mi Casa, Your Casa more than an installation was a living object, a space… to be inhabited, a stage… to be observed, a workshop… to learn and a blank canvas… for open expression and interactivity, not one related to technology, but to human physical interaction.