Archivo is the only project in Mexico dedicated to collecting, exhibiting, and rethinking design and architecture.
Archivo is focused on researching and advocating design, as well as in exploring its history and evolution, questioning its principles, and exploiting its potential as a tool for everyday transformation.
Through our permanent collection—consisting of 1,800 objects, a specialized library, and a dynamic program of research, exhibitions, and activities, Archivo has established itself as a pioneering space and an essential reference for design and architecture in Mexico and abroad.
(ESPAÑOL) TRANSPORTE
general
DIRECTOR
ASSISTANT CURATOR
PROJECTS MANAGER
RESEARCH
Our collection is a resource that we extend to all public as a research tool. We’ll share information about its relocation soon. For the library, we recommend that you make an appointment by sending us an email where you specify the topics you are looking for.
VOLUNTEERING
Archivo seeks volunteers all year. If you are passionate about design and want to be part of the team, check our programs here.
WEB CREDITS
design: Alejandro Olávarri
realization: dupla.mx
Archivo is not your typical archive. Instead of simply organizing and preserving documents that are only accessible to specialists, we want to produce new readings, perspectives, and ideas regarding material culture in its broadest sense, without restricting ourselves to categorical definitions or expert knowledge.
We are not a repository of records and documents, but of artifacts, testimonies, activations, and any sort of exploration about design. Archivo is an open archive: our storage rooms are accessible and our catalog is open; we share our resources, and we make our processes public.
We see Archivo as the raw material for learning and experimenting with design and architecture, a source of inspiration for designers, where curiosity, knowledge, and critical thought are instilled.
Archivo reasserts the relevance of design in our daily lives. We are pioneers in researching and exhibiting design in Mexico and we offer a unique study collection of everyday design. We’ve broken down our SPACE and work into three areas of activity:
From our foundation, Archivo has focused on acquiring, cataloging, and preserving a permanent collection of popular and industrial design as well as limited edition objects from the 20th and 21st centuries. Convinced that there is a difference between interacting with an object and seeing a representation of it in a book or website, we decided to open our archive in 2016, through Archivo Abierto—our open storage, consultation, and exhibition area, allowing anyone to see our collection up close and to interact with the pieces.
The other half of our permanent collection is the Archivo library, which specializes in architecture, art, and design. It is divided into two: the Personal Collection of Enrique del Moral (CEM) and the Archivo Collection (CAD). Both can be perused in our Reading Room.
You can also explore our entire collections (both the object collection and the library) in our online catalogue.
Design and architecture are meant to be used and experienced, not displayed in a museum or gallery space. So, how and why do we exhibit design?
For Archivo, the answer to this question changes and adapts as time pases and according to different scenarios, but we generally believe that the practice of exhibiting design is important to rediscover histories, make processes public, and to go beyond the surface of a finished product. Our purpose is to strip design from any sense of mystery trying to tie it to a broader discussion regarding cultural and collective processes.
Our exhibitions delve into these concerns and attempt to push their boundaries: they question the nature of authorship in design and the relevance of process; they reveal the engineering logics behind a common artifact or blur the object-based focus of design; they reactivate historical memories, and seek to redefine the relationship between design and contemporary life in Mexico.
You can explore a complete history of our past exhibitions, learn more about our current shows, or discover the ones we have planned for the future.
Archivo seeks to inspire and encourage people to think design in non-traditional ways, to break disciplinary boundaries, and to create a broader view of the practice and its contexts, processes, histories, uses, and impacts.
Archivo is both a practical and educational resource for students and professionals, as well as a space that introduces a broader audience to design and material culture.
We generate and promote original and informed perspectives through a range of formats that are accessible to everyone: research projects and publications, opinion pieces, workshops and collaborations, and even informal gatherings and other kinds of activities.
Archivo is an exhibition space, as well as a research and gathering space; entrance is free of charge and open to the public. We want you to visit Archivo, but we especially want you to use Archivo. We want you to see our exhibitions and spend the day reading our books in the Reading Room or in the garden, having a coffee. We invite you to use our archive for your research or school project, or to participate in one of our conversations and workshops.
We may be a small, independent space, but we offer a considerable variety of resources and activities, as well as an ambitious program, and original, quality cultural offerings.
You can collaborate with Archivo through our volunteer program. If you are part of the design community in Mexico and you have a project or a collaboration proposal that involves Archivo, you can also contact us.
Sometimes we offer spaces for private events. If you are interested in hosting a photo shoot, a book launch, a dinner or a private event in Archivo, you can request information through our e-mail: info@archivo.design.
Archivo is the only project in Mexico dedicated to collecting, exhibiting, and rethinking design and architecture.
Archivo is focused on researching and advocating design, as well as in exploring its history and evolution, questioning its principles, and exploiting its potential as a tool for everyday transformation.
Through our permanent collection—consisting of 1,800 objects, a specialized library, and a dynamic program of research, exhibitions, and activities, Archivo has established itself as a pioneering space and an essential reference for design and architecture in Mexico and abroad.
Archivo is not your typical archive. Instead of simply organizing and preserving documents that are only accessible to specialists, we want to produce new readings, perspectives, and ideas regarding material culture in its broadest sense, without restricting ourselves to categorical definitions or expert knowledge.
We are not a repository of records and documents, but of artifacts, testimonies, activations, and any sort of exploration about design. Archivo is an open archive: our storage rooms are accessible and our catalog is open; we share our resources, and we make our processes public.
We see Archivo as the raw material for learning and experimenting with design and architecture, a source of inspiration for designers, where curiosity, knowledge, and critical thought are instilled.
Archivo reasserts the relevance of design in our daily lives. We are pioneers in researching and exhibiting design in Mexico and we offer a unique study collection of everyday design. We’ve broken down our SPACE and work into three areas of activity:
From our foundation, Archivo has focused on acquiring, cataloging, and preserving a permanent collection of popular and industrial design as well as limited edition objects from the 20th and 21st centuries. Convinced that there is a difference between interacting with an object and seeing a representation of it in a book or website, we decided to open our archive in 2016, through Archivo Abierto—our open storage, consultation, and exhibition area, allowing anyone to see our collection up close and to interact with the pieces.
The other half of our permanent collection is the Archivo library, which specializes in architecture, art, and design. It is divided into two: the Personal Collection of Enrique del Moral (CEM) and the Archivo Collection (CAD). Both can be perused in our Reading Room.
You can also explore our entire collections (both the object collection and the library) in our online catalogue.
Design and architecture are meant to be used and experienced, not displayed in a museum or gallery space. So, how and why do we exhibit design?
For Archivo, the answer to this question changes and adapts as time pases and according to different scenarios, but we generally believe that the practice of exhibiting design is important to rediscover histories, make processes public, and to go beyond the surface of a finished product. Our purpose is to strip design from any sense of mystery trying to tie it to a broader discussion regarding cultural and collective processes.
Our exhibitions delve into these concerns and attempt to push their boundaries: they question the nature of authorship in design and the relevance of process; they reveal the engineering logics behind a common artifact or blur the object-based focus of design; they reactivate historical memories, and seek to redefine the relationship between design and contemporary life in Mexico.
You can explore a complete history of our past exhibitions, learn more about our current shows, or discover the ones we have planned for the future.
Archivo seeks to inspire and encourage people to think design in non-traditional ways, to break disciplinary boundaries, and to create a broader view of the practice and its contexts, processes, histories, uses, and impacts.
Archivo is both a practical and educational resource for students and professionals, as well as a space that introduces a broader audience to design and material culture.
We generate and promote original and informed perspectives through a range of formats that are accessible to everyone: research projects and publications, opinion pieces, workshops and collaborations, and even informal gatherings and other kinds of activities.
Archivo is an exhibition space, as well as a research and gathering space; entrance is free of charge and open to the public. We want you to visit Archivo, but we especially want you to use Archivo. We want you to see our exhibitions and spend the day reading our books in the Reading Room or in the garden, having a coffee. We invite you to use our archive for your research or school project, or to participate in one of our conversations and workshops.
We may be a small, independent space, but we offer a considerable variety of resources and activities, as well as an ambitious program, and original, quality cultural offerings.
You can collaborate with Archivo through our volunteer program. If you are part of the design community in Mexico and you have a project or a collaboration proposal that involves Archivo, you can also contact us.
Sometimes we offer spaces for private events. If you are interested in hosting a photo shoot, a book launch, a dinner or a private event in Archivo, you can request information through our e-mail: info@archivo.design.
Archivo is the only project in Mexico dedicated to collecting, exhibiting, and rethinking design and architecture.
Archivo is focused on researching and advocating design, as well as in exploring its history and evolution, questioning its principles, and exploiting its potential as a tool for everyday transformation.
Through our permanent collection—consisting of 1,800 objects, a specialized library, and a dynamic program of research, exhibitions, and activities, Archivo has established itself as a pioneering space and an essential reference for design and architecture in Mexico and abroad.
(ESPAÑOL) TRANSPORTE
general
DIRECTOR
ASSISTANT CURATOR
PROJECTS MANAGER
RESEARCH
Our collection is a resource that we extend to all public as a research tool. We’ll share information about its relocation soon. For the library, we recommend that you make an appointment by sending us an email where you specify the topics you are looking for.
VOLUNTEERING
Archivo seeks volunteers all year. If you are passionate about design and want to be part of the team, check our programs here.
WEB CREDITS
design: Alejandro Olávarri
realization: dupla.mx
Archivo is not your typical archive. Instead of simply organizing and preserving documents that are only accessible to specialists, we want to produce new readings, perspectives, and ideas regarding material culture in its broadest sense, without restricting ourselves to categorical definitions or expert knowledge.
We are not a repository of records and documents, but of artifacts, testimonies, activations, and any sort of exploration about design. Archivo is an open archive: our storage rooms are accessible and our catalog is open; we share our resources, and we make our processes public.
We see Archivo as the raw material for learning and experimenting with design and architecture, a source of inspiration for designers, where curiosity, knowledge, and critical thought are instilled.
Archivo reasserts the relevance of design in our daily lives. We are pioneers in researching and exhibiting design in Mexico and we offer a unique study collection of everyday design. We’ve broken down our SPACE and work into three areas of activity:
From our foundation, Archivo has focused on acquiring, cataloging, and preserving a permanent collection of popular and industrial design as well as limited edition objects from the 20th and 21st centuries. Convinced that there is a difference between interacting with an object and seeing a representation of it in a book or website, we decided to open our archive in 2016, through Archivo Abierto—our open storage, consultation, and exhibition area, allowing anyone to see our collection up close and to interact with the pieces.
The other half of our permanent collection is the Archivo library, which specializes in architecture, art, and design. It is divided into two: the Personal Collection of Enrique del Moral (CEM) and the Archivo Collection (CAD). Both can be perused in our Reading Room.
You can also explore our entire collections (both the object collection and the library) in our online catalogue.
Design and architecture are meant to be used and experienced, not displayed in a museum or gallery space. So, how and why do we exhibit design?
For Archivo, the answer to this question changes and adapts as time pases and according to different scenarios, but we generally believe that the practice of exhibiting design is important to rediscover histories, make processes public, and to go beyond the surface of a finished product. Our purpose is to strip design from any sense of mystery trying to tie it to a broader discussion regarding cultural and collective processes.
Our exhibitions delve into these concerns and attempt to push their boundaries: they question the nature of authorship in design and the relevance of process; they reveal the engineering logics behind a common artifact or blur the object-based focus of design; they reactivate historical memories, and seek to redefine the relationship between design and contemporary life in Mexico.
You can explore a complete history of our past exhibitions, learn more about our current shows, or discover the ones we have planned for the future.
Archivo seeks to inspire and encourage people to think design in non-traditional ways, to break disciplinary boundaries, and to create a broader view of the practice and its contexts, processes, histories, uses, and impacts.
Archivo is both a practical and educational resource for students and professionals, as well as a space that introduces a broader audience to design and material culture.
We generate and promote original and informed perspectives through a range of formats that are accessible to everyone: research projects and publications, opinion pieces, workshops and collaborations, and even informal gatherings and other kinds of activities.
Archivo is an exhibition space, as well as a research and gathering space; entrance is free of charge and open to the public. We want you to visit Archivo, but we especially want you to use Archivo. We want you to see our exhibitions and spend the day reading our books in the Reading Room or in the garden, having a coffee. We invite you to use our archive for your research or school project, or to participate in one of our conversations and workshops.
We may be a small, independent space, but we offer a considerable variety of resources and activities, as well as an ambitious program, and original, quality cultural offerings.
You can collaborate with Archivo through our volunteer program. If you are part of the design community in Mexico and you have a project or a collaboration proposal that involves Archivo, you can also contact us.
Sometimes we offer spaces for private events. If you are interested in hosting a photo shoot, a book launch, a dinner or a private event in Archivo, you can request information through our e-mail: info@archivo.design.
Archivo, Italy, Archivo
When it opened in 1972, Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, curated by Emilio Ambasz, became the most influential design exhibition ever held at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York; at least since Philip Johnson placed a series of metal springs, a propeller, a billiard ball, an ashtray, a hammer, a white plate, a dictophone and another 400 ordinary artifacts on pedestals, raising them automatically to the status of works of art, when he inaugurated his Machine Art in 1934. Showcasing 150 objects by 114 designers and 72 manufacturers, 12 «environments» (4.8 x 4.8 m space installations commissioned for the exhibition), 20 corporate sponsers and a 432-page catalog with 520 illustrations (124 of them in full color), Ambasz’s Italian exhibition established itself as perhaps one of the most ambitious and memorable curatorial initiatives ever in the history of design. (It remained more or less undefeated in that sense, until Paola Antonelli unveiled her Design and the Elastic Mind in 2008, also at MoMA. For some reason, Italy always reappears in the crucial moments of the history of design.)
Still, more than by a question of sheer numbers, Ambasz’s overview of the Italian domestic landscape of those years became milestone because without fault it managed to crystallize a moment of disruption, a turning point, in the culture of design (and of design exhibitions) of the twentieth century. Perhaps like no other country, in the 1960s and 1970s, Italy represented a challenge for those who understood design as a practice that was easy to pigeonhole: professional, formal, direct, coherent, lacking any mystery. But the design scene in Italy was a reflection—an intensified one at that—of a change in material, cultural and productive conditions throughout the world.
«I had read some magazines and seen beautiful products,» Ambasz wrote, «so I decided that we should have an exhibition. It was not until I arrived in Italy that I realized that designers were making objects, but thinking of environments.» This duality—an organic distinction rather than categorical division—was the guiding principle of the exhibition: on the one hand, it displayed a selection of domestic items with formal and technical merits, or with important sociocultural implications (mostly experimental modular systems and adaptable furniture) and on the other hand, twelve experimental «environments,» which focused on spatial, social, technological, media and ecological aspects of design .
In deference to Ambasz—with a small nod—and in the same spirit of challenging taxonomic and display conventions, Archivo | Italia also departs from a selection of design objects of Italian origin to discuss disciplinary boundaries, rehearse spatial arrangements and test institutional limits. Although rather than formulating an immeasurable question about the present and future of design, we prefer to limit ourselves to a specific, manageable and almost prosaic question regarding the nature, function and arrangement of our own space and collection dedicated to the design, at this precise moment, at the beginning of a new direction for Archivo.
From a Mexican standpoint, Italy reminds us of ourselves. We recognize ourselves in the same habit of looking back to push forward, in the tireless moves between tradition and modernity. We share the same taste for the fertile clash between the primitive and the popular, the weight of the history and the hunger for novelty. Looking towards Italy, we also find traces and echoes of the experimental drive and the vocational crisis of the radical designers of the sixties and seventies; with the same fascination for design in its broadest sense, for its mediatic nature, for the tensions derived from technological progress and also certain nostalgia for the enthusiasm with which the future was faced as both challenge and promise. All this resonates in the proposals of the three critical and research design initiatives that have been invited to take part in Archivo | Italia : FIG projects, Salottobuono and Space Caviar.
From the standpoint of Archivo, Italy also represents an opportunity to question ourselves about the nature and mission of our own project and space. More than an exhibition, Archivo | Italia is presented as a case study—as the team from APRDELESP precisely points out in their display proposal, which sacrifices the traditional dynamics of the gallery space for a more flexible format, with different uses and intensities—. Through minimal gestures (couple of stools, opening a small window, offering someone a cup of coffee) we will try out ways to generate and digest information, gather different people and positions, explore the public dimension of our collection. Testing layouts and balances; generating, essaying, scattering, and sharing information, ideas and proposals. All with the same question in mind:
Archivo? How, why, for whom?