An industrial design company Alejandro Castro/Pirwi
Pirwi was founded in Mexico about ten years ago. In 2012 it made its debut at the FuoriSalone in Milan, gaining international media acclaim for furniture based on a particular way of using plywood, with research on different types of wood, always left in a natural state.
The products communicate a unique aesthetic and ties with the Mexican tradition, without direct references. “We created the company when interest in design was starting to emerge in Mexico,” says Alejandro Castro, co-founder and designer of Pirwi.
“Nevertheless, it was hard to work as designers in those days. The established industry wasn’t interested in involving designers and the path of self-production seemed necessary, to approach many different aspects of the situation. So we created a brand that would be a productive, collaborative platform for designers: teamwork that would channel the forces and forms of expertise in multiple fields, for a common goal. A model that is quite rare in Mexico City.
The company was conceived for a global market, to pursue values of sustainability and social wellbeing: we created the reality in which we wanted to work. All our staff share the brand’s philosophy and identify with it. We develop the products in house, to give the collection a single character. The sharing of projects and strategies among designers, the manufacturing process and the commercial aspect are fundamental factors for business success and international operations.”
When asked if Pirwi represents a local aesthetic, Castro says that “Mexican identity has been achieved in a natural way, due to the fact that the production and the designers are Mexican, and the manufacturing is 100% artisan. This last aspect is the heritage on which we rely: our artisans have skills that add visible value to products, in the overall making, the joining systems, the sanding and finishing of the woods, which no machine could ever do so well.”
In recent years, Pirwi has launched operations with artists who make numbered editions of products; this makes it possible to offer more complex objects, but also to open up to the market of collectors. The firm has also expanded the collection of furniture in solid wood, developing other areas of manufacturing expertise. Finally, it has moved from finished furniture to the design of prefabricated houses, applying the same aesthetic and philosophy on larger scale.
From the spoon to the city Hèctor Esrawe
Winner of awards on an international level for interior design, architectural and product design, Héctor Esrawe also has extensive experience as a teacher at UIA (Universidad Iberoamericana) and Centro de Diseño, Cine y Televisión, which he also helped to found and direct.
He has also worked in the world of publishing, as part of the advisory team of the Mexican magazine Arquine. His design covers multiple disciplines, from architecture to small editions of handmade products. Is there a difference of approach for projects on such different scales?
“I began as a furniture designer,” Esrawe says, “and furniture has to interact with the physical space that contains it. So i began to study the inseparable relationship between objects and interiors, ‘boosting the scale.’ Today we work with a method based on a scientific approach, more than an instinct, a style or an expression. We start with extensive research and a clear brief that guides us in the ‘diagnosis.’ It is a method you can apply on all scales and types, to understand the context and its limits.”
Industrial Mexico is growing fast. “It is becoming easier to produce here with the best technologies and highest manufacturing quality, including craftsmanship and digital processes. The biggest problem is cultural: the understanding of design on the part of industry. We need to create a link, to emphasize the benefits, the potential and value that can be generated by design. Because this is a dialogue in progress with the user and his context, aimed at understanding the physical space and emotional needs of the society in a give moment, forecasting its evolution.”
Studio Esrawe, founded in Mexico City, has won many prizes on an international level, as for the project Casa del Agua, in collaboration with Cadena + Asociados, which received the Red Dot Award (2014). Esrawe’s works are shown at important museums and galleries, including the High Museum of Atlanta, Galerie Bensimon in Paris, and Mint in London.
On the Mexican character of his design, Esrawe specifies: “I am interested in learning from the tradition and transferring it into new symbols and expressions, renewing the language, through a design that does not set out to be pleasing or to respond to a stereotyped image. Mexican production is ‘epidermic’ in the sense that there is no consolidated industry, though there are more mature, aware designers who understand the context, and are able to make inroads abroad on the basis of an ancient, creative culture, rich in traditions.”
Social design and sustainability for the future Emiliano Godoy
Involved for 20 years in projects that employ sustainability as a tool to generate positive changes in society and the environment, Emiliano Godoy believes the ecological choice is not just a factor of differentiation on the market, but a strategic necessity as well.
“The use of materials from resources risking extinction or involving toxic substances is not just irresponsible but also risky,” Godoy explains. “The reality of the market confirms this, more than any ethical or philosophical reasoning. The business model of environmental care has an entire aesthetic, a function, a systemic path to explore, which will prove how obsolete our models of production and consumption really are.”
Godoy teaches Industrial Design at the Tecnológico de Monterrey, is a member of Abierto Mexicano de Diseño, an international open-source festival in Mexico City, and is part of the advisory board of UNESCO/Felissimo Design 21 Social Design Network, an international network that explores social design as a tool to trigger changes, especially in marginal communities.
“Many people see social design, or socially responsible design, as projects aimed at the disadvantaged, or at minorities, which would include 70% of the population in Mexico. But design has to pay attention not only to the starting conditions of those involved, but also to its impact on society as a whole.
I believe design has to be regenerative for the environment, innovative on a functional and technological level, politically active, economically fair, symbolically progressive, socially correct and culturally appropriate. In this way the discipline stops being a tool for business and becomes a tool for society.
To intervene on a social level means making a commitment to build a correct and economically equitable community. One of the latest projects, with the Tuux production lab of which I am a part, is a pavilion in Tijuana that becomes a place to produce and to train the community of people from Central America who have been deported from the United States, at a rate of about 500 persons per day.”
Mexico, since the end of the 1970s, has undergone a transformation: from a rural country to a market for the components of transnational brands. This has caused poverty and exploitation of labor, and a reduction in the quality of design caused by the fact that the goods are produced and engineered elsewhere.
In the 1990s a new generation of designers began to create its own businesses and to self-produce, revealing a dynamic design scene that is still not able, however, to get beyond the boundaries of limited production scale and an elite target.
“There are two areas in which design can operate in Mexico. First, in projects that encourage local manufacturing capacities: Mexico has one of the strongest manufacturing infrastructures, it is the leading exporter of automobiles and flat-screen televisions, the third largest of mobile phones, though it has no trademarks of its own! Second, in the initiatives of business that involve the poorest communities of the country. You cannot fight poverty with philanthropy, but with integrated business programs that generate value and products for the domestic market.”
Godoy has international clients like Nouvel Studio, Lamosa, Nanimarquina, EHV Weidmann and Gustavo Gili, and sees great potential in Mexican crafts. “Crafts processes like cabinet making, pottery, hand weaving, braiding and blown glass are still used, because local design is based on the available techniques. But the opening to new foreign markets and distributors will bring new processes and materials: an absolutely necessary development.”
Text by Valentina Croci