Tu casa es mi casa

Tu casa es mi casa
Frida Escobedo, Pedro&Juana, Tezontle, Aris Janigian, Katya Tylevich, David Ulin
September 23, 2017–January 13, 2018 

Join the Neutra VDL Studio and Residences, Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design, and Archivo Diseño y Arquitectura, for the final viewings and closing event of Tu casa es mi casa.

On view at the Neutra VDL House in Los Angeles through January 13, Tu casa es mi casa features site-specific installations by three Mexico City–based design teams—Frida Escobedo, Pedro&Juana, and Tezontle, and three California-based writers—Aris Janigian, Katya Tylevich, and David Ulin.

If our contemporary political moment offers up a border wall as the primary architectural expression of connection between the U.S. and Mexico, Tu casa es mi casa suggests a more porous boundary between the two countries. The title, a riff on the welcoming “my house is your house,” offers the inverted “your house is my house”—an expression of the personal and political stakes of this transposition.

Installed in Richard Neutra’s VDL Research House in Los Angeles and in collaboration with Mexico City–based gallery Archivo Diseño y Arquitectura, Tu casa es mi casa grapples with questions about architectural space, mass production, and domesticity within the legacy of modernism. Both Mexico City and Los Angeles absorbed the initial precepts of the international movement and adapted them to singular social-political-environmental contexts. A return to these twin interpretations re-investigates the promises of the utopian project through a contemporary lens.

Timed to coincide with The Getty’s Pacific Standard Time LA/LA, the exhibition acknowledges a history of architectural, critical, and literary exchange between California and Mexico, however the curators ask that we not only reevaluate past understandings, but also celebrate the richness of contemporary Mexican design practice today.

Tu casa es mi casa is supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Cal Poly Pomona Foundation, Bestor Architecture, Michael Maltzan Architects, NAC Architecture, TEN Arquitectos with additional support from Aesop, Bar Keeper and Mezcal Union, Triview Glass Industries LLC, Cal Poly Pomona Department of Architecture (CPP ARC), SCI-Arc, USC School of Architecture, and Woodbury University School of Architecture.

Architects: Frida Escobedo, Pedro&Juana, Tezontle
Writers: Aris Janigian, Katya Tylevich, David Ulin
Photographer: Adam Wiseman
Curated by Mario Ballesteros, Andrea Dietz, Sarah Lorenzen, Mimi Zeiger
Organizational collaborators: Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design, Archivo Diseño y Arquitectura

The Neutra VDL Studio and Residences (1932-1965) of famed modernist architect Richard Neutra is owned by the Cal Poly Pomona Foundation (501(c)(3) tax exempt organization) and is under the stewardship of the College of Environmental Design (ENV) at Cal Poly Pomona. The primary mission of the College with respect to VDL is: to use the house as an educational resource for ENV students and faculty, to preserve and maintain the property, to make the house accessible to visitors through tours given by Cal Poly Pomona architecture students, and to host arts and culture programs that will strengthen the facility’s mission as a community resource.

In 2010 VDL began an exhibition program, where artists/architects/writers are invited to spend time in residence and to create in-situ installations that respond to either the house, the period in which the house was built, or the history of Richard Neutra. Previous exhibitions include: Fort Da Sampler by Santiago Borja (2010), Architectones by Xavier Veilhan (2012), Inverting Neutra by Bryony Roberts (2013), Competing Utopias a collaboration between the Wende Museum and the VDL House (2014), Wet Horizons by Luis Callejas (2015), and Cornerstone by Les Frères Chapuisat (2016-17). These installations have served to reinvigorate the house and have been very well received by the public.