Museum of Emotions #5 Honorable mention winner - The University of Texas at Arlington

We’d like to take the opportunity to introduce you to the Honorable mention winners of our "Museum of Emotions #5" competition – Cristian Ernesto Madrid and Kevin Omar Negrete from United States!

Cristian Ernesto Madrid and Kevin Omar Negrete

Please tell us about your company (when it was founded, where it is based, how many employees, etc) Alternatively, if you do not have a company, please give us some insights on your own professional/academia background.

We are 4th year students of Architecture at the University of Texas in Arlington, Cristian Madrid has an additional minor in Mexican American Studies. Kevin N. worked professionally at Gensler, and Cristian M worked at OMNIPLAN.

Brief information about the projects that you/your company have been involved with. For instance, what scale have you focused on/preferred, any significant projects where the company/ individuals have been Involved?

Cristian Madrid has generally focused on architecture of spatial justice in the southwestern region of the United States at any architectural scale . Kevin Negrete has generally focused on computational design and architectural visualization at any scale and region. Recently, Cristian Madrid has received a design award to build ADU in Lewisville, Texas along with partner Shane Pellerin.

What does architecture mean to you and what is the role of an architect in your society?

I think a lot of Plato’s Theory of Forms, the idea that there are perfect versions of qualities, objects, or ideas. For example, a perfect circle exists in the realm of forms, while any drawn circle in the physical world is just an imperfect approximation, and in a world where there are many sorts of injustices I believe our ideas/designs bring glimpses of those worlds into our reality. Therefore architecture for me is the exploration of what the world “Ought” to be, but extending that further, architecture is the marriage between the realm of forms and our physical world, a poetic balance.

Why do you participate in architecture competitions?

I participate in competitions to explore ideas. Bernard Tschumi famously said that you must either practice your theories or theorize your practice, and I believe that practicing your theories is crucial to truly understanding the ideas themselves. In this case, we used the brief to explore the emotions we felt about the border between Mexico and the United States. Initially, the ambiguity left us feeling dazed, but through the design process, we gradually began to understand what it means to be an immigrant in the United States.

What advice would you give to individuals who struggle to decide whether it would be beneficial for them to participate in architecture competitions?

I personally have dealt with the struggle of deciding whether or not to do an architecture competition, especially because it can mean a larger workload with school, but generally speaking it isn't overbearing and at the end becomes an extremely satisfying process. I highly recommend that you just do it, it generally falls into place with planning.