Courtesy of Design Week Mexico

Now in its eighth edition, Design Week Mexico, in collaboration with Museo Tamayo, has unveiled the design for a major public architectural pavilion designed by leading German architects Nikolaus Hirsch and Michel Müller. Until Spring 2017, the installation will be a cultural attraction at Chapultepec Park, Mexico City’s largest public park. 

Courtesy of Design Week Mexico

Entitled Museum of Immortality II, the project is based on an unrealized concept by German-Russian philosopher Boris Groys, and draws on 19^th Century Russian philosopher Nikolai Federov’s “notion of the ‘Common Task,’ which envisions the creation of the social and political conditions necessary to achieve technological immortality and material resurrection for all men who have ever lived. Federov believed that museums provided the ideal setting for such resurrections to take place, having developed preservation and conservation techniques.”

Courtesy of Design Week Mexico

Made up of modules assembled into a six-by-six and eight-meter-high hexagonal arrangement, the installation is situated in Museo Tamayo’s gardens in a vertical configuration—opposite of that of the project’s arrangement while it was on display in Beirut as Museum of Immortality I, when its configuration was horizontal.

Courtesy of Design Week Mexico

The architectural structure is additionally accompanied by a 30-minute video by Anton Vidokle and Oleksiy Radynski that explored the theoretical premises of the project.

Courtesy of Design Week Mexico

Courtesy of Design Week Mexico

We are thrilled to show a prototype for the Museum of Immortality in Mexico City, said architects Hirsch and Müller. Its deep fascination with death cults makes Mexico a very special context for such a speculative project. Based on theories of cosmism and resurrection by philosopher Boris Groys and artist Anton Vidokle, we try to speculate on the limits of what we call design and the material world. We ask: can we design after-life? Can—as the context of the Museo Tamayo suggests—humans be preserved like museum artifacts?

Courtesy of Design Week Mexico

Courtesy of Design Week Mexico

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Courtesy of Behnisch Architekten

Behnisch Architekten has announced the groundbreaking of the AGORA—Cancer Research Center located in Lausanne, Switzerland within sight of Lake Geneva. As the new home of the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC), the Center will bring together 400 researchers, scientists, doctors, and clinicians under the goal of enhanced communication. 

The new AGORA building will connect to an existing building on one side, with minimal disruptions to existing programming. “Visual relationships both on the site and to the landscape beyond require a carefully defined building mass and the new building responds sensitively to these site conditions while sculpturally standing out from its heterogeneous surroundings.”

Courtesy of Behnisch Architekten

Both interdisciplinary and disciplinary communication will be addressed in the organization of the building’s floor plans. The public level of the center will connect the campus’ existing pathways with the laboratory and office levels via interconnected communication areas and informal workspaces.

Courtesy of Behnisch Architekten

Designed to enhance daylight use throughout the building while minimizing heat gain, the building’s skin will work in conjunction with daylight enhancement systems and optimized sunlight protection. Furthermore, operable windows will allow for natural ventilation, providing better individual climate control.

Courtesy of Behnisch Architekten

A green rooftop will provide recreational space for the building.

AGORA is expected to be completed in 2017.

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