El White Cube

Concept model

Photographic extraction

De-contextualization and re-organization

Re-composition and design

Façade 1

Façades 2-4

(Des)contextualization

(Des)contextualization

(Des)contextualization

(Des)contextualization

(Des)contextualization

Art installation for Postpostpost: Nueva Arquitectura Iberoamericana exhibit

Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Medellín, 2009

Design team:
Francisco Cevallos, Santiago del Hierro, Felipe Donoso, Roberto Morales
Photo archive:
Katy Barkan, Nicole Beattie, Santiago del Hierro, Ana María Durán, Jimena Leiva, Manuel Mansylla, Catherine Venart

El White Cube is a conceptual critique on the fixation architecture sometimes has with the form of informality. Too often, we detach the aesthetic qualities of texture, material, shape and color from the social meaning of precarious human settlements. We objectify poverty.

This installation consists of a house composed of “whitened” pieces that belong to a catalog of architectural moments photographed along the Amazon river, between Iquitos and Belém do Pará.

Essentially sarcastic, El White Cube aims to expose the morbid fascination of adversity by extracting, de-contextualizing, purging, re-composing and re-contextualizing the arbitrary formal compositions of basic human needs for shelter, protection and privacy.

Download exhibition panels (Spanish only)