(MEX) After working with Enric Miralles (1996), Jean Nouvel (1997) and, above all, Rem Koolhaas (1997-2000), the young Mexican architect Fernando Romero founded the L. C. M. (Laboratorio de la Ciudad de Mexico), in 1998, a multi-disciplinary organization, akin to the O.M.A. ( Office for Metropolitan Architecture) model, bringing together architects, artists, designers, city planners, researchers, and so on. As a forum for a renewal of Mexican architecture, the L.C.M. is structured around a three-part programme: studies and research projects; design (architectural and urban); and cultural and publishing projects (P.C.C.M., Programme for the Dessimination of Contemporary Culture in Mexico City). The L.C.M. is involved in observing and analysing urban phenomena, and, in May 2000, published ZMVM, a study about changes in the metropolitan area of Mexico City. The architecture produced by Romero and the L.C.M., which is fuelled by all the other activities of the group, is markedly collective and experimental: each project is the topic of a specific strategy, and a different process which leads to a one-off result that cannot be reproduced, thus rendering the concept of authors and signatures null and void.

LCM
Romero (Fernando) (1971)
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• Orozco‘s House 1999