plastic cups, cheetos in resin, and mannequins become new-age mexican baroque artworks
Market Objects Become Contemporary Baroque Ornaments
Alburrigueresco is an artistic research and material production project by Mexican artist and architect Alfredo Tamayo. The work reinterprets elements of Mexican Baroque architecture through contemporary commercial objects and materials associated with informal trade. The public art roject emerges from the observation of downtown Mexico City, where viceregal architecture coexists with a dense saturation of goods, colors, temporary structures, and popular economies.
Rather than using traditional architectural materials, the project works with objects commonly found in markets, street stalls, food businesses, and commercial displays: plastic cups, laminated packaging, Cheetos encapsulated in resin, mannequins, printed tablecloths, metal frames, grids, and other low-cost urban materials. Through their reconfiguration, these objects become architectural fragments such as pediments, moldings, columns, estípites, niches, and ornamental details. These fragments operate as meta-architectures: structures that do not attempt to faithfully reproduce historical Baroque architecture, but instead activate its visual logics of excess, ornament, theatricality, and accumulation within a contemporary urban context.
all images by Gerardo Torres
Temporary Installations Reinterpret the Urban Landscape
The project by Mexican artist and architect Alfredo Tamayo unfolds through ephemeral interventions in public space. Temporarily installed in plazas and streets across Mexico City’s historic center, the works create visual frictions between architectural heritage, informal commerce, and contemporary material culture. Their presence interrupts the everyday flow of the city and invites passersby to look again at the objects, textures, and signs that shape the urban landscape. Alburrigueresco proposes ornament not as a residue of the past, but as an active strategy of attraction, identity, desire, and communication within popular urban life. Each intervention functions as an autonomous chapter within an ongoing investigation into architecture, consumption, collective memory, and contemporary Baroque aesthetics.
Alburrigueresco is a temporary public intervention in Mexico City’s historic center
plastic, food in resin, and market objects become architectural elements
the project draws inspiration from the visual landscape of downtown Mexico City
low-cost urban objects are reconfigured into sculptural architectural fragments
plastic cups, printed tablecloths, and metal grids form ornamental compositions
the installations create dialogue between heritage architecture and informal trade
the installations reference the visual excess of Mexican Baroque architecture
ephemeral interventions occupy plazas and streets across Mexico City’s historic center
Cheetos encapsulated in resin become part of the architectural vocabulary
the project explores ornament through accumulation, color, and material contrast
popular market materials are transformed into contemporary architectural forms
temporary structures introduce new readings of the historic urban landscape
project info:
name: Alburrigueresco
designer: Alfredo Tamayo Cortés
location: Mexico City
photographer: Gerardo Torres
designboom has received this project from our DIY submissions feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.
edited by: christina vergopoulou | designboom
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