Activities

Public Program

La Cuadra’s public program creates experiences that bring people closer to architecture, heritage, art, design, and culture through participation, dialogue, and shared exploration.

Through workshops, tours, conversations, and other activities, the program creates spaces for artists, experts, communities, and institutions to come together, share their knowledge, exchange perspectives, and collectively build knowledge.

Each experience aims to strengthen the bond between people and La Cuadra, fostering a community that finds in curiosity, contemplation, creativity, and learning a starting point for discovering new ways of living in and understanding its surroundings.

Urban Sketchers at La Cuadrawas a series of four on-site drawing sessions organized by La Cuadra in collaboration with Urban Sketchers Mexico City. The program included two regular sessions and two special sessions: “Guided Drawing,” led by illustrator Harumi Tanimoto, who led exercises in observation and architectural drawing; and “Drawing Movement,” facilitated by architect and Urban Sketchers Mexico City coordinator Iván Reyes, with the participation of dancers Valeria Palermo and Andrea Alonso, who brought the space to life through contemporary dance improvisations to explore the relationship between architecture, the moving body, and drawing.

Over the course of the four sessions, 92 people participated in the program, creating a space for the communities of La Cuadra and Urban Sketchers to come together.

Portraits

Feb. – Apr. 2026

"Portraits" was an outreach workshop developed by La Cuadra as a tool to introduce students to contemporary art through participation, reflection, and personal exploration. Inspired by Félix González-Torres’s *Untitled* (1989), the workshop sought to expand the traditional concept of the portrait through words, dates, memories, and personal associations. Participants explored identity as a fluid process, shaped by experiences and connections. Based on these explorations, each participant created a conceptual self-portrait that was later integrated into a collective artwork. The workshop was attended by 811 students.

As part of the initiative, 25 copies of *Felix Gonzalez-Torres: The Final Revenge (A Workbook)*, published by the National Portrait Gallery in 2025, were distributed to the institutions participating in the academic tours, with the aim of extending the reflection on *Untitled* (1989) beyond the experience at La Cuadra and helping them incorporate new materials into their library collections.

Cleaning the House

Feb. 2025

Marina Abramović led an intimate workshop on her Method—a synthesis of her 55 years of artistic practice centered on presence in time and space—for 22 artists, curators, and writers. Under Abramović’s guidance, participants performed mindfulness exercises in the pool and courtyard, including periods of blindfolded contemplation, attuning themselves to the subtlest sounds of their surroundings, and moving in slow motion while wearing noise-canceling headphones. Held in the Barragán spaces, where serenity and silence are fundamental principles, the workshop took place in complete silence, interrupted only by instructions.