Skip to content
Magdalena Fernández

Photography & video: Fernando Montiel Klint, Magdalena Fernández. Renders: Juan Manuel López-Zajía.

Magdalena Fernández Wins International CODAawards Merit Award


MADISON, WI, September 1, 2021 – When artists, designers, industry resources, and clients work together, common places are transformed into spectacular spaces. CODAworx, the hub of the commissioned art economy, has once again partnered with Interior Design magazine to announce the winners of the ninth annual international CODAawards: Collaboration of Design + Art. The CODAawards recognize collaborations that result in outstanding projects which successfully integrate commissioned art into interior, architectural, or public spaces.
3i019 Site-specific installation at Museo Amparo received Merit honors in the Institutional category. The project was developed in collaboration with the Museum Amparo's team, in charge of the production, and Carlos Arturo Fernández as advisor.  The project features a modular structure, made up of white cords and tubes placed at different heights, suggesting a light and mobile reinterpretation of the modular architecture of the building. 
“The CODAawards recognize the importance of collaboration, and honor the design and art professionals whose collective imaginations create the public and private spaces that inspire us,” said Toni Sikes, CEO of CODAworx.
In its ninth year, the CODAawards received 374 entries from 19 different countries around the globe, representing over $463 million USD in commissions. Merit winning projects were found as far as from Germany to Los Angeles, from Scottsdale to Bulgaria. The merit winners exemplify the best of what can happen when artists and design professionals collaborate to create artful spaces in our built environment.
An esteemed panel of 18 jurors from the design, architecture and art worlds judged the submissions. Jury members included Malene Barnett, Founder, Black Artist + Designer Guild; Simon Beer, Principal, OJB Landscape Architecture; Kim Boganey, Director, Scottsdale Public Art; Thierry Boissel, Glass Artist; Gareth Brennan, CEO and President, Eventscape; Frances Bronet, President, Pratt Institute; James Carpenter, Founder, James Carpenter Design Associates; Jean Cooney, Director, Times Square Arts; Mary Douglas Drysdale, Founder, Drysdale Design Associates, Inc.; Hansoo Kim, Studio Director, Design Director, Principal, Gensler; Chad Oppenheim, Principal Design Director, Oppenheim Architecture; Annette Ridenour, President, Aesthetics, Inc.; Ilene Shaw, Founding Producer, Design Pavilion; CEO, Shaw & Co. Productions; Paula Stoeke, Curator, Seward Johnson Atelier, Inc.; Daniel Tobin, Founder, UAP; Gary Wheeler, CEO, ASID; Jieun Yang, Principal, Habitat Workshop.
The jury selected winners in each of the ten design categories. Their Top 100 selections were then exhibited online in early summer, where the public was invited to vote for their favorites.
The CODAawards will be covered in the November 2021 online issue of Interior Design magazine and on CODAworx.com, 
and through seven design + art partner organizations, reaching the largest, most qualified audience of design and art professionals in the world.

Press Contact:
Jenifer Wetterau, Public Relations Manager
608-467-3040 jeni@codaworx.com

About CODAworx
CODAworx provides a platform to celebrate design projects featuring commissioned artwork in interior, architectural, and public spaces. The CODAworx team is on a mission to transform every space in the world by making more great commissions happen. Since 2012, the site has been the online “Hub of the Commissioned Art Economy,” where anyone can showcase work, hire artists, and get hired. Visit www.codaworx.com

...

Overview

The installation 3i019 appropriates the modular structure and atmosphere of the Amparo Museum’s architecture. The foyer of the Museum constitutes an axis that concentrates the modular conception that dominates the design of the building and that we find in the walls, floors and ceilings, elaborated from a square grid. This structure relates – and unifies – the different spaces, giving coherence and fluidity to the different construction materials. The installation expands and projects this modular structure until it becomes a subtle reticular tissue that fills the ample empty space, making it seem as if the walls and the floor were leaving their “flat conformation” and transforming themselves into space. From the sky hang cords on which are held, at different heights, white tubes that repeat some of the lines of the walls and floor, replicating the geometric “structure” in an uncertain way thanks to the counterpoint of the lines. These cords placed at different heights suggest the modular design without repeating or reiterating it, but evoking it from autonomous and separate lines. This elements forms an open structure, a rain of lines, an expanded grid that is dispersed and arranged to provide enough space to allow for mobility and interaction.

Goals

Several objectives were pursued simultaneously in the design of this installation. First, to thematise the modular structure of the building by expanding it transparently into the void, through the suspension of light materials creating a condition of "unstable equilibrium" that optimises constant movement (the power of transformation) as a counterpoint to stability. Secondly, to convert this modular structure in movement into a kind of "skin" that manages to coherently unify the different spaces and places in the building, and that by occupying the entire space of the foyer, extending to the ceiling of the cafeteria, can be seen from the entrance, the intermediate floor and also the floor leading to the roof and cafeteria.

Process

The proposal for the installation of the foyer of the Museo de Puebla was drawn up after a visit to the site. Based on the plans, materials and structural characteristics of the building, sketches were made and the feasibility of its execution was evaluated before submitting the final proposal. Subsequently, the Museum's production team contacted its contractors and we began to work as a team; evaluating the materials to select the most suitable ones, and making decisions to optimize the assembly system.