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Collection of household and studio items related to clay production

Lo Que Sabe el Barro: From Clay to Fire

This research by MCI Fellow Andrea Martinez traces extraction, craft, labor, and reuse across Oaxaca, Saltillo, and Mexico City. Rather than locating rupture between artisanal and industrial practice, it proposes a material continuum, a framework for understanding how ancestral knowledge is not lost but translated through landscapes, labor, and economies.

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Black-and-white photo of a woman shaping clay on a table

Clay as Living Archive

What can a planner learn from a pot? MCI Fellow Lys Otárola (MUP ’26) presents her 2025 research arguing that the pottery practice of Oaxaca’s red clay communities constitutes a living archive of design intelligence, a system in which social infrastructure, embodied knowledge, communal governance, and ecological reciprocity are not separate concerns but a single, integrated practice.

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Pink-toned photo of clouds with overlaid text

De la Porqueria al Público / From Pigsty to Publics

MCI ’25 Summer Fellows Gemrisha Anantham and Miriam Hernandez Medina’s research investigates the contamination of the Yucatán Peninsula’s karst aquifer by the region’s pork industry, a project that shifted in direction after repeated access to pig farms, from small operations to major producers like Kekén, was denied due to biosecurity protocols and producer wariness stemming from recent regulatory crackdowns.

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Dark blue drawing of textiles with white geometric line patterns

The Soft Infrastructure: How Textiles Define Mexico’s Spatial Memory and Identity

MCI ’25 Summer Fellows Savalee Jayendra Tikle and Romina Cordova Grados’s research centers on textiles as “soft infrastructure,” the cultural, spatial, and economic systems that quietly shape urban and rural life across Mexico. What began as an inquiry into supply chains and material culture shifted, through fieldwork, toward a deeper focus on the social role of textiles, particularly how embroidery and weaving passed through mother-daughter lineages structure women’s autonomy, livelihoods, and intergenerational power.

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2015 Fellows

2015 Fellows EN BICI: Hyperlocalized explorations of biking as a tool for urban resilience in Mexico City Carlos Hernandez-Tellez | Master in […]

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