The Soft Infrastructure: How Textiles Define Mexico’s Spatial Memory and Identity
Romina Cordova Grados | Master in Architecture and Urban Design
Savalee Jayendra Tikle | Master in Architecture and Urban Design
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.
In these domestic spaces, where home, workshop, and archive blur together, textile production offers women a rare path to economic independence, giving them greater control over income, time, and decision-making. This publication traces textiles across households, markets, and generations, revealing them as networks of care and survival that stitch together rural and urban territories. Textiles emerge as living infrastructure, sustaining communities and preserving cultural identity while shaping the rhythms of everyday life. Download the full publication for The Soft Infrastructure.
