Alan Ríos-Cruz was born and grew up in Mexico. He graduated in 2015 from ITESM-CCM (Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education) in Mexico City, and worked as an assistant designer at the furniture and interior design company BLANGKAZ.
He co-founded the art and architecture collective WASA MX, with the aim of creating a dialogue between societal problems and architecture through the intermediary of its users. Among its projects are ‘EIEI’ (2017, ITESM), ‘The Machine is Broken!’ (2018, MAK Center Los Angeles) and ‘Tapetito Tapetote’ (2018, ARQUINE).
Alan Ríos-Cruz has already taken part in several residency programmes, including at the MAK Center for Architecture and Art in Los Angeles, AIR Krems ORTE at Krems an der Donau (Austria) and the Platform Finland at Vaasa.
His artistic project at the Saline Royale is ‘Le premier plan’ (The first plan). The final design of the Saline Royale is today very familiar to us, but there was also a ‘first plan’, an initial design for the saltworks rejected by Louis XV as he regarded it as more appropriate for a church or a palace. But are there elements of this first design which survived in the second? Why did Ledoux move from a square to a (semi)circle? And did his experience in saltworks influence the way he conceived these imposing projects? Were they based on a model? Are columns important in both projects?
Residency postponed to 2021.