by Ambika Subra, culture editor.

In Mexico, power is etched into the streets—highways slice through working-class neighborhoods, glass towers rise from Indigenous communities. Architecture in Mexico can serve as both a weapon and a witness to inequality. But re/presentare, a new spatial research agency in Mexico City, based at UNAM, is attempting to flip the script. Founded by architects Sergio Beltrán-García and Elis Mendoza, and working as part of Investigative Commons - a network of agencies around the world using open-source methods to investigate human rights abuses - re/presentare is moving beyond analyzing space. Its architects are trying to reimagine space as a tool for justice, hope, and collective action. This year, with the launch of their first major socio-environmental investigation in Mexico City, their work is set to establish a new benchmark for spatial research and intervention.

“Architecture is the discipline of organizing bodies,” Beltrán-García says. “You can pass here; you cannot pass there. And that means power.”

Both Beltrán-García and Mendoza were trained by Eyal Weizman of Forensic Architecture, the renowned London-based investigative group based at Goldsmiths, University of London. But while Forensic Architecture excels at producing analytical data sets for the purposes of exposing state and corporate violence, re/presentare looks to go a step further—into direct intervention and localized action. Their goal is not just to diagnose problems but to collectively repair and redesign spaces to amplify communities over individuals and capital.

One of re/presentare’s first major investigations is taking place in Xochimilco’s San Gregorio Atlapulco, a pueblo originario where locals have been resisting water privatization and urban expansion for several years. Beyond research, the team is working in collaboration with the community to develop methods for investigating the violence they have faced at the hands of the state, including the erasure of their collective traditions. “Investigating collectively,” Mendoza emphasizes, “is just as important as resisting collectively.”

In this way, it’s helpful to understand them not just as architects but as storytellers. They’re using design to make invisible violence visible. “The violence is in the silence,” Mendoza says. “Our job is to force it into the light.” Re/presentare is developing a new vocabulary of resistance through physical and digital interrogation: How do you map the chaos of social media, YouTube comments, or the calculated rhetoric of a morning press conference? How do you make power visible?

Solutions come through building networks. With their work in Xochimilco, alongside local land and water defenders, a model of cooperation is forming that challenges architecture’s often individualistic and hierarchical structures. It’s a horizontal approach which lays groundwork for future expansions, such as collective exhibitions with other spatial practitioners—architects, artists, and individuals from entirely different disciplines. “It’s not enough to analyze what we see,” says Beltrán-García. “We also have to visualize it, to make it tangible in museums, workshops, and public forums.” Through workshops, collaborative design projects, and on-the-ground interventions, re/presentare is creating a new kind of research practice—one that merges community engagement with the transformation of public space.

Mexico is a country facing acute problems with gender violence, environmental destruction, and authoritarianism, all of which is reshaping the country’s physical and built environment. re/presentare is working to imagine and build alternative futures. “The only way to build the future we want,” Mendoza insists, “is by strengthening our networks. By working together.” With this upcoming investigation in Mexico City, their practice holds the power to flip the script—turning Mexico’s struggles into strength via its collective action. In the face of overwhelming challenges, re/presentare is paving the way for another possible outcome where space is not a tool of oppression, but a canvas for hope.