Help Launch Red Materia: A Hub for Designers

Red Materia is now OPEN! But we need your help to complete the studio spaces!

Red Materia is now an exhibition space and a residency program for designers that focuses on natural material exploration and sustainable design. But in order to be fully functional and supportive to the community, we need to convert 2 more rooms into studio spaces!

This dynamic hub is a new platform for cultural events, a hive of knowledge sharing, an incubator for innovative (and ancient) techniques, a launchpad for future materials, and will become the town’s icon for world-class design.

This residency, gallery, and studio space welcomes product designers, interior designers, architects, landscape designers, researchers, academics, and material explorers of all kinds.

After just a few months of light renovations and stocking up on tools/supplies, the project will sustain itself! We just need a little more help to get there.

My Story:

Ever since I started directing an art space and artist residency in 2016, I regularly receive inquiries from artists and groups about where to rent studios or exhibition spaces in La Antigua. I never have a good solution to recommend to them, and have been designing the perfect space in my head for years.

Recently, while conducting research in Mexico City and Oaxaca, I visited several successful and world-renowned, multi-use, artistic spaces and paid residencies. The constant activity of these spaces for designers and architects made me think of the demand I still see in Antigua, which is not as flexible. Likewise, the steady success of for-profit residencies in towns like Oaxaca made me realize that something similar would do very well in Antigua.

At the same time, group travel and artisan-based tours in Guatemala do great business, and there is growing demand. But there is nothing that caters to experienced designers, architects, researchers, and other creatives who want to go deeper, stay longer, and work on their preexisting practice.

Now that I am connected with an international network of designers, I have a clear vision for a space in Antigua that would be alive with residents, exhibitions,, workshops, collaborations, and global recognition.

Nothing like this exists in Antigua, but the proof of success elsewhere, along with tangential projects in the area, tells me there is a clear opportunity and I am perfectly positioned to make it happen.

Learn More:

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