Mi Casa-Your Casa

As part of a two-year initiative to activate the Sifly Piazza and engage the community in the vibrant campus of the Woodruff Arts Center designed by Renzo Piano, the High Museum of Art unveiled an ambitious interactive design installation entitled Mi Casa-Your Casa, conceptualized and created by contemporary Mexican designers-in-residence Héctor Esrawe and Ignacio Cadena.

Mi Casa-Your Casa is a site-specific installation that will invite the community to actively participate in the life of the entire Woodruff Arts Center campus through recreation, social interaction, performances, and art-making activities.

Mi Casa-Your Casa is a welcoming space where visitors can play, create and relax. Hammocks, swings, easels, bins of chalk, and buckets of bubble water, among other elements, offer daytime “playtime” options. The Woodruff divisions (Alliance Theatre, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Arts for Learning) will utilize the installation for performances, youth education and more. The High is also collaborating with artists and performers from across the Atlanta arts spectrum to enliven the space. These highly unique and original collaborations will allow visitors to experience some of Atlanta’s most compelling artists in exciting new combinations as they explore new territory and branch out in fresh and unexpected directions to bring the Piazza to life with art.

The installation features 40 three-dimensional open frames in the shape of a house, The houses form a blank canvas for community engagement and activity in a basic- straight foreword- form recognizable and relatable to all ages and cultures: the home, a simple metaphor of warmth and welcoming. Mi Casa-Your Casa is inspired by the lively street markets of Latin America where human connections are made every day. The chromatic quality of the object responds to the red color painted steel structures that house each merchant and to design intention of creating high contrast against the white purity of Richard Mier’s and Renzo Piano’s Architecture.

Mi Casa-Your Casa, Sifly Piazza, Atlanta
Concept and creative direction: Héctor Esrawe & Ignacio Cadena
Design Team: Javier Garcia-Rivera de la Plaza, Stella Riesterer, Mariana Nuñez, Berenice Galindo, Ignacio Piedras, David Flores, Rodrigo Casanova, Gerardo Galaviz, Fernando Ortega, Angélica Krinis, Alberto López Monzón, Ricardo Bideau, Marcela Fraustro, Alan Coria, Sergio Martínez, Alejandro Flores, Marco Montemayor
Project Management: Javier García-Rivera, Ricardo Bideau
Operational Coordination: Jorge Bracho, Alberto López, Joaquín Cevallos
Prototype: Mario Alberto Gómez – MAGSA
Production: Manuel Arevalo – DISEMO
Curators: Sarah Schleuning (Curator of Decorative Arts and Design), Virginia Shearer (Eleanor McDonald Storza Director of Education)
Commissioned by: High Museum of Art Atlanta / Woodruff Arts Center