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Pixelated volcano

At the Tamayo Museum Zeller & Moye rethink the standard clay blocks used in Mexican sprawls, and create an installation that resembles the Popocatépetl volcano.

Zeller & Moye, Popo, Tamayo Museum, Mexico City, 2016

Popo is an installation by Zeller & Moye seen at the Design Week Mexico 2016 at the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City, that transforms a common low-cost industrial building material, the standard clay block, into a new multipurpose object, thanks to a specular glazing finishing. The composition represents a pixelated 1:350 scale model of the nearby Popocatépetl volcano.

The climbable structure is situated within the central patio of the museum including details such as the crater and the volcano’s extensions at its foot. Assembled to a topographic landscape, hundreds of Popo blocks resemble the urban sprawl of informal housing that follows the topography of the volcanic peripheries as it can be found in many parts of the valley of Mexico City.

Typically these informal housing are build from unfinished standard clay or concrete blocks tracing the subjacent topographies. Popo is an utilitarian object, conceptualised by Zeller & Moye for Ideal Estándar, a social franchise model of utilitarian artwork production, developed by the Mexican art gallery Arena México Arte Contemporáneo.