Hierve-Diseñeria

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Alejandro Villarreal

Alejandro Villarreal – © Hierve-Diseñeria

Published projects

	Club Hipico The project consists in a Horse Riding facility, that sits within a 220 hectare residential complex called La Reserva, which is immersed in a pine and fir...
	Las Torres 60 dwelling residential block conformed by houses and apartments made out with tepetate (hard compacted soil) and a pink stucco façade.
	Liverpool The project involves the refurbishment of a former office building built in 1981, to be converted into a residential building with 23 apartments. It is worth...
	Depa H The project consists in the interior design of a 1,202.32 sq/ft apartment, where the main element is a wooden mantle that extends itself throughout the...
	Hesiodo This building speaks of mediation. It is an element that intends to situate itself halfway between culture and nature; openness and introspection; imposition...
	La Antena The project is a residential development consisting of 100 departments of social housing. The development includes 10 apartment towers, 5 levels each, where...
	Sistema Arde Cheap and widely available, concrete masonry unit blocks (CMUs) have become one of the most commonly used materials in low-income housing all along Mexico...
	Santa Maria Santa Maria is a housing development located in a historic protected site in the heart of Valle de Bravo, a small colonial city dating from 1530, which is 2...

Brief description

Hierve is a small multi-disciplinary design firm based in Mexico City and London. The firm was established in 1999 by Alejandro Villarreal, with the purpose of serving society through high quality projects in architecture, product design, visual arts and the developing of business models. At the core of our belief system is the underlying idea that creativity should not serve itself, but should serve society as a whole.

The word “Hierve”, which means boiling, stands for the active, moving and dynamic properties of any liquid at its boiling point, representing our continuous need to generate ideas, concepts and solutions for a better living. The word “Diseñeria”, which means designery, is a self coined word which accounts for our main activity, just as it has been traditionally used for bakeries, carpentries and smitheries.

The company is small and it has a global approach. We team up with highly qualified professionals who bring up their talent from Mexico City (Mexico), London (UK), Boulder (USA), Sofia (Bulgary), Munich (Germany), etc. Since the beginning the company has looked at finding a balance between efficiency and artistic thrive, between practicality and creative insight. We believe that a high level of creativity can be achieved alongside a high level of efficiency and business sense.

Since we do not believe in the exclusivity of creativity, we develop projects for any people, in any place and with any level of resources. We are equally excited to work with the private sector than with NGOs, with individual clients than with corporate clients, with commercial projects than with projects with social connotations.

When developing a project we open ourselves up to the past, to history. We believe there is a great amount of information in past achievements and efforts. However we also open ourselves up to innovation, to new insights and ideas that can bring up something good an useful. At the same time we believe that each project should be unique, it should emerge from its own specific conditions and requirements. We take the time to listen, to research, to understand and to develop, and in doing so, we let each project get its own language and personality.

One of our top priorities is to develop a sense of intimacy with each project that we make. Each project is developed exhaustively with utmost precision and attention to detail. That´s why we work with a small number of simultaneous projects, and we opt for small to medium scale projects. We think of our creative endeavor more as a craft, as an constant learning process done with passion, attention, care and respect. As a painstaking process that needs time to refine itself, to become its best possible outcome.

We use many different tools throughout the creative process. We feel comfortable with both traditional techniques and state of the art technologies. We feel the same passion for a hand drawn sketch than for a computer generated drawing, by a hand made scale model than by the use of Building Information Modelling and Rapid Prototyping technologies.

We believe that the creative process should be a cooperative and open one, in which every exchange, by every participant, should enrich the process itself and its final outcome. We promote constant interaction and discussions not just with our clients, but with our co-workers, design specialists, builders, manufacturers, marketing team, etc.

Finally, all our efforts and all our creative energy are driven by a single purpose, by a single motivation: to bring well being to people. At the core of our aspirations is that everyone who experiences one of our projects can feel uplifted and enhanced as a human being.

Mission:

To ignite, explode, stretch, bend, shape, bounce, suck, caress, open, connect, expand and liberate creativity, with the ultimate aim of inducing it into the world, to bring about some change, improvement, benefit, evolution and liberation.

Creative Philosophy:

It is our pursuit that our projects find a balance between the following four factors:

Creativity: We believe in experimentation, in ingenuity, in daring, in spontaneity, in play, in poetry, in roughness, in beauty, in harmony, in refinement, in emotional connection.
Function: We believe in the pragmatic level, in performance, in utility, in function, in the reason for something to be, in the improvement of circumstance, in simplification, in economy.
Social Responsibility: We believe in community, in sustainability, in responsibility, in commitment, in consciousness, in caring, in respect, in honesty, in diversity, in the cycles of things.
Spirituality: We believe in essence, in substance, in truth, in silence, in union, in connection, in expansion, in liberation.

Principal

Alejandro Villarreal

Key projects

2007-2008 - Santa Maria, Multi family housing with 9 units, Valle de Bravo, Mexico
2004-2007 - Las Torres, Low income residential block with 60 units, Cuautitlan Izcalli, Mexico
2004-2006 - Depa H, Interior design of an apartment, Mexico City, Mexico
2002-2006 - Liverpool, Remodeling of a former office building into an apartment building with 23 units, Mexico City, Mexico
2002-2003 - Hesiodo, 13 apartment building complex, Mexico City, Mexico
1999-2000 - La Antena, low income residential block with 100 apartments, Iztapalapa, Mexico
1998-2000 - Sistema Arde, Patented constructive system for low income housing

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