Michel Rojkind

Complex forms that positively impact society

Mexican architect Michel Rojkind is transforming his country through the exploration of innovative architectural and urban planning programs. His ideas translate into complex forms built with local manufacturing skills that positively impact society and the environment.

Rojkind started out as a rock star, drumming for one of Mexico’s most popular bands of the 1990s, Aleks Syntek y La Gente Normal. However, in 2002 he switched to architecture, founding Rojkind Arquitectos. Already in 2005 counted by the American trade magazine Architectural Record among the ten best Design Vanguard firms.

‘We generate strategies that enhance the designs final result,’ Rojkind once said.  ‘Nowadays a design proposal needs to find its full potential, it needs to have an added value, give something back to society.’

Among Rojkind’s designs are the Nestlé Chocolate Museum, Toluca, Mexico, which was awarded the International Architecture Award in 2008, the remarkable Liverpool Interlomas department store (2011) in Mexico City, and the New Tamayo Museum, designed in collaboration with Danish firm BIG and built into a mountainside on the edge of Mexico City.

Touring through Central and South America, the United States, and Europe with his band, was of great influence on Rojkind’s professional life as an architect, he said in an interview. ‘I could compare cities, policies, infrastructures, public space, and architecture, but most importantly how people behaved around them. Being able to witness social changes when returning to a city was always something that drove me to think: What could architecture do besides solving a client’s problem?’

Picture: Santiago Ruiseñor