Hasta La Ideas

That there is a rendering of Mexico City’s Soumaya Museum, funded by telecom magnate Carlos Slim and currently under construction. The 183,000-square-foot structure was designed by architect Fernando Romero, who happens to be Slim’s son-in-law; but this is no case of nepotism, as ex-OMA architect Romero “has won praise in international design competitions [and][ is well regarded in Mexico’s architectural community,” as a Bloomberg article points out. (You can also see some of Romero’s work at the bottom of this entry.)

The article also points out that

Romero’s Soumaya Museum is [part of] a global phenomenon that Jose Maria Nava, head of the undergraduate architecture department at the Iberoamerican University in Mexico City, where Romero studied, calls “buildings as spectacles.” Nava adds: “It’s part of a trend that has become very common worldwide — architecture featuring very complex, undulating geometries made possible by computer-aided design, a kind of digital baroque.”

Engineering the curvaceous edifice is complicated enough that Romero is working with engineering firm Ove Arup, who helped erect the Sydney Opera House as well as the Beijing Olympics’ Bird’s Nest and Water Cube structures. (Read more about it here.)

Flickr user Adam Wiseman has some killer photos of the construction in progress:

Check out the rest of Wiseman’s shots here.

Also, for those interested in Romero’s previous work, he’s got tons of pics up on his own Flickr page. A few of the shots are below.

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