About
DONIS is an international studio of architecture, urbanism, research, industrial design, and art. The studio has won several international prizes, including the Dubai Frame, selected as the first-prize winner from 926 proposals in an international competition regulated by UNESCO-UIA; the first prize for the National Palace of Justice in Paris; and the winning design for a new landmark for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games at the City of London. DONIS designs, develops, and builds projects across a wide range of scales and programs, consistently pursuing innovative, sustainable, and socially engaged architecture. DONIS was founded by Fernando Donis, Mexican Dutch architect who received his Master’s degree from the Architectural Association in London through the Design Research Laboratory (DRL), where he studied under Patrik Schumacher and Brett Steele. He also received a PhD in Architecture from Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), through the doctoral research program The City as a Project, led by with Pier Vittorio Aureli. His doctoral research, FRAME, is a five-chapter study of the archetype of the frame and its role in the architectural and urban history and culture of Mexico. Following his studies at the Architectural Association, Fernando Donis worked closely with Rem Koolhaas as an Associate at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) for nine years, from 2001 to 2009. During this period, he was the main designer of the CCTV Headquarters in Beijing, among numerous other architectural projects and masterplans. He also collaborated with AMO, OMA’s research and design branch, contributing to research projects concerning the European Union. Fernando Donis has taught at the Berlage Institute and the Academy of Architecture in Rotterdam, as well as at Universidad Iberoamericana and Universidad Anáhuac in Mexico, integrating architectural research, design, and urbanism across multiple scales. His work and career have received international recognition. In 2011, CNN Expansión selected him as one of the 30 most promising and influential people in Mexico. In 2015, Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs selected him as one of the country’s most creative Mexicans living abroad.
MMM — Vertical CUPA
Second Prize — Arquine International Competition for New Housing Prototypes
In 1943, four years before the construction of CUPA (Conjunto Urbano Presidente Alemán)—the first modern multifamily housing complex in Latin America, designed by Mario Pani—Josep Lluís Sert, together with Fernand Léger and Sigfried Giedion, published the Nine Points on Monumentality, proposing a new monumental architecture as "human landmarks, symbols of our ideals, aims and actions."
Following this manifesto, and in response to the international competition organized by Arquine to reinvent new forms of housing based on Pani's project, we developed MMM – Modern Monuments for the Masses. The proposal outlines new points toward an unprecedented form of monumentality—initially for Mexico City—to generate more compact cities for the twenty-first century. In other words, it extends the same way of thinking that led Mario Pani to conceive the first mixed-use multifamily housing complex in Latin America. Rather than producing distant and fragmented urban sprawl, these buildings become a new modern expression of collective life.
If, during the last forty years, we have "witnessed the devaluation of monumentality with empty shells," the MMM buildings instead seek to "represent social and community life." By reinventing the CUPA as a vertical city and incorporating diverse residential typologies (40, 80, and 120 m²) that accommodate people with different incomes and program needs, the project becomes not only an extension of (hyper)modernity but also an adaptation to today's cultural and urban conditions.
The new Vertical CUPA modules are stacked while liberating intermediate communal spaces, generating a vertical city with multiple ground floors in the sky. By updating Mario Pani's vision for the twenty-first century, the project applies Operative History as a design method to advance the future development of Mexico City and metropolitan regions around the world.
