Mexico City–based architecture firm Pedro y Juana (Ana Paula Ruiz Galindo and Mecky Reuss) created the site-specific installation From the Tropics with Love for the Commons. The installation includes an urban garden consisting of 221 planters and lamps (named Brunhilde, Olivia, and Antonia), hardy indoor plants, a collapsible stage, and a suite of multi-functional furniture that can be dismantled and stored on the wall. The work subverts the reality of Chicago’s harsh climate in the city by bringing the summer indoors year-round and disrupts the traditional austerity of the museum space, welcoming the visitor with color, humor, and a sense of play.

Pedro y Juana is an architecture and design studio in Mexico City, founded by Ana Paula Ruiz Galindo and Mecky Reuss. Together, Galinda and Reuss create dynamic interior spaces, accessible public installations, and smart design objects.

They have been commissioned by the MCA to design the Commons, a multiuse engagement space in the center of the museum. Galindo says, “Our design will create a learning environment that opens up new possibilities to engage and think about the fundamental social, political, and critical framework of art. We are working on translating these ideas into a social typology of a third space, a place that you frequent outside of home or work. We imagine the Commons as an egalitarian space in constant motion that is flexible and creates a sensation where all kinds of things—even those that are unexpected—can and will happen at all times.”

Pedro y Juana are best known in Chicago for Dear Randolph (2015), their distinct interior environment at the Chicago Cultural Center that featured a network of movable lamps, rocking chairs, tables, and a wall tapestry for the 2015 Chicago Architecture Biennial. Other recent projects have included Anastasia (2016), a courtyard installation of lanterns for the Hammer Museum’s Gala in the Garden; the exhibition display for The Natural Order of Things (2016) at the Jumex museum DF/Mexico; and Hotel Palenque Is Not in Yucatan (2014), in which Pedro y Juana worked in collaboration with Montserrat Albores Gleason to produce an exhibition and architectural intervention that was the site of Little Pig Session (Sesiones Puerquito 2012–15), during which they held a roast to prompt a social and conversational experience among attendees.