Pedro Reyes on making cities better

Pedro Reyes tells of his “Palas por Pistolas” project that saw weapons being voluntarily turned in and transformed into garden shovels.

Mexican architect and artist Pedro Reyes grew up in a creative and imaginative family, with his parents and grandparents thinking up challenges for him to conquer. Today, he finds creative solutions  for a living.

All knowledge is transmitted through metaphors and regardless of what you do, creativity is available to everybody, says Reyes.

Having designed  a puppet show that comments on the changing nature of politics and economics, he puts serious and important topics into a more digestible format, such as the words and ideas of Adam Smith and Karl Marx during conversation.

Reyes urges designers to think about the activities that take place in the spaces they design. To encourage public participation, he designed a monument horizontally rather than vertically.

Reyes also talks of the Urban Genome Project aimed at making cities better. 

Watch the Interview with Pedro Reyes, Carla Fernandez