Founded in 1995 by Raul Cárdenas Osuna in Tijuana, Mexico, TOROLAB is an interdisciplinary collective engaged in a series of experiments responding to the urban conditions of Tijuana. Their project SOS: Emergency Architecture addresses questions of survival, emergency and camouflage in the urban context.

TOROLAB’s SOS: Emergency Architecture proposes to rescue materials from the local milieu, what they term “an emergency architecture.” This interdisciplinary project represents a critical examination of the border condition, addressing irregular housing environments and potential spaces for reassessment and negotiation.

TOROLAB is invested in redefining notions of emergency architecture – an architecture of possibility - an architecture necessary for the dynamic conditions of socio-political flexibility and exchange inherent to the border. The LAXART project features the presentation of 9 Families, a video presentation marking the interviews and research with 9 families in a collaboration of “designing” a domestic community for the families, with the families. The exhibition is complemented by a public project in the form of a billboard on La Cienega between Venice and Washington, imaging the women from the 9 Families collaboration.