Andrea Sanchez Moctezuma



Andrea Sanchez Moctezuma started the Taxonomy of Unscripted Living around 2018, the archive was born from a compilation of photographs from her travels through South Central rural Mexico.

During her time at Yale School of Architecture, Andrea’s research focused on further developing

The Taxonomy as a comprehensive book and online database that would archive and document the aesthetics of autonomous construction in rural Mexico. Today, the taxonomy is an evolving, open-source platform that encourages public submissions. Its long-term goal is to become a self-sustaining archive, continuously documenting typologies and extending its scope beyond Mexico to include diverse and underrepresented regions of the  global south.

Andrea is an architectural designer born and raised in Mexico City, she obtained her Bachelor degree in Architecture from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), where she graduated with distinction and received a Thesis Merit Prize. She has gained valuable professional experience with firms such as AZPML in London, as well as Oyler Wu, HLW, and Griffin Enright Architects in Los Angeles.

In 2023, Andrea earned her post-professional Master’s degree in Architecture from Yale University, where she was honored with the Gene Lewis Book Prize for Excellence in Residential Architecture. Currently, she is a senior architectural designer at GEA in West Los Angeles and serves as an adjunct faculty member at SCI-Arc, co-teaching design studio.


@andrea_sanch

andrea_sanchez@sciarc.edu