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Architects: a|911
- Area: 650 m²
- Year: 2022
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Photographs:Onnis Luque
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Manufacturers: CONCRETO CRUZ AZUL, Cemex, MACERE México, Tecnolite
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Lead Architect: Saidee Springall, José Castillo
Text description provided by the architects. Pilares Valentín Gómez Farías is a building located in the Benito Juárez neighborhood in Mexico City, part of an initiative and public policy with the aim of rebuilding the district through committed architecture, a community center that benefits the citizenship.
According to the program, the proposal gives priority to the young population that have abandoned formal educational institutions, to women who need to strengthen their economic autonomy, and to communities that currently do not have access to decent cultural and sports facilities.
The building is located inside the Rosendo Arnaiz Park, next to the San Antonio metro station, within the limits of the old frontons of the park that were deteriorated and gave rise to crime.
Two lattice walls frame the building at the eastern and western ends of the property, developing inside a reticular enclosure that is distributed in a series of classrooms and educational spaces illuminated and naturally ventilated thanks to a series of north-facing skylights with different heights. The classrooms are connected to each other by a longitudinal walkway, making this a pavilion more than a building.
Two gardens at the North and South ends receive the users of the center and function as an extension of the park that houses various programs such as seating areas, reading, and an outdoor forum, creating an educational system where learning is also done outside the center.
The building is interwoven with the park through a noble and balanced gesture between permeability and presence. It is a low-impact architecture, conceptualized on the footprint of what were the park's pediments.
The building is intertwined with the history of the context and its typology. Its materiality of partition walls and reinforced concrete columns seeks to remember the social and educational infrastructures of previous decades with a new morphology.
Its central concept is the creation of a new landscape, a horizon with a civic dimension. The horizontality of the lattice walls is contrasted by multiple gestures of verticality: a system of skylights with an expressive force in the environment.
