Abstract:

Smoke Architecture is a conceptual project set in Mexico that explores architecture as a tool for coexistence in response to an emerging urban condition. As cannabis consumption undergoes a process of destigmatization and approaches potential legal regulation in Mexico, architecture is challenged to engage with practices already present in public space. Rather than ignoring this reality, the project proposes a speculative spatial response to a social phenomenon that is progressively reshaping the way the city is inhabited.

The project does not seek to provide definitive solutions or moral judgments. Instead, it understands consumption as an individual decision and positions architecture as a proactive, empathetic, and speculative medium capable of anticipating new forms of coexistence. The proposal embraces ambiguity, allowing multiple perspectives and social dynamics to coexist within the same spatial framework.

The intervention imagines a Fifth Section of Chapultepec Forest in Mexico City as a Cannabis Park — a hybrid infrastructure combining spaces for consumption, production, experimentation, and sale with cultural, exhibition, gastronomic, and contemplative programs. Central to the proposal is the demolition and recycling of the Estela de Luz monument, reinterpreting a symbol of corruption and urban disconnection into a collective landscape focused on care, inclusion, and shared urban experience.