SHoP Architects has just broken ground on their first project in Mexico, a mixed-use development in Tijuana. The complex, which will be know as BAJALTA, explores new ideas about open-space and mixed-use developments, yielding a better quality of life for residents and visitors.
Alfonso Medina, Joseph Ruiz Tapia, Enrique De La Concha, Sara Díaz Barranco, Amy Galeana, Mariel Nuñez Collins, Héctor Hernández, Alejandra Matías, Lucía Arroyo, Alejandro Bustos, Juan Carlos Ibarra
In 1971, Friendship Park was created at the western coast of the US-Mexico border, a small strip of land where the United States and Mexico were separated by just a single chain-link fence to offer friends and family in San Diego and Tijuana a place to meet and spend time together. The park was a small acknowledgement of the effect of border politics on human lives; all the same, border politics made a dramatic comeback in 2009, when the US created a second fence, severely limiting access to the park. Eight kilometers (5 miles) to the East, pedestrians wishing to cross the border are funneled alongside twenty lanes of traffic, over a bridge with high fences on either side.
These less-than-ideal conditions led Patrick Cordelle, a bachelor's student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo to design "La Línea Borrosa" (The Blurred Line), a combined pedestrian border crossing and shared national recreation space for the Tijuana-San Diego coastline.
In this TED talk, architect and urbanist Teddy Cruz urges us to rethink urban growth. Sharing lessons from the slums of Tijuana, Cruz denounces the “stupid” and consumption-driven ways in which our cities have been expanding and declares that the future depends on the reorganization of social economic relations.
Alfonso Medina, Mauricio Kuri, Oscar González, Pablo Casals-Aguirre, Sara Díaz, Joseph Ruíz Tapia, Alejandro Bustos, Lucía Arroyo, Alina Castañeda, Ana Darice Payan