THE MESOAMERICAN COMPLEX
TEMIXCO, MEXICO
COMPETITION | OFFICES | SECOND PLACE, 2019
Learning about Mesoamerican culture led us to define the proposal for the new Temixco city hall building. The project delves deeply into two concepts; architecture and urbanism.
In the first case, we canonize pre-Hispanic architecture, we define the building in a mystical, heavy and brutalist architecture with inclined angles, strongly in line with the buildings seen in Xochicalco. In the second case, we return to the importance of the Mesoamerican square, corresponding to geometric lines, very defined and with strict-linear attachment. However, what really defines our complex is social inclusion through public space; And it is up to this stage that we ask ourselves: How public can a public building be? The typology by itself describes it, "Public Building", the public space is the "place that is common to us". T he public means, at the same time, open to all, known to all and recognized by all. In a quote from Marcel Henaff: "a place where human diversity finds more than anywhere else the opportunity to be recognized and valued."
Then, the square gives a community and urban register between the public-urban and individual-private space, claiming the connectivity of the people with the sidewalk, the street and the neighborhood, as a whole, it is inevitably a neighborhood appropriation. We started by opening our town hall towards the city avoiding any physical barrier interposed between the surrounding context and the project.
The project starts from everything mentioned before. The idea is to prioritize the open space of the complex, from the public, going through the semi-public to the private. We began opening our city hall to the city, avoiding every single physic barrier placed between the surrounding context and the project. The convenient orientation was analyzed; in this case, north-south, from which two blocks arise connected by a bridge; the main one with 3 levels, aligned with the perimeter axis of the property, and the second with 2 levels that opens at an inclined angle, taking the national flag as the center and reference, implanting an open patio and creditor to all social activities, whether for direct users of the city council or for the citizens of Temixco, resulting in the original intrinsic message, an inclusive proposal.