ARCHIVO

Mexico City, Mexico

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ARCHIVO

Mexico City, Mexico

Firm

Zeller & Moye

Type

Hospitality + Sport › Restaurant
Cultural › Gallery Cultural Center Museum
Educational › Auditorium Library
Government + Health › Community Center
Landscape + Planning › Urban Green Space

YEAR

2014

SIZE

25,000 sqft - 100,000 sqft

‘ARCHIVO’ is a new space for Mexico City offering an exciting mixture of manifold programs, that aims to further enrich the cultural and social life of the metropolis.

Located in the heart of Mexico City, the new cultural hub is comprised of spaces for temporary exhibitions and a permanent collection of design pieces as well as room for educational and communal activities, social events and commercial use. ‘Archivo’ will attract both locals and first-time visitors, and will thus bring new life and regenerative energy into an undiscovered part of central Mexico City.

The building is designed as a raw exoskeleton that opens up to the surrounding jungle-like greenery. Like a tree, the open structure consists of vertical spines and floor plates that branch out horizontally to offer terraces at different levels with views into the green as well as over the city. Its six floors, orientated according to the irregular city grid, can be explored via a generous spiraled route that wraps along the building’s perimeter and meaders up through various functions at each level. Each function is partially located inside, with a portion situated on covered terraces in an unusual semi-open condition benefitting from Mexico’s year-long moderate climate. Large open stairs connect the terraces, creating a continuous open territory that can be programmed and appropriated by its users as a stage, exhibition display, for social events or to meet and socialize. These activities animate the elevations of the building, clearly visible from the street, and from the inside of the park. The pure structure is completed by glazed facades set back from the slab edge to provide shade and privacy, whilst the more public functions occur along the active edges. A truly transparent and lively building is achieved that emanates outwards to the surrounding city.

‘Archivo diseño y arquitectura’ is an exclusive and vast collection of design items that will be displayed in open galleries enclosed only by glass in clear opposition to the traditional walled exhibition space. This open condition allows visitors to enjoy views into the exhibition areas both at a distance when approaching the building as well as when passing by more closely on the vertical public route. As the final destination point, a new "City Floor" is located on the building's top level with a publically accessible exhibition about the history and future of Mexico City against the backdrop of magnificient skyline views.

A wide spectrum of communal life forms an intregral part of the project. Inside the green park-like terrain and immediately adjacent to the building, new multi-functional spaces for workshops, dance classes and socializing, as well as outdoor areas for urban gardening, serve as new destinations for the local community.