Paseo del Arte

Chih., Mexico

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Paseo del Arte

Chih., Mexico

Firm

Garza Maya Arquitectos

Type

Commercial › Office Retail Shopping Mall

STATUS

Built

YEAR

2018

SIZE

10,000 sqft - 25,000 sqft

BUDGET

$500K - 1M

Chihuahua is a city in Mexico’s broad northern region, which has an arid climate of extreme temperatures where it can reach temperatures above 50 ° C. A metropolitan area that, taking advantage of its geography and with one of the highest growth rates in the country, it has spread mainly in a horizontal manner.
With this growth, in the new developments at the city’s borders, which are generally over irregular topographies and mostly with steep slopes, generally lack of efficient transportation systems, so the inhabitants tend to take the automobile as the main source to commute creating isolated neighborhoods that interact between themselves through cars. Also, and because of the absence of a clear reference that foments a stable and positive environment, the city expands in an unorganized and sometimes chaotic fashion.
Under these circumstances, in the western outskirts of the city, over a plot of triangular shape and with a regular and constant slope, the project proposes ORDER through an orthogonal grid, that is expressed through the exposed structure, to organize in square 4 pavilions with orientation east-west.
The structure of the ensemble is a hybrid structure, where the columns that contain the interior of the pavilions are made of gray exposed concrete with a section of 0.30 X 0.30 M. And the outside is delimited by steel columns of circular section of 12” D.
Each pavilion has in the exterior, terraces and corridors that work as platforms for the development of experiences with an identity of their own, but also forming part of a unitary whole, since each of this corridors is covered and contained by porticos that, as an ensemble, result in a promenade starting at the entrances at the extremes of the plot, and culminating in the heart of the project, an endemic garden.
The interior of the pavilions consists of a double-height space where there is the possibility, according to the needs of the user, to increase the profitable area through the integration of a mezzanine so it can duplicate the floor usable area.
The garden extends over a platform made of traditional handmade brick, and consists of cercidium, fresno, huisache, lavender, rosemary and cat’s claw. This space, that evidences the proposed order through the brickwork in the floor, but also through the steel armors pergola that covers it, works as the main common area of the project, a space of coexistence of the inhabitants and also of synchronicity with time and the natural environment through the weight of the shadow that the pergola generates with path of the sun.