Villa Aloysius

Mexico

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Villa Aloysius

Mexico

Firm

op'us architects

Type

Cultural › Religious Memorial

STATUS

Built

YEAR

2018

SIZE

25,000 sqft - 100,000 sqft

BUDGET

Undisclosed

Chalco, 2,300m above sea level, a city located 40km southeast of Mexico City. There are satellite cities and areas of extreme wealth and poverty surrounding the metropolis. Mexico City is no exception. The Villa de las Niñas, a free boarding school run by the Sisters of Mary, is directed by its mission to help ‘the poor without the government’s help to become self-reliant’. 3,400 children call this school their home, living there, learning, playing and running together. When they finish the five-year-long middle and high school course, they become independent, as healthy members of society, capable of taking full responsibility for their families.
Located within the Hacienda, the Villa Aloysius is a multi-purpose building with the founder’s memorial hall, chapel, the little replica Chapel of Banneux, the nun’s convent, guesthouse, café, restaurant, and conference rooms. It is a place in which a hundred thousand spiritual sons and daughters, friends, benefactors, and retreatants come to commemorate and celebrate the spirit of Father Aloysius.
The warehouse on the long, wide farm was used as a bakery and printing workshop for thousands of children. The size of the warehouse is immense, as if signifying the wealth of the farm. The wall of the existing warehouse indicates how it has long functioned and established order on this land. This wall is maintained and reused as an exterior wall to place required functions, such as the small convent, office, conference rooms, and exhibition halls. The aim was to repair and reuse everything as much as possible: the bricks that are exposed are left as they are to show that this is not a newly built house but a place that relates to the past. Two storage towers used for storing grains were kept as they were and converted into a family dwelling with an attic. The piled soil, from digging deep into the ground to construct the chapel and to make the foundations for the building was used to make a mound to provide a border around the children’s house.
This house was completed by the nuns, graduates, and students, who not only supported the project financially but actively participated in the planting of trees, laying of a new lawn, and the paving of the street with gravel. Above all, they themselves built the entire 60m-long dyke that divides the children’s space from the spiritual space.
They piled up the 4m-high mound, and they planted grass and flowers. There is an essential difference between supporting something financially and physically participating in the construction.
The general methods of building in this area and the means of building with local technology and inexpensive labour have been studied. ‘Labour-Intensive Construction’, requires a high labour input while simplifying the building materials and details. The potential for the uneven application of details does not dominate, and such irregularities are easy to fix without any special skill. By this virtue, students and graduates can be engaged in the completion of the building. Even without special skill, anyone with a strong will to participate can do so.
Father Aloysius went to his eternal sleep two years after the Mexico project began. Cardinal Ivan Dias, who was the Apostolic Nuncio to Korea at that time, said to Father: ‘You have started this, but you don’t have to finish it. This is your unfinished symphony’. This is also the case for the Villa Aloysius: those who use it now will complete its unfinished symphony.

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Villa Aloysius

Mexico

Villa Aloysius

Mexico

Product Spec Sheet

Collaborating Firms

Team