Centro Raíz

Temporarily located in the Alameda of Mexico City’s Historic Downtown, a complex structure made entirely of wood is placed as part of the activities of the Mextrópoli 2023 city festival.

This project is an URBANKETING® exercise in collaboration with Global Woods, a concept created by A-001 Taller de Arquitectura, which allows companies or brands to market themselves through responsible and non-invasive city projects. With this urban intervention the brand is organically inserted into the narrative of the Alameda, the public space and the city.

The idea behind CENTRO RAÍZ, as its name suggests, is about going back to the roots of architecture, construction and humanity. Building materials are much more than just matter, they are stories within stories, regions and ecosystems, elements that largely determine ways of life.

“The use of wood as a building material allows us to decide how our relationship with the forests, the city and the planet will continue.”

Working with wood implies recognizing that culture is inseparable from nature, that materiality affects architecture, and that art is closely linked to ecology. We must look to the past to realize that the future of construction and architecture lies in the use of wood.

The pavilion is built with American teak staves arranged in the x, y, and z axes, achieving a large volume with less material.

A quarter of a sphere is subtracted from the interior of the pavilion, symbolizing time as an abstract and intangible concept, which you need to actively imagine and construct in the present. The missing fourth part represents the future, built in the imaginary of the Alameda, the trees and the people, representing the history that we continue to write day by day.

How do we want this future to look like?
The pavilion holds an open forum, which became another urban element of the Alameda, with which people were free to interact, sit for a while to rest in the shade, read, share through photographs and make city.