10 th International Architecture Competition - "Arquine"

This project posed the challenge of building two towers within an ecological and technological framework along modern architectural lines, without ruling out the force of Mexican culture as its underlying base.

Xochimilco

One of the most important symbols of the Aztec culture was the "Pyramid of the Sun" , a structure that gave rise and inspired the geometric and conceptual idea behind the Xochimilco Tower. With its base crowned by a rectangle and giving priority to a central vertical space that ascends in the direction of the sun, Xochimilco seeks to emulate the same characteristics as the Pyramid of the Sun.

Shaped out of four squares, rotated and split up into three parts, the interior horizontal angles oppose each other at an angle of 30º.

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Tezozomoc

"The Plumed Serpent" belonging to the Mayan civilization is the principal inspiration for this project, mainly because of its visual aspect. This inspiration is present under two premises: one intentional and the other consequential.

Intentional: The anatomy of the serpent curling its way upward, stands out strongly in its geometry, incorporating the airiness of the plumage at the top.

Consequential: In the search for bioclimatic sustainability, the final result of this project is its visual relationship with the Mayan stones and its Kukulkan sculpture.

Based on two ellipses – crossing at the center – in the guise of a slight twisting on the ground floor and a dramatic one on the second level, it generates spaces where each volume is clearly different from one to the other.

The Tower is a generator of vertical currents of air due to the dynamism of its shapes with an outer layer that is semi-open and an interior one that is hermetic; it has suspended parks and vertical empty space that represent the underlying intentions.

Bioclimatic Response

The tortuosity of the volumes – in both towers – gives rise to vertical empty spaces in its centers, generating a double skin, geometrically as it were. It is in these (empty) spaces where the intertwining terraces meet that reinforce this project by means of vegetation, where the widest side of the rectangle lies permanently facing the sun, seeking a vertical visualness, which responds bioclimatically, protecting it from the sun and thus causing Xochimilco and Tezozomoc to be held as a self-sustaining project, bioclimatically speaking.

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