Arquine announces winners of the 2023 MEXTRÓPOLI Pavilion Competition

Three winners have been announced at the conclusion of Arquine’s MEXTRÓPOLI Pavilion Competition ‘23 in Mexico City.

The competition’s brief called for designers to enact a pavilion structure in the capital’s historic Centro district while working within the curatorial framework of the MEXTRÓPOLI Architecture and City Festival, which takes place at six different historic locations from September 22-25th this year.

Pavilions are meant to be temporarily inserted at each site in order to “[allow] the development of an open public program that builds a place for interaction between architecture and citizenship.” Designers were then tasked with meeting two objectives:

• Convene, with a universal character, to present ideas for the development and construction of a Pavilion, recyclable and reusable, without exception, complying with the requirements established in these bases.
• Turn the Pavilion into a reference space within the framework of the MEXTRÓPOLI Architecture and City Festival, which manages to provide the festival with a space for reflection and discussion around architecture and the city.

The jury for this year’s competition included Daniel Daou, Rocío Pina, Eva Franch I Gelabert, Sandra Barclay, and Diego Rivero Borrell. Their only mandate, according to Arquine, was to select a proposal that "manages to propose a solution that is considered superior to the others." 

They noted: "The jury decided to select the second and third place projects as a message to topics to assess for future editions, at a spatial, tectonic or environmental level." Cash prizes of $100K, $50K, and $25K (in Mexican pesos) were awarded to this year's winning design teams. 

FIRST PRIZE - "OUT OF PLACE "

Team: Alvaro Martin Morales Reyes, Durango, Mexico; Manuel Alejandro Alemán Rocha, City from Mexico, Mexico and Rubén Aldair Bermúdez Martínez (Seville, Spain)

Jury description: “This proposal, inserted in the Alameda, on a real scale, the terrace of the only house in Mexico declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Cloisters the visitor in his  interior with views of the sky, but now in the context of the Historic Center, isolating it from the same park. The political aspect, which decapitates the building itself, leaving only the roof, is what gives the project the most strength, by questioning the idea of what is the world heritage if you really can not access it? [Does it] remain Sacred architecture if it is decontextualized? The proposal raises a number of provocative questions for architects today and in turn about the architecture of reference to citizenship.”

SECOND PRIZE - "SHIRT"

Team: Alonzo Petit-Breuilh Osses, Giuseppe Navarro Marin, and Ignacia Zurita Contreras (Concepcion, Chile)

Jury description: “The jury selects this piece as an attractive architectural element that offers the visitor different actions and spaces. On the one hand, he points to the replica of Diego's mural Rivera, and on the other, the daily activities of the Alameda Central. One of the questions was to highlight the replica of the mural, when the original mural was located a few steps away. However, the piece stands out for offering a space contemplative and tiered, the possibility of circulation at another height and also a shadow space under the same element to invite other activations.”

THIRD PRIZE - "symbiote"

Team: Francisco Farit Acosta Perez (Queretaro, Mexico)

Jury description: "It stands out for the research it does on the species that inhabit the Alameda Central and for the relevance, it gives to ecology from architecture. strays away from the speech hyper-architectural or playful experience, and launches a message that establishes that the Architecture is not only anthropocentric but a dialogue must be established with other species and with the planet we inhabit."

Learn more about this year's MEXTRÓPOLI Architecture and City Festival here.