The first competition selected by the Latin America working group was Pabellón MEXTRÓPOLI 2023, held in Mexico City. The competition focused on the architectural design and construction of a temporary pavilion in the Alameda Central, in the historic center of Mexico City. It aimed to create a space for reflection and discussion on architecture and the city, as part of the MEXTRÓPOLI Architecture and City Festival.
Following the first two training workshops focused on the geographical context, the working group held numerous additional meetings to complete the design and formally submit the competition entry, thereby activating a collaborative mechanism between the Polytechnic University and professional architecture firms.
The ACTO group included architects Barbara Gasparini, Salvatore Risafi, and Matteo Novarino, supported by Monica Munoz and Lorenzo Savio from the Polytechnic University of Turin and several professors and researchers from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana de Bogotà – Gloria Mercedes Zuloaga Lozada, Daniela Carrasco Beltrán, Jose Javier Alayon Gonzalez, Juan Carlos Arturo Cancino Duarte, Juan Fernando Sanmiguel Jimenez, Sandra Carolina Valbuena Bermudez, and Miriam Kuhler.
The candidate project presents spaces that invite us to listen to each other and recognize ourselves in diversity. The collective, manual, and progressive construction of the pavilion’s interwoven walls restores meaning to this public space. Reuse as a sustainability strategy recovers pieces of fabric as a material that binds the bamboo pillars, woven together to achieve rigidity and flexibility.
The sinuous profile of the pavilion generates spaces of different sizes and qualities, changing the distant perspectives of the Alameda into small frames that make each corner unique, transforming its inhabiting into a sensory experience. Its shape adapts to the flows of the park, capturing passersby in its internal paths.
