a new/work neighborhood designed around public & private urban courtyards

Studio | Mixed-Use Neighborhood in Mexico City

Fall 2014 | Prof. Wilfried Wang

Project Partner | Jessica Mills

As Mexico City welcomes Foster and Romero’s new airport in the next 15 years, our project proposes the re-development of the old airport site with a series of parks and green spaces that offset the future loss of permeable ground. Using deliberately smaller scale parks to maximize the benefit for more people in the surrounding area, our scheme mirrors the large urban park at the west of the city: Chapultepec Park. Alongside green spaces, the urban scheme is such that it integrates the new fabric with the existing surrounding neighborhoods.

With the larger site as an eventual end goal, our studio was structured to design from the bottom, up. We began at the scale of a minimal live-work unit. We standardized and combined two different apartment designs into a single module that shares a circulation core, articulated by a concrete block screen that plays with light and visibility. We took into consideration the typical Mexican street, which has solid and mute facades and open interior courtyards. In that vein, we reduced the openings at the street facade, favoring privacy. We then designed an interior courtyard with more windows, balconies, and social potential.

The aggregated module is repeated to form a perimeter block. By integrating “connector” buildings that divide the larger courtyard, we produced intimate courtyard spaces that provide a sense of ownership for the inhabitants. These buildings integrate mixed used program directly into the block, used as libraries, daycares, work incubators, studios, etc.

As an exercise, we grow the single perimeter block into an 8-block “Urban Fabric Swatch.” We increased density at the green edges and integrated urban program such as schools, churches and retail. A series of parks and bioswales carry water from west to east across the site. That water then telescopes into the larger retention and filtration system to the city’s western perimeter.These bioswales and green spaces invert the relationship of permeable to impermeable surfaces within the site. As the low point in Mexico City – it’s the bottom of the bowl – the airport can perform a role within the larger water management system.