Memory

The objective of the Competition was to convert a heterogeneous set of buildings that currently make up the UNAM into a university city. Along with the General Plan, the participants were asked to design a preliminary project for new facilities and infrastructure (classrooms, laboratories, auditorium, library and areas for sports and recreation).

The Master Plan is conceived from a simple and powerful idea: interaction with nature along an axis. In the branches of this tree-lined axis, buildings are located that adapt their orientation to the views and sunlight. These blocks are related to each other as neighborhoods within the university city, thus giving each of the faculties their own identity.

In this sequence from the city to nature, more limited spaces are generated, conducive to social exchange. Each group of buildings opens like arms towards the axis to welcome the visitor, incorporating the richness of flora and vegetation in green lungs determined by facades permeable to the landscape. As the Master Plan fundamentally takes into account the natural elevations of the land, the buildings and paths follow the slopes and are directed from them.

Along this visual axis, the repetition of pavilions is used, also including atypical buildings such as the auditorium and the library. The inclination of the plan with respect to the axis causes the blocks to be partially hidden, promoting a sequential discovery of the spaces. The faculty buildings have a powerful image, with a significant institutional presence, without being monumental. In their hundred meters of development, the horizontality of the pavilions parallel to the natural slope of the land contrasts with the verticality of their sunshades.

The harshness of the climate dictates that the land be covered with large roofs. Shade nets, cross ventilation and semi-covered perimeter circulation with parasols help to maintain a comfortable temperature, reducing heat transmission in periods of high temperature. At the end of the axis, the idea of a centre appears, the place where knowledge and outdoor life come together… an imposing green space, like an embrace of nature, links the axis with the forest, incorporating the amphitheatre and the library. The growing trees that form the background, the grass carpet and the reflecting pool of water receive the dramatic entrance of the rhomboidal formation of the forest, like an arrowhead entering the natural pot of the land.

This large space is the culmination of the visual and circulatory axis of the proposal and a meeting and recreation place with colorful groups of lemon and orange trees.

Thus, the paths, buildings and trees configure their layout around the large circular void, generating relationships between background and figure that enrich the perspectives of the whole.