Levitating Mexico City

This project leverages the literal layers of Mexico City by becoming, itself, yet another physical addition to the existing city. While some projects establish new ground on existing city rooftops, this project takes advantage of its context’s ample open space. By removing a portion of this site’s church, ruined in the 1985 earthquake, even more ground level space was made available. In developing a mass for this project, several manipulated grids form a skeleton from which solid volume can exists. Housing units are arranged at an angle to the overall massing, creating opportunities for vertical circulation and structural cores. This project incorporates a large, elevated urban void that not only relocates the potential for an urban plaza on the ground floor, but can accommodate the more-than 60 families currently living in the center of this site; displaced by the aforementioned earthquake. This graduate studio was written and taught by John Enright and Francisco Pardo at SCI-Arc in the Spring Semester of 2017.