Ruin porn has hit Mexico City, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. The city has, like many others, a history of uneven development: The historical downtown especially has for some time been a place of empty floors above shops and run-down hotels or apartment buildings on quiet streets. The presence of ruins down the street from some of the country’s central institutions and monuments has also been the result of periodic earthquakes and the fact that much of the city is built on a reclaimed lake and nearby swamps. Outside the core but within the city that developed in the 18th and 19th centuries, factories and workshops have sat disused and idle, even while new ones have appeared at the edges of the vast con-urbanization of almost 9 million inhabitants.
Later than in most cities, the conversion of older, underutilized structures into playgrounds for creatives and the hipoisie—conversions that maintain a sense of the wear and tear those buildings have experienced—is now happening in Mexico City. A star example would be the new Círculo Mexicano Hotel, a boutique establishment of a few dozen rooms (not all of which are finished yet) directly behind the city’s central cathedral and next to its major Aztec ruin, the Temple Major. The Habita Hotel group, which has a habit of hiring interesting architects and creating striking renovations, leased the crumbling structure from the Catholic Archdiocese for 10 years, and proceeded to gut much of the interior, leaving in place fragments and pieces of brick and concrete walls around which new public spaces snake. To get light into the rooms in this mid-block structure, the Mexico City firm of Ambrosi Etchegaray cut holes through several floors, hoping the sunlight would reach down into the lower reaches. It does—sort of—although mainly into the foyers that give the bedrooms “windows” onto a miniature “private courtyard.”
The experience inside this luxury hotel in the “Centro Historico”—the city's historic core—is more Spartan than you might expect. The furniture, created by local firm La Metropolitana, consciously echoes Shaker prototypes that I doubt have ever made it to Mexico City before, down to hanging chairs and mirrors from pegs on the walls. The skeletal elegance here is reflected in the smallest details. Perhaps this is not so much ruin porn as it is ruin abnegation. That is not to say that the hotel is not comfortable and luxurious—just that it seems to cater to guests clad in a combination of Muji, Uniqlo, and Prada more than to those who are partial to Versace.
The La Metropolitana furniture was made in a former textile factory in the Colonia Doctores neighborhood that has been transformed into La Laguna, a rambling array of architects’ and designers’ offices, cafés, and restaurants—and, on the day I visited, a movie set. The renovation, by Productora, is not quite as studied as that of the Círculo Mexicano, and instead gives the factory walls, large panes of windows, and all the other accoutrements of the lofts—as well as some looms preserved as pieces of sculpture—the chance to set the tone. The most striking additions are window boxes and other protrusion that festoon a central bar. Elsewhere, you’ll find big open spaces filled with light and designers and coffee sippers engaged in some sort of creative activity.
La Laguna
La Laguna
Even more free and open is a space called Prim, located at the edge of Centro Storico. Named after its street, this retail and entertaintment center shows off its ruinous state with as much bravura as the Círculo, but without as much furniture. The main additions here are plants, which have taken over every surface not in use and thrive on the rooftop terraces. Designed by the Spanish firm Planta (also responsible for the interior design), this greenery is deceptively wild and is in fact modulated and tended with great care. Two skylight structures bring a contemporary finish to the project. The first, designed by Alberto Kalach, features a sweeping central arch in white-painted steel and is both soaring and strangely heavy. The second, by Productora, appears at first to be a version of a standard greenhouse structure, but its modulated elements and lightness make it appear to float above the heavy concrete roof. Below, there are various restaurants and commercial establishments, but no offices or rooms to rent: Prim makes its money mainly from the restaurant, weddings, parties, and movie rentals.
That transformation of places used for production or living into places of consumption—places where the main thing being consumed, other than overpriced coffee or cocktails, is the space itself—seems more pronounced in these Mexico City examples than it does in most such structures in the United States or Europe, though it is akin to the many conversions of factories in China that started 20 years ago with 798 Factory in Beijing. I assume that, as in many other places, these sites will be pioneers, and that soon we will see a spate of apartment buildings, hotels, co-working spaces and—I would hope—civic spaces that will reveal and reimagine Mexico City’s urban heritage.
Perhaps then architects and developers will turn their attention towards what I have always considered one of the city’s most exciting characteristics: its vernacular of low-rise apartment and office structures built between the 1920s and 1960s, whose thin façades of metal, glass, and stucco make the areas just outside city center a vision of everyday modernity that knits together block after block of the urban grid. A promising sign is the new OMR gallery, designed by the Mexico City-based architect Max von Werz out of the remains of a 1960s-era record store. Filled with light, much as the former industrial buildings are, but with a lighter aura and materiality, the project bodes well for a post-influenced-by-Barragán future for Mexico City.
Aaron Betsky is a regularly featured columnist whose views and conclusions are not necessarily those of ARCHITECT magazine nor of the American Institute of Architects.
