Pilares 02 and 03

This project was named an Award winner in the 69th Annual Progressive Architecture Awards, and was featured in the March 2022 issue of ARCHITECT.

“Pilares is just a striking solution. It’s wonderful because it brings cultural aspects and pure architectural form into underserved parts in Mexico City.” — Juror Patricia Saldaña Natke

For its first projects south of the border, New York firm WorkAC partnered with the Mexico City firm Ignacio Urquiza Arquitectos to embrace the rich architectural vocabulary of Mexico while adding a cosmopolitan accent to produce a pair of civic buildings that speak in a compelling urban lingua franca. Commissioned by the municipal government of Mexico City in conjunction with architect Carlos Zedillo, Pilares 02 and 03 are part of a series of structures sprouting up around the sprawling capital to provide a range of civic services in areas long deprived of public or private investment. WorkAC’s and IUA's two contributions to the Pilares program take advantage of their shared proximity to small public gardens, integrating the buildings with the landscape to make them feel truly a part of their respective communities. Broad, glazed entrances open to each of the mini-parks, and the buildings’ blocky forms are precisely cut to fill their irregular oblong sites, rising to three stories with over-scaled windows affording views to the surrounding neighborhoods. Clean and contemporary in outline, the buildings also do proper homage to traditional Mexican Modernism by way of their raw concrete materiality and dreamy, green-and-blue polychromy, hearkening back to the works of Midcentury geniuses Pedro Ramírez Vázquez and Luis Barragán.

PROJECT CREDITS
Project Name: Pilares 02 & 03, Mexico City
Client/Owner: Mexico City Municipal Government
Architects: WORKac, New York, and Ignacio Urquiza Arquitectos, Mexico City. WorkAC: Amale Andraos FRAIC (Hon); Dan Wood, FAIA. Ignacio Urquiza Seoane: Michela Lostia di Santa Sofia, Aida Hurtado, Eder Hernandez, Maria del Mar Carballo, Ana Laura Ochoa, Anet Carmona, Noé García, León Chávez, Fernando Tueme, Sacha Bourgarel (team)
Mechanical Engineer: Grupo BVG
Structural Engineer: Grupo BVG
Electrical Engineer: Grupo BVG
General Contractor: Ignitia
Landscape Architect: Genfor Landscaping
Concrete: CEMEX
Size: 472 square meters
Cost: 8,000,000 MXN

MATERIALS AND SOURCES
Concrete: CEMEX
Exterior Wall Systems: blue concrete wall
Flooring: grey concrete
Furniture: steel and wood tables
Glass: clear tempered glass
Kitchen fixtures: Coriat
Lighting Control Systems: apparent electrical installation
Lighting: EMSA
Masonry and Stone: squared block, oxford grey
Paints and Finishes: COMEX
Plumbing and Water System: PVC pipes
Roofing: Blue concrete roof
Structural System: bearing walls, concrete beams, concrete slabs
Walls and Doors: interior walls with steel panels
Windows: steel sliding windows, steel large windows