Project Details
- Project Name
- Regeneración: A Vision for the Campus and District of the Tecnológico de Monterrey
- Location
- Mexico
- Architect
- Sasaki
- Client/Owner
- Tecnológico de Monterrey
- Project Types
-
Cultural ,Sports ,Transportation
- Project Scope
- New Construction
- Size
- 312,337 sq. meters
- Shared by
- Hanley Wood
- Consultants
- Philip Parsons
- Project Status
- On the Boards/In Progress
2017 AIA Institute Honor Award Winner in Regional & Urban Design
Since its founding in 1943, Mexico’s Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education has demonstrated an enterprising and ambitious spirit unusual in an academic institution. It was among the first in the country to seek accreditation from the United States Department of Education—thereby drawing students from north of the border—and its campus, designed in the late 1940s, was conceived as a showcase for the best in modernist architecture.
Enrique de la Mora, a key figure in Mexico’s own national brand of Modernism, created a gorgeous suite of buildings for the original campus, which he arranged for optimal exposure to light and air. In the intervening decades, however, subsequent additions have departed from de la Mora’s vision and added architectural clutter, while also cutting off the school grounds from the surrounding city.
Looking to counter this unfortunate trend, Boston-based landscape and planning specialists Sasaki Associates devised a scheme called Regeneración that reintegrates the school into the community, centered around a new corridor that will cut through the campus and connect its disparate parts. At either end, two new “learning nodes” will transform the former periphery into active hubs, while a massive, underused stadium and adjacent surface-level parking will be repurposed with new multi-use playing fields and a smaller sports facility for the town. Not just a revitalized plan for the university, Regeneración promises to help attract new investment and development for the city of Monterrey as a whole.
Project Credits
Project: Regeneración: A Vision for the Campus and District of the Tecnológico de Monterrey, Monterrey, Mexico
Client: Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey
Architect and Planner: Sasaki Associates, Boston
Size: 1,434 acres
Cost: Withheld
To see the rest of ARCHITECT's coverage of the 2017 AIA Institute Honor Awards, click here.
Project Description
FROM THE AIA:
Poised to showcase Latin American universities as powerful hubs of innovation and entrepreneurship, Mexico’s Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education has adopted a new master plan that will reshape the institution’s relationship with its urban setting. When it was originally designed in 1945, the campus’ framework was heralded as being both rational and visionary, with careful attention paid to solar orientation and circulation. And while many of the plan’s main elements still exist today, many of the school’s more recent buildings undermined the sustainable integrity of the original vision. While vibrant, the campus had disengaged with the surrounding context that faces issues of neglect, disinvestment, and an obsolete stadium surrounded by acres of surface parking. Despite the global trend of allied industries developing around educational institutions, the school had attracted little investment. The most significant challenge facing the design team was to recapture the spirit of the original plan while adjusting it to reflect new directions in pedagogy. Every detail of the plan focuses on three key elements—transparency, connectivity, and engagement—and sets the stage for the institution’s evolving roles in the city, country, and beyond. Centered on an open-space spine that cuts through the core of the original campus, the new flow helps blur the lines between the campus and district while attracting new mixed-use development and neighborhoods. On both ends of the campus, two learning nodes transform underused spaces into hubs for collaboration, while sandwiched between them is the university’s social and academic crossroads formed by a student and faculty commons and library. Replacing the aging and oversized stadium is a series of flexible playing fields that create a parklike connection and draw the community to the university’s public amenities and academic core. To provide an additional civic benefit, a smaller, more suitable stadium is proposed for the site. By providing an integrated framework that balances investment in the campus and the neighborhood, this project will aid the university in making a new kind of contribution to city and country while reframing the conversation about higher education in the Mexico.