Mexico City Wetlands Housing Project

Rethinking the Abandoned Airport
Mexico City, Mexico
UCLA, Fall 2014
Critic: Wonne Ickx

Featured as a Selected Proposal in Arquine Competition No. 17

This masterplan for the former airport of Mexico City makes a bold proposition to revolutionize the city’s water infrastructure while simultaneously providing housing for the ever-growing metropolis. Situated upon a vast new wetlands system, four bridge-like buildings traverse a lake that naturally collects and filters water for the city.

Rising and falling throughout the seasons, the wetlands become a new recreational park for the community. Four arched buildings gracefully bound across the site, linking once-distant neighborhoods across the recreational lake. In each bridge, the structural role of the arch is subverted through variations in size and spacing, resulting in an irregular rhythm. This graphic use of the arch creates interesting programmatic arrangements and unique suspended spaces.

Visitors traverse the lake along the bridge roofs – which feature public walkways, gardens, observation decks, and a light rail shuttle – and then travel vertically downward to reach the residences and offices below. Dockside restaurants and water taxi services are provided at the base of each pier.