San Pedro Garza García is a city-municipality of the Mexican state of Nuevo León, foundedin 1882. It has had a massive growth placing it as the city with higher GDP per capita in LatinAmerica, making it appealing for businessmen and investors. However, architecture focused on the economic development of San Pedro has brought with itself consequences that affect life quality inside the city. 14% of the urban ground of San Pedro is occupied by business, of which 7% are shopping malls. They offer products and services to users asplaces for social interaction, leisure and recreation. It’s worth saying that in most of these projects, free comfort places are hard to find, and that most of their land is occupied by parking lots. The current shopping mall model is being replicated uncontrollably with a limited focus; that of shopping. This takes more space off the city’s urban ground, neglecting social urban and environmental impact. Some of the problems we’ve identified
on this model are non-sustainable designs, pedestrian adversity and limited social
interaction.

Users of housing and working neighborhoods have changed the concept of local
coexistence. We are planning to take advantage on the fact that this projects are beingdeveloped all over the city by providing social spaces where interpersonal activities canhappen in a pleasant place. We intend to create social interaction between people living,working, and consuming on the zone where the project would be held. 

The goal is to establish a number of guidelines focused to social, urban and environmental benefit for future shopping mall designers to follow. Likewise, to design a hybrid shopping mall model to replace the current one, where the use of sustainable strategies, proper mix of land uses and social areas, are expected to improve life quality in San Pedro. It is also our intention to generate interconnection between new and old models of shopping malls.

Sinapsis (Synapse) is the name of the movement that defined the guidelines for shopping malls design. This word is used to name the action of two neurons communicating. As ananalogy, we are looking for hybrid shopping malls to send people to more of the same type, creating mobility and social interaction. We designed a project that follows the guidelines
established by Sinapsis. It is called Tres Puentes (Three Bridges).