Archinect - News

El Salvador picks Fernando Romero to plan its Bitcoin City

2022-05-13T08:27:00-04:00

The country of El Salvador has picked an architect for his attention-grabbing bid to lure cryptocurrency investment to the small Central American nation.

FR-EE founder Fernando Romero is now in charge of the country’s Bitcoin City development and plans to add a new Pacific airport, according to an announcement made on social media from President Nayib Bukele Tuesday.

All images via Nayib Bukele/Twitter

Somewhat similar to the layout of the new “crypto paradise” private island development in Vanuatu, plans revealed this week display a concentric design with outlying nodes connected to a central plaza, itself forming the shape of a Bitcoin logo. The pop-up city, which includes an airport concept similar FR-EE’s contribution to the abandoned design for a new international airport in Mexico City, will be located at the base of the Conchagua Volcano (also its power source for mining operations) along El Salvador’s southern coast.

All images via Nayib Buk...

Fernando Romero Enterprise reveals concept for Burning Man temple

2020-01-17T18:12:00-05:00

Mexico City and New York-based Fernando Romero Enterprise (FR-EE) has unveiled their proposal for this year's Burning Man Temple. Each year, the event invites a team of architects, artists, and designers to create a temple proposal where Burners (Burning Man participants) can gather.

Interior view.

Aerial view.

FR-EE's concept is inspired by the Ancient Greek word holon, which refers to an object that is both complete unto itself and an integral part of a larger whole. Taking the form of a wooden ellipsoid, the larger inhabitable temple houses an identically smaller version of itself within that serves as an altar. Within the altar still lies an even smaller replica of this ellipsoidal form, a nested array of artifacts, each complimenting the other.

The temple's construction consists of a wooden truss system, devised by FR-EE to achieve its organic form. Each truss bows outward and is braced by 34 circular horizontal members, representing the 34 years of Burning Man's existence. A com...

Fernando Romero to design world's tallest statue of Christ

2019-01-16T14:18:00-05:00

An actor from Tamaulipas has created a project that would give the state’s capital, Ciudad Victoria, the world’s tallest statue of Jesus Christ. Eduardo Verástegui Córdoba explained that the 77-meter-high statue and a complex to be built around it will be known as The Christ of Peace. He said that the purpose of the project is to leave a legacy of peace for the state in which he was born.

Besides the enormous statue of Jesus Christ, the ambitious project is also expected to provide a large plaza for 10,000 people, a church of course, a convention center as well as facilities for retail, dining, hospitality, shopping, entertainment, transportation, and housing.

Mexican actor Eduardo Verástegui Córdoba, the driving force behind the Cristo de la Paz vision, hopes to send a message of peace while also bringing pilgrims, tourists, and thus commerce to his drug war-ravaged home state of Tamaulipas, one the country's most violent.

Fernando Romero, a lead architect of Mexico City's recently canceled NAICM airport development, will reportedly design the project.

It's unclear how much the endeavor will cost and who is paying for it, but construction is set to start soon.

Construction work on partly built Mexico City International Airport officially suspended

2019-01-04T13:32:00-05:00

Some work continued on Thursday at a partly-built $13 billion Mexico City airport that the new president is scrapping, even after the government announced construction had been halted. [...] The head of the government-run agency responsible for the project, Gerardo Ferrando, said the only construction still underway was to preserve what had already been built, such as drainage works, slabs of foundation and a partly-built tower.

NAICM aerial visualization. Rendering: Dbox.

It's unclear what should happen now with the partly built new Mexico City International Airport which, some argue, was about one-third complete. "Construction work is officially suspended on that airport, and negotiations on the early termination of the contracts has begun," said Communications and Transport Minister Javier Jimenez Espriu in a news conference this week.

Interior concept. Rendering: Dbox.

The mammoth $13 billion infrastructure project was designed by a conglomerate comprising Foster + Partners, FR-EE (Fernando Romero Enterprise), and NACO (Netherlands Airport Consultants).

Mexican voters reject partly built $13 billion Mexico City International Airport project

2018-10-29T14:14:00-04:00

Voters in Mexico have rejected completion of partly built new airport for Mexico City, opposing it by a 70 to 29 percent margin. Mexico’s President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Monday he will respect the referendum, effectively ending the $13 billion project which is already about one-third built. “The decision taken by the citizens is democratic, rational and efficient,” Lopez Obrador said. “The people decided.”

It's looking like the end of the runway for the partly built new Mexico City International Airport designed by a conglomerate comprising Foster + Partners, FR-EE (Fernando Romero Enterprise), and NACO (Netherlands Airport Consultants).

While the public vote clearly disapproved of the $13 billion megaproject that's been associated with corruption and overspending, the referendum is not without criticism due to its extremely low voter turnout.

Mexico City International Airport project's future now relies on public vote

2018-08-22T14:28:00-04:00

Mexican President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Friday he would let voters decide whether to continue construction of Mexico City’s new airport, throwing into doubt the country’s biggest public-works project and billions in investment and debt. The airpot, designed in part by U.K. architect Norman Foster, is about one-third complete. About $5.2 billion has been spent on the infrastructure project, the biggest of the administration of current President Enrique Peña Nieto.

After softening his original stance on cancelling the new Mexico City International Airport, president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has now opened up the project's fate to the public. The partially built infrastructure project by Foster + Partners and FR-EE now hangs in the balance of public voters.

Mexican president-elect softens his opposition to $13 billion airport project

2018-07-09T15:16:00-04:00

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Mexico’s next president, is no longer seeking an immediate suspension of Mexico City’s new $13 billion airport, according to a member of his economic transition team. Abel Hibert, who attended a planning meeting with Lopez Obrador and about 100 aides from the transition team on Tuesday evening, said it was clear that there’ll be no immediate demand to President Enrique Pena Nieto to suspend construction of the airport, at least until a review of the contracts.

Canceling the new Mexico City International Airport project due to alleged corruption and wasteful spending was one of the campaign promises of socialist (then) candidate, and now president-elect, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

The tone appears to have softened now to not completely alienate investors, and an AMLO aide laid our three possibilities: "Auctioning the airport to the private sector, moving it to an alternative site (which would mean losses on construction that’s already happened), or going ahead with the current plan," Bloomberg reports.

A conglomerate comprising Foster + Partners, FR-EE (Fernando Romero Enterprise), and NACO (Netherlands Airport Consultants) had won the international architectural competition in 2014 for what might become one of the world's largest airports with (up to) six runways and a 560,000-square-meter terminal.

Closer look: FR-EE's Hyperloop One Mexico City-Guadalajara route proposal

2017-09-18T19:43:00-04:00

Out of over 2,600 entries, a multi-disciplinary consortium led by Fernando Romero / FR-EE was recently announced as one of the 10 winning teams in the Hyperloop One Global Challenge with the proposal “Mexloop”, the 330-mile Mexico-Guadalajara route. The Mexloop project builds on Mexico's ambitious $600 billion public works investment under the National Infrastructure Program.

The team submitted concepts for Mexloop's inter-modal station designs and locations, route infrastructure, public space, the pods, and logistics. Aiming to alleviate traffic in one of the world's most congested cities, Mexloop will connect Central Mexico’s major population, cultural, industrial, and manufacturing centers into one new ‘Megalopolis’ of 42 million people that is projected to grow to 60 million by 2050, the Mexloop team describes.

Image © FR-EE.

The Mexloop corridor will reduce travel time between Mexico City and Guadalajara to 38 minutes, at a spe...

FR-EE, Frente and RVDG to redevelop Mexico City's historic Avenida Chapultepec

2015-08-21T17:59:00-04:00

Mexico City-based firms FR-EE, Frente Arquitectura and RVDG Arquitectura + Urbanism will redesign a 0.8 mile-long stretch of Avenida Chapultepec, one of the city’s most historic corridors, into a multi-modal public space and park.

Extending the roadway as a part of Chapultepec Park, their proposal for "Cultural Corridor Chapultepec" includes a broadening of the street’s center for pedestrians and recreating, and increased lane spaces for bikes and buses, with a narrowing for cars. There will also be an upper retail level built into the Avenida.

The corridor has played a strong historical role in the city, serving as the thruway that divided the cities of San Juan and San Pablo in the 16th century, and connected the city of Calzada San Juan to the resting place of the Aztec emperors. The roadway became the path for an aqueduct to Mexico City in the 18th century, and was the site for the city’s first electrical tramway in 1900. Student protests raged on the Avenida in 1968, while below ...