Archinect - News2024-11-21T12:39:33-05:00https://archinect.com/news/article/150010659/design-for-tijuana-cathedral-nixed-for-not-looking-like-a-cathedral
Design for Tijuana Cathedral nixed for 'not looking like a cathedral' Nicholas Korody2017-06-02T17:44:00-04:00>2021-10-12T01:42:58-04:00
<img src="https://archinect.gumlet.io/uploads/fz/fzes4snkmxdvp79t.jpg?fit=crop&auto=compress%2Cformat&enlarge=true&w=1200" border="0" /><p>The architect Eugenio Velazquez has had a tough couple years. Back in 2012, he was jailed for smuggling cocaine from Mexico into the United States. Now, his design for a new cathedral in Tijuana has been shut down—11 years after work first started.</p><p>The Archbishop of Tijuana, Francisco Moreno Barrón, cancelled the project because he felt that Velazquez’s contemporary design didn’t look like a cathedral. So now he’s launched a competition for a new, assumedly more traditional, design. It’s open only to Mexican architects, although foreigners are allowed to team up with Mexican ones.</p><p><img title="" alt="" src="http://cdn.archinect.net/images/650x/mv/mvqk3w6zpdnyq9kb.jpg"></p><p><img title="" alt="" src="http://cdn.archinect.net/images/650x/k5/k551bpsorrert5c0.jpg"></p><p>“In its eagerness to be modern, the project does not resemble a Catholic temple, much less a cathedral,” Archbishop Barrón wrote in a statement.</p><p>The whole project has a rather dark side to it. While the site was obtained back in the late ‘70s, construction was delayed due to the 1993 assassination of the previous archbishop of Tijuana, Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo, who was mistaken for a drug lord. And Velazquez...</p>