2024-05-15T15:49:58-04:00 https://archinect.com/news/article/150010659/design-for-tijuana-cathedral-nixed-for-not-looking-like-a-cathedral Nicholas Korody 2017-06-02T17:44:00-04:00 >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&mdash;11 years after work first started.</p><p>The Archbishop of Tijuana, Francisco Moreno Barr&oacute;n, cancelled the project because he felt that Velazquez&rsquo;s contemporary design didn&rsquo;t look like a cathedral. So now he&rsquo;s launched a competition for a new, assumedly more traditional, design. It&rsquo;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>&ldquo;In its eagerness to be modern, the project does not resemble a Catholic temple, much less a cathedral,&rdquo; Archbishop Barr&oacute;n 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 &lsquo;70s, construction was delayed due to the 1993 assassination of the previous archbishop of Tijuana, Juan Jes&uacute;s Posadas Ocampo, who was mistaken for a drug lord. And Velazquez...</p>