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Several factors play into the lax code enforcements issue. Mexico City is going through a construction boom, and some local officials have been hesitant to put the brakes on such a profitable sector. Corruption is rampant [...] “There is a whole system that’s been designed to benefit everyone involved: public officials, DROs, developers,” said Gómez Durán. “They all protect each other. The citizens are left unprotected.” — CityLab
One year after Mexico City's devastating 7.1-magnitude earthquake, this piece by Martha Pskowski explores how, over the last three decades, the city's engineers, politicians, and builders have repeatedly failed to regulate stricter building codes — which often has deadly consequences. View full entry
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.
— wsj.com
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... View full entry
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.
— Bloomberg
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... View full entry
Construction is underway for the upcoming Bora Residential Tower, which is set to be the tallest building of its kind in Mexico City. Client Nemesis Capital commissioned Zaha Hadid Architects to design the tower back in 2015. Located in the growing Santa Fe business district near the 28-hectare La... View full entry
Yesterday, Mexico City was struck by a powerful 7.1-magnitude earthquake. As of today, over 200 people have been reported dead as rescuers continue their efforts to recover those still trapped in the rubble. Dozens of buildings in and around the city were reduced to rubble and many more, severely... View full entry
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... View full entry
An unpopular president, a myth-making architect, and a multibillionaire tycoon are building an oversize airport in a nature preserve. Can they make Mexico great again? — Places Journal
The progressive capital of Mexico has a long history of massive infrastructure projects — megaproyectos — with egalitarian aims. Daniel Brook looks at the social, political, and environmental issues surrounding the latest — a $13bn new airport rising on a sinking lakebed. This article... View full entry
Forming a closer, more harmonious bond between humanity and nature is the underlying goal of Javier Senosiain's organic or so-called "bio-architecture." His buildings often take the shape of organic forms--in one case, mythic serpent Quetzalcoatl--while simultaneously harvesting rainwater and... View full entry
Mexico City is notorious for its gridlock (and the smog it produces). The ride-sharing platform Uber has taken advantage of this captive audience with an unusual advertising medium: drones.As reported by Bloomberg, Uber has sent off a fleet of sign-bearing drones to hover over windshields... View full entry
'Mexico City’s water system goes against its own functional essence. The city is dehydrating itself. We’re mixing our water with poisonous waste and then pumping it out through a complex network of pipes. Just like what happens when a human is dehydrated, Mexico City has diarrhea.' — Elias Cattan — Quartz
"In a mega-metropolis with a deep history of corrupt leaders and state-sanctioned misinformation, [architect Elias Cattan of Taller 13] believes awareness is the first step. That’s why he’s part of a growing movement of environmental scientists, activists, designers and engineers determined to... View full entry
Basically, instead of allowing this anarchic development to continue growing over the bed of the lake – which is very expensive, because the quality of the soil is very bad – we wanted to conduct the growth of the city around the lake area, and to recover a huge natural feature that belongs to everyone, which will change the climate of the city. — Guardian
Shumi Bose learns from Alberto Kalach (of Taller de Arquitectura X), why the solution to the capital’s future growth may be found in embracing a pre-Hispanic, lacustrine form of urbanism.To learn more about the "The hydrological balance of the city", read this weeklong report (also from the... View full entry
Somewhere along the lines of recent years, I became the unofficial interviewer for the semiannual Neutra Award, offered by Cal Poly Pomona to highly regarded master architects in Neutra's vein. In the past, it has been awarded to Tadao Ando, Michael Rotondi and now, Enrique Norten of TEN... View full entry
In the dappled afternoon sunshine of the VDL House’s backyard in Silver Lake, senior Archinect Editor Orhan Ayyuce sat down with Enrique Norten, winner of this year’s Richard J. Neutra Award for Professional Excellence, to talk about modernism’s legacy and evolution since the mid-20th... View full entry
Housing – its affordability, accessibility, and form – is a key preoccupation of the Chicago Architecture Biennial. While not necessarily the core concern for most of the Biennial's participants, housing gets a significant share of the exhibition's floorspace.Several participants'... View full entry
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... View full entry
