outside the box

To design public spaces for communities in need, a collective of Mexican architects thinks on its feet 

- FRED A. BERNSTEIN

In 2005, Hurricane Stan rendered the main train station in Tapachula, Mexico, in the coastal state of Chiapas, unusable. For more than a decade, the government did nothing. Then, in 2018, Mexico elected a president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who was determined to revitalize impoverished neighborhoods with new construction, a job he entrusted to his Secretariat of Agrarian, Territorial, and Urban Development (SEDATU), led by a then 35-year-old powerhouse named Román Meyer Falcón.

Not long after, a group of civic-minded architects joined the cause. When the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) announced a competition, organized at SEDATU’s behest, to design amenities like a new market for the city of Matamoros, UNAM academics Gabriela Carrillo, José Amozurrutia and Eric Valdez, along with Carlos Facio and Israel Espín, all teamed up. (Facio is Carrillo’s husband and Amozurrutia’s partner; Espín had previously worked with Carrillo.) Forming a group called Colectivo C733, the five worked day and night, coming up with a winning scheme in just two weeks. The building, opened in 2020, was an instant landmark, thanks in part to a grid of two-story-high brick chimneys that let daylight in and hot air out while forming a dramatic roofline.