Published in the December 2022 issue of the magazine werk, bauen + wohnen
© Sandra Pereznieto
© Sandra Pereznieto
© Sandra Pereznieto
© Sandra Pereznieto
The article presented here was published in the Swiss magazine werk, bauen + wohnen in December 2022. The original language of the article is German. Laure Nashed has translated the article into English as best she could.
Gemeinschaft bauen – wbw 12-2022
Using a great deal of personal initiative and critically questioning established ways of working, Rozana Montiel offers proof of her social and architectural conscience with her district centre in a disadvantaged neighbourhood. Portrait of a women’s office in Mexico City.
In the shade of the tall trees that form a dense leaf canopy over the street, one Friday morning I am standing in front of a modest brick building in the San Miguel Chapultepec neighbourhood. Following an invitation from Rozana Montiel, my visit is to her office, which is located in this building. The door opener buzzes and I enter her studio on the first floor: the ceiling is high, the ambience calm and the materialisation well balanced with the atmosphere.
The words «community», «shadow» or «dissolving boundaries» are written in Spanish on sticky notes on the walls; next to them are – neatly arranged – reference pictures, sketches and photographs of buildings by the architect’s own office.
Rozana Montiel is dressed in a casual yet elegant clothing and has a charismatic appearance. The fifty-year-old leads me past her co-workers into her small office. The fact that only women work here has come about over time, but it is not a strategy, she explains. After a while, male employees no longer felt comfortable in an office dominated by women.
During the 1990s, Rozana Montiel studied architecture at the University Iberoamericana in Mexico City and calls it the time of ” Mexican architecture deprived of meaning”. Trained to design private homes for the upper class, most architectural practitioners had lost sight of the city and their role in serving its inhabitants. Montiel finished her studies in 1995, feeling she had not learned enough, and went on to take a master’s degree in architectural theory and criticism in Barcelona, where she deepened her analytical skills.
Returning to Mexico was difficult for her. For a young female architect, professional opportunities were sparse in a society dominated by machismo, with hardly any female role models.
Unexpectedly for her, Rozana Montiel received an award for her Master’s thesis and, at the age of 28, was invited to teach at the University Iberoamericana, as she recounts with a sparkle in her eyes. Besides teaching, she now worked on small construction projects and conducted research on informal settlements. She received a number of awards and scholarships for her research, including one from the Holcim Foundation.
© Sandra Pereznieto
The front plaza is already an activity area for the centre, thus reducing barriers and signalling safety for the neighbourhood.
Investing in building quality instead of big gestures
In 2014, a significant opportunity opened up for her: Carlos Zedillo, son of a former president and then head of the Sustainable Development Research Centre of the National Housing Fund for the Low-Income (Infonavit), commissioned Montiel to improve the public space in a social housing settlement in the metropolitan region of Mexico City. In order to explore the needs of the local people and get as close to them as possible, she claimed to be a sociologist. To this day, this experience is still formative for her, she says. Since becoming a mother, however, she moves more cautiously in areas with high crime rates.
Montiel has since been invited to other projects with a social focus, mostly by Zedillo. However, the difficulties remained the same, Montiel explains: «Architectural firms are only hired for the design, and the construction companies often deliver disastrous quality in the execution.» As for how she deals with this, I ask, because in her district centre, the high level of execution is surprising. «My team and I visited the site about sixty times during the one-year construction period, without payment from the contracting municipality. Fortunately, the contractor mostly listened to us.»
© Sandra Pereznieto
The open ground floors create a spatial continuum, divided by courtyards, which in turn are used like stages.
Discreet and permeable
An hour’s drive south of Montiel’s office, in the district of Iztapalapa, lies the district centre Pilares, an acronym for Puntos de Innovación, Libertad, Arte, Educación y Saberes ( Spots for Innovation, Freedom, Art, Education and Knowledge). Since 2019, around 275 such centres have been built, 25 of which have been commissioned from renowned architects. They are located in marginalised areas of the 22-million metropolis and offer free classes and workshops to children, adolescents and adults. The aim is to strengthen the social fabric and motivate people to pursue an education.
The centre, designed by Rozana Montiel and inaugurated this spring, stands on a corner lot in one of the most densely populated areas of Mexico City. Here, most people live in houses built by themselves. There are hardly any green spaces or public places. Therefore, from the very beginning it was crucial for Montiel that an oasis of culture and recreation be created here that would convey a sense of generosity and spatial diversity despite the small plot. Four two-storey building modules alternate with green courtyards. The mild climate allows for fluid boundaries between inside and outside. Despite the depressingly high levels of violence and poverty in this part of town, Montiel and her team managed to find a balance between openness and shelter. A small plaza at the front corner of the site forms a subtle threshold between the urban space and the centre of the neighbourhood. Here, activities arouse curiosity and strengthen trust in state institutions, which has suffered from decades of political neglect of the lower class.
© Sandra Pereznieto
The sports facilities offer the neighbourhood’s residents a welcome opportunity for activity, which is particularly in demand among teenagers.
Vitality in monochromy
During my visit to Iztapalapa on a Saturday, the district centre is full of life. Already on the front plaza, people are busy doing handicrafts under the trees. After passing the entrance gate, a detached staircase leads me to the upper floor with an excellent view over the scene: The two rooms facing the forecourt are used as workshop areas, in the middle part of the building a salsa dancing class is taking place on the ground floor, and above that a well-attended cooking class is being held in the large kitchen. At the back of the building, adults are studying on computers, and on the terrace above, children and teenagers are climbing over some daring equipment and training on improvised punching bags.
The entire centre consists of just two materials: the load-bearing reinforced concrete skeleton is filled with concrete blocks, and a steel structure in the inner courtyard supports the circulation area. Concrete blocks and steel profiles are consistently coloured in a soft red. The monochrome design gives the building an iconic strength and at the same time a harmonious identity in its heterogeneous surroundings, Montiel explains. These materials are also cost-effective, low-maintenance and have a varied effect: the staggered arrangement of the concrete bricks promotes a rich interplay of light and shadow on the surfaces, in addition to cross-ventilation.
Perhaps this thoughtful directness is the secret of her international success.¹ Rozana Montiel does not indulge in formal gestures, as some of her colleagues do, but concentrates on the functionality and longevity of the building without sacrificing its distinctive character. In a country where the names of the architects are more important than the satisfaction of the population with the building, it is all the more impressive that a renowned architect with great sensitivity is committed to the social conscience in architecture.
© Sandra Pereznieto
The courtyards are connected to the interior, but are screened off from the outside. This also creates areas for concentrated work.
1 The utility of Montiel’s buildings is particularly remarkable for Mexico, where there are hardly any regulations and the city administration gives architects almost free rein. Some social infrastructure projects of recent years are hardly practical, even if they have won international prizes and were designed by famous architects.
