Project description by jury

El Tepozán is a new space designed for arts and crafts education. Borne from collaboration between the architects and the Tierra Adentro Cultural Mission Foundation that owns the land, the art village provides a safe and creative environment where the people of Canalejas, 100km northeast of Mexico City can meet, work, learn and produce art. The architecture establishes a synergy with the landscape and makes the site an attractive place especially for young locals to whom new cultural and leisure opportunities are offered. 

As a Main category prize winner in the regional Holcim Awards 2020, Creative Space in Mexico automatically qualified as a finalist in the Global Holcim Awards 2021.

View Global Holcim Awards Entry – Creative Space in Mexico

The built environment has a significant role to play in addressing climate change and enabling the transition to a net-zero and more inclusive future. The Holcim Awards for Sustainable Construction global winners showcase the cutting edge of approaches to sustainable design, green architecture, and materials innovation. The 6th cycle of the competition saw a double-prizewinning entry in Latin America: A project in Colombia won the Global Holcim Awards Silver as well as Gold at the regional level. The global prizes were presented at a handover ceremony at the International Architecture Biennale in Venice, Italy. The regional Holcim Awards Main category winners for Latin America were recognized at the same event.

Opportunities - Empowerment tools for the local youth

This is not an architectural project - but an educational one. The creation of spaces where kids can grow in contact with art and creation remains fundamental for the NGO behind the project. Canalejas stands in the center of a municipality that has lost its youth due to migration and drug trafficking and has lost its possibility to be sustained by a magnificent handcraft tradition (stone sculpture). Providing diffusion of their artistic creations could be a way to recover through local, ancient knowledge. This artistic and educational congregation site arises from the sum of efforts of both architects and the foundation who owns the land. The program was not pre-conceived but was the conclusion of a territorial approach focused on looking at how to help and positively impact the region as a whole.

The selection for the location of the projects responds to an extensive analysis of the regional functioning and the narrow circumstances of the region. Canalejas is strategically chosen as a place which makes it more efficient, transport wise, the educational offer of the center. While the projects incorporate pre-Hispanic infrastructures (“hagueyes”) to collect, store and distribute water and architectural structures that help to avoid the use of mechanical ventilation or heating, probably the CO2 primary reduction is peripheral to the project itself and resides in the emission reductions that result from the territorial positioning of the cultural center which allows to greatly reduce the transportation emissions at the regional scale.