Answering the Ministry of Culture of the State of Jalisco's request, architecture studio ATELIER ARS was commissioned to intervene in the existing auditorium and carry out its expansion as a cultural centre for the Colonia La Floresta on the shores of Lake Chapala, belonging to the Mexican state of Jalisco.

The program proposed by the Ministry of Culture seeks to decentralize and spread culture in different regions of the state, by constructing different cultural complexes. The project seeks to recover the value of what already exists, focusing on the place's original characteristics and the lake's presence to understand the local culture. 

The project developed by ATELIER ARS integrates three new landmarks into the existing elements of the complex: a library that functions as the complex's façade, a service building and a central pond. These elements function as boundaries, thus acting as a single enclosure.

The new buildings of the complex were built with traditional clay elements as a tribute to the auditorium's brick-vaulted portico, the most valuable existing architectural element. To this end, different formats and construction systems were used, seeking to create a certain continuity with what already exists and contributing to preserving the region's living artisanal knowledge.

Centro para la Cultura y las Artes de la Ribera por ATELIER ARS. Fotografía por César Béjar.

Centre for Culture and Arts of the Ribera by ATELIER ARS. Photograph by César Béjar.

Project description by ATELIER ARS

The project to intervene in the existing auditorium and expand it as a cultural center was requested by the Ministry of Culture of the State of Jalisco, to meet the objectives of the program known as Cultura Cardinal. This program seeks to decentralize culture and spread it in different regions of the state, through the construction of different cultural complexes. Our project is located on the shore of Lake Chapala, the largest lake in Mexico.

Its coastline is the most important settlement of foreigners in the country, due to the benefits of its climate and peaceful lifestyle. It was very important for us that our project could communicate part of the cultural history of the site.

Centro para la Cultura y las Artes de la Ribera por ATELIER ARS. Fotografía por César Béjar.
Centre for Culture and Arts of the Ribera by ATELIER ARS. Photograph by César Béjar.

That is why we took on the task of researching and learning about some of the founding myths of the ancient Wixárika culture, which has one of its most important ceremonial centers in Lake Chapala.

Natural formation and myth. In the Paleozoic era, the lake was part of a fjord coming from the Pacific Ocean. Due to volcanic activity, the topographic system known as the Mexican Transversal Neovolcanic Axis emerged.

This phenomenon separated the great inland sea to which Lake Chapala belonged, leaving it delimited by topographical eminences. Over the centuries, these natural phenomena produced the ecosystem that we know today, with a very particular identity in terms of the mineral configuration of the subsoil, vegetation, fauna, climate, etc. where the presence of the lake is a fundamental factor for the understanding of the founding cultures of the place.

Centro para la Cultura y las Artes de la Ribera por ATELIER ARS. Fotografía por César Béjar.
Centre for Culture and Arts of the Ribera by ATELIER ARS. Photograph by César Béjar.

The myths of this pre-Hispanic culture allude to these processes of topographic and aquifer formation of the site. Their legends tell us about the emergence of the lake through a process of drying, in which a goddess sank her staff into the seabed, causing the water to descend and also producing the formation of an islet, in the same place where the most important sanctuary of the Wixárika culture is located today. Our intervention tries to narrate some of these myths in a simple and understandable way for anyone, which we approach in three different moments as part of a landscape narrative.

Reconsidering the preexistence. For the configuration of the new cultural center, the starting point of our intervention was the recovery of what preexisted on the site: an auditorium for 400 people and an office building. The auditorium already contained a portico with traditional brick vaults that we recognized as the most valuable preexisting element in architectural terms.

That is why we decided that the rest of the buildings would be built with clay elements from the region, using different formats and construction systems, to produce a sense of unity, and in turn, as a way to help perpetuate the artisanal knowledge that is still found in the region.

Centro para la Cultura y las Artes de la Ribera por ATELIER ARS. Fotografía por César Béjar.
Centre for Culture and Arts of the Ribera by ATELIER ARS. Photograph by César Béjar.

Although none of these pre-existing buildings had heritage value, we decided to recover them and integrate them into the new complex, to which we added three new elements: a library as the complex's façade, a longitudinal service building with a music room, dance hall and open-air amphitheatre, and finally a central reflecting pool.

The location of the new buildings was done so that they could function as boundaries, and so that their presence would convey the idea of ​​enclosure. For this reason, the library building is clearly aligned with the avenue and the long service building, for its part, delimits the eastern side of the site.

More information

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Architects
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ATELIER ARS. Lead architects.- Alejandro Guerrero, Andrea Soto.

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Project team
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Project lead.- Isabel Castiello.  
Inés Plasencia, Diego Orduño, Luis Roberto González.

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Builder
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SIOP Secretaría de Infraestructura y Obra Pública del Estado de Jalisco.

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Developer
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Secretaría de Cultura del Estado de Jalisco.

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Area
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3,100 sqm.

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Dates
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Completed.- December 2022.

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Location
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Carretera a Chapala-Jocotepec 168, Colonia La Floresta, Ajijic, Jalisco. CP. 45920 - Mexico.

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Photography
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ATELIER ARS. Architecture studio founded in Zapopan, Mexico, in 2004 by Alejandro Guerrero and Andrea Soto, both are architects from the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente [ITESO] in Guadalajara, Mexico.

As a result of a deep reflection around three main ideas that have become fundamental, the studio bases its work on the relationship of architecture with nature through the landscape, the intrinsic condition of architecture understood as a discipline through the role of history in contemporary practice, and the relationship of architecture with the human through rituals and myths.

Alejandro Guerrero and Andrea Soto are architects, both graduates of the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente (ITESO) in Guadalajara, Mexico. They have been working together since 2010. Alejandro Guerrero earned a Master’s degree in Architecture, Criticism and Design from the Barcelona School of Architecture at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in 2006, and has taught architectural design for over 14 years at ITESO. Andrea Soto won the CEMEX Arquitecto Marcelo Zambrano Scholarship that funded her Master’s studies in Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, graduating with a distinction from the American Society of Landscape Architects ASLA in 2017.

Together they have received the Emerging Voices award, granted by The Architectural League of New York and the Design Vanguard award from Architectural Record magazine, both awards in 2015. Their work has been nominated for the Mies Crown Hall America’s Prize, awarded by the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, and has been a finalist in the Ibero-American Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism in Sao Paulo, Brazil. They have been professors at Harvard Graduate School of Design through the Latin GSD cycle, Boston Architectural College BAC, as well as UBC SALA, and UVA University. Some of their works were part of the Official Exhibition of the Mexican Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2014, 2016 and 2018. They obtained the Silver Medal at the XV Mexican Architecture Biennial and were finalists for the Emerging Architects Award from Architectural Review magazine in 2018. Their work has been recognized and won 1st place at the III Latin American Biennial of Landscape Architecture. In 2019, within the framework of the Mantovarchitettura 2019 event, they participated as professors and their work was presented at the international exhibition “Designing Mexico” of the Polytechnic of Milan, Polo Territorial di Mantova, in collaboration with CASABELLA.

Over the course of many years, they have developed academic activities that promote the exchange of architectural culture through courses and seminars on topics of theory and history with universities and NGOs such as ForA and CCAU, as well as participation in Harvard GSD and UVA Virginia as guest critics. As a result of this academic work, in 2020 the book Arquitecturas del Fuego I y II was written by Alejandro Guerrero, a theoretical framework that reflects our office's interest in topics of history, architecture and landscape.

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Published on: November 27, 2024
Cite: "Back to the origin. Centre for Culture and Arts of the Ribera by ATELIER ARS" METALOCUS. Accessed
<http://www.metalocus.es/en/news/back-origin-centre-culture-and-arts-ribera-atelier-ars> ISSN 1139-6415
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