Video about process of the construction of Telcel Theatre in Mexico DF.

Project Synopsis

Telcel Theater, buried underground, evidences its presence through a large metallic structure lifted from ground level, named Dovela (Keystone), which acts as a lure.

We understand contemporary culture as a constant expression of connectivity with the movements of time, and the layers of history that overlap and hybridize the Mexican culture are of great inspiration to make a work of architecture today. Therefore, the Dovela appears as a stone of air, supported by the space that comes from a sequence of excavated terraces; that offers to the sun which moves the time when going through its slats; and that protects from the rain and shelters us inside the earth. The Dovela tries to collect all the resonances of the world emerging above it, to give them order. It is a mathematical object which allows the natural elements (water, light and air) to affect its last configuration. The excavated spaces articulated in a sequence of theater lobbies at different levels are given to the public and open to the sky, protected by the symbolic metal structure. The project confronts the elemental natures with which it is built: the deep density of the negative space, of vertical character; and the horizontal tension of the air contained and supported by the Dovela, last key piece of an abstract balance that loses its weight to appear aerial, mutable and light as a cloud that qualifies the space in the ground by filtering sunlight rays.

And the contact between the sun and the earth could not pick up patterns of the order of any of them. So in the design of the structure that generates the gravitational connection between the Dovela and the excavations in the ground, we decided on a very figurative solution, as if it were caryatids and Atlanteans; evoking diversity, reflecting the world of the man that will inhabit the space. Therefore, the supports are involved in the movement, in time, and are freely arranged in the space dance, relying on the rigidity of the structure its non symmetric disposition within the internal grid of the Dovela.

By immersing ourselves in the negative space of the open excavated lobbies, we can have access to a new and final happening. Once inside the earth, the Theater appears as the end of this sequence of spaces. Here the synthesis of the building culminates with the function of a halted time, recreated, a place to contemplate.

Text.- Ensamble Studio.

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Ensamble Studio is a cross-functional team founded in 2000 and led by architects Antón García-Abril and Débora Mesa.

Balancing education, research and practice, the office explores innovative approaches to architectural and urban spaces, and the technologies that build them.

Among the studio’s most relevant completed works are Hemeroscopium House and Reader’s House in Madrid (Spain), Music Studies Center and SGAE Central Office in Santiago de Compostela (Spain), The Truffle in Costa da Morte (Spain), Cervantes Theater in Mexico City and, more recently, Cyclopean House in Brookline (USA) and Structures of Landscape for Tippet Rise Art Center in Montana (USA). Currently, bigger scale projects are being developed like Zip Tower, Plot Tower and Big Bang Tower, high-rise systems for residential and mix-use programs.

Their work has been extensively published in both printed and digital media, exhibited world-wide -MOMA NY 2015, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2015, Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/ Architecture 2013 in Shenzhen, GA International Exhibitions 2014-2010 in Tokyo, Venice Architecture Biennale 2010, etc.-  and awarded with international prizes -Austrian State Award for Architecture 2014, Iakov Chernikhov Prize 2012, Rice Design Alliance Prize 2009 to emerging architects, Architectural Record Design Vanguard Prize 2005, among others.

Beside their professional career, both principals keep a very active research and academic agenda, have been invited professors and lecturers at numerous universities and architecture forums, were curators of Spainlab -Spanish Pavilion at the 13th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia- in 2012 and founded that same year the POPlab (Prototypes of Prefabrication Research Laboratory) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), that they continue to direct.
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