At the end of a quiet residential street in northwest Mexico City, a splash of painted tiles springs from the ground to form the monumental gated entrance to Parque Quetzalcóatl. Beyond the gate and its rippling colours, a series of interlocking gardens descend the surrounding hillside in a sprawling complex of pathways, pools, bridges, natural amphitheatres and ornamental grottos. For most people, though, the gate is as far as they can go. The park has been under construction for over twenty years, and it remains closed to the general public. The current goal is to complete the park within three to five years, but with no fixed date, a few questions remain. Last month I was invited to explore Parque Quetzalcóatl and discuss its development and future with its designer, the Mexican architect Javier Senosiain.

Senosiain is a contemporary pioneer of organic architecture, a style organized around the principle that architectural forms should emulate the natural world. ‘This may seem like an -exaggeration,’ Senosiain said, ‘but corners can be visually, even physically aggressive.’ For the architect, after our births most of us enter a world of ‘boxes’: the crib, the office, the coffin. To remedy this, a central conceit of his style is the elimination of sharp lines and angles in favour of rounded shapes. Senosiain sees his work as an act of reconciliation with nature, a return to the womb, so to speak, from which modern architecture and industrial processes have largely isolated us.

Η συνέχεια εδώ.