Mexico City, MX
2022

A participatory architectural installation featured in the Mextrópoli Architecture and City Festival (September 2022), one of the largest architecture exhibitions in Latin America.

Collaborating with artist Marisa Morán Jahn, the project engaged students and researchers from MIT’s Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism to create the installation Sueños con Fiber/Timber  - a pavilion that shapes a public space at the corner of Alameda Square - -the oldest public park in the Americas. Sueños con Fiber/Timber reflects on the past and future of Mexico City. Built from wood recycled from the city’s iconic rollercoaster (La Feria’s Montaña Rusa), the pavilion adapts the pre-Columbian art form known as papel picado(perforated paper), whose openings invite ancestors to pass through to the present.

“City-making is about finding new ways to express collective memories and aspirations,” says Rafi Segal, “The Fiber/Timber pavilion uses familiar materials in a new way: salvaged wood and traditional amate paper are assembled to create a new urban space at the existing Alameda Square corner. As such, visitors experience the power of making something new out of something old.”

The installation was funded by Mota-Engil, a global engineering and construction consortium focusing on civil construction, public works, port operations, waste, water, and logistics.

Design team: Rafi Segal (lead), Marisa Morán Jahn, Maria Rius Ruiz, Patricia Dueñas Gerritsen