Mexico City is one of the largest urban centres in the world with an estimated population of 22 million living within a surface area of 100,000 hectares [1], resulting in uncontrolled urban expansion and environmental deterioration.

The project is located on the periphery zone mediating the federal district city centre and the expanding surrounding suburbs, occupying a derelict site inside a military camp. While this area is classified as an ecological reserve, it is neither maintained nor open to the public. The project aims to connect the fragmented spaces through the utilisation of an existing border condition, reinterpreting it as a distributed network which would form the infra-structural base of an ‘event-surface’, responding to the current sociological condition.

The main strategy is to disperse the centralised pattern of services within the city centre and allow for a more polycentric distribution of resources by a counteraction of re-intensifying events on the periphery zone. The remaining open space would be retained as an urban park that would embed programmes such as sports and leisure, park and recreation, and culture and market exhibits.
The surrounding neighbourhoods are mainly mixed and commercial housing which are linked to the park via a series of land bridges that vary in width. The spaces above and below the bridges are appropriated for recreational, commercial and leisure facilities.
The neighbouring green areas and ecological reserves are annexed to the area of intervention as green anchors allowing for a continuous green structure extending throughout the urban fabric.
The proposed connections link the site to Chapultepec Park, existing informal markets, other nearby ecological reserves and gardens, and bus stops. The linear connections are also designed to pass through existing collection pools and the remaining forestation patches.

2004-2005
Sarah Majid