Reversed City
Master of Urban Design
Spring Term - University of Michigan
Location : Benito Juarez Airport, Mexico City
Team : Shreejit Modak, Yiwei Huang, Shuya Xu
Redevelopment of the Benito Juarez Airport gives the city of Mexico an opportunity to cultivate a huge mass of land into a new center of advancement. Thinking on a city level, this chunck of undeveloped mass now gives an opening to create a hub for commercial development and its supportive communes. Reversed City see the opportunity to establish different nodes within this enclave and connect them through transit stations. The Reversed City takes an opportunity for an urban level green connection for the City. It acts as a connector as well as a continuous stretch for the landscape to flow from the ecological reserve to other parts of the city.
The Walls - Commercial and Residential, rise from the landscape and merge into the landscape. They are designed not only as the separators, but actually a part of landscape that emerges from the greens. The functions are distributed into tiers which form hierarchical porous structural placement.
Inspired by the walled city in Medieval times, the proposal turns this historic precedent to the contemporary enclave inside out, forming abrupt walls for the adjacent enclaves and allowing the center of our enclave to complete a network of green space spanning the city from the north to the south. The result is a network of public spaces at a scale never before available in Mexico City.
The two “walls” adjoining other enclaves’ act like edges. The
aggregation of building types selected makes them porous and solid at the same time. These two separators emerge from the landscape and at moments become the part of greens. This enclave creates an opportunity in bringing and linking the two main large eco-parks next to the site, this creates a larger system of connected landscapes making the city follow the sustainable culture which then ends at Lake Texcoco.
Inviting the Greens from the city to be connected through the continuous stretch developed due to the Walls. The internal green space and the water bodies between the walls give a very country side feel within the city which the Mexico City lacks.
The design of the Reverse City is composed of two major vehicular connectors with the ring road that goes all around other enclaves. It gets divided into tiers according to the density designated to every function. This helps in making the internal circulation of the Reverse City completely pedestrian. The landscape designed becomes the part of the architecture and sometimes emphasizes the language of architecture types used into the design. Taking the sustainable move from linking of greens, the retention ponds and the mounts designed help in water purification and directing the flow towards Lake Texcoco.
The commercial activities will mainly happen along the east – west connector (road) which links the two major highways in Mexico City, and later on will become the main part of commercial center that the design initiates.
The design of the Reverse City is composed of two major vehicular connectors with the ring road that goes all around other enclaves. It gets divided into tiers according to the density designated to every function. This helps in making the internal circulation of the Reverse City completely pedestrian. The landscape designed becomes the part of the architecture and sometimes emphasizes the language of architecture types used into the design. Taking the sustainable move from linking of greens, the retention ponds and the mounts designed help in water purification and directing the flow towards Lake Texcoco.
The commercial activities will mainly happen along the east – west connector (road) which links the two major highways in Mexico City, and later on will become the main part of commercial center that the design initiates.
The densities of the types, typologies, prototypes and communities though sparse, but, co-relate the belongingness. A high-rise, mid level structure and a country house comes into same community which in turn gives a whole embodied communal attach.
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