An Analogous Theater
2017
competition proposal, honorable mention
a collaboration with Juan Andrés Suarez
An Analogous Theater is located in Tenancingo in the Mexican state of Tlaxcala. This region is entrenched in the sex trade industry, which is the second largest criminal industry in the world. Our approach was subtractive, to erase any indication of an expressive authorial character in the architecture by delineating a simple frame around Tenancingo’s main Zócalo. Each edge of this frame forms a specific relationship to its existing context: the stepped plaza, the market edges, and the cathedral, which is recentered in the square through reframing the urban space that it foregrounds.
The competition proposal asked, “how can a modified square reshape communal mindset and motivation, reconstituting the image of a town where exploitation has become normalized?” In response we asked, “how can Tenancingo’s victims subjectify traffickers? How can the trafficker’s resources be appropriated by the people they exploit?” The communities of Tlaxcala have already provided an answer to this question. Every year they throw an explosively colorful carnival called the Tlaxcala Carnival, which is one of their most important folkloric and cultural events. The way the Carnival has evolved over time has a long history that has transformed by Tlaxcala’s as a stratregic critique and reformulation of Spanish colonialism. L ike the Feudal system in Europe, the Spaniards introduced the hacienda system, which subjected indigenous people to working land in a way that trapped them in debt. Hacienda owners began organizing exclusive, lavish fiestas. In response, the Tlaxcalan people occupied the streets and plazas with dancing, and extravagant costumes that mocked the colonizers. This tradition persists today, over 300 years later, and each city in the region has adapted its own way of celebrating the Carnival through idiosyncratic colors and dances.
Drawing from this 300-year momentum, what if Tenancingo’s citizens once again reclaimed their urban space as a stage for protest against exploitation? What if they constructed and destroyed the traffickers’ mansions in the square as an act of protest against them?
In present-day Tlaxcala, the traffickers themselves operate from elaborate mansions scattered throughout the countryside. We propose caricaturizing these mansions, to quote and capture them within a new permanent peristyle surrounding the existing city square. We propose a new “carnival” where the community can gather and mock the traffickers as an act of protest, and to restage their urban square as a theater of resistance. This leverages the possibility of architecture to act as a medium for communities to collectively expose and confront the constructedness of exploitation in their territory.
An Analogous Theater on Arch Out Loud ︎
︎territorial plan
︎︎︎ site plan
︎︎︎ axonometric illustration
︎︎︎ digital collage
︎︎︎ digital collage
