NATURAL RUINS

Honorific Mention

FÉLIX CANDELA AWARD IV EDITION: RAQUIS

TEAM:

SARAÍ GARZA BERNAL

LUIS ÁNGEL GARZA DÁVILA

Utopian living

“Natural ruins” is a project for IV edition of Felix Candela Architecture competition. Awarded with a honorific mention for the sustainable approach.

The basis of the competition is to design an utopian way of living over some ruins, any ruins. Yet, we selected an actual sustainable crisis in Monterrey, Nuevo León: the limestone quarries.

A main concern for the city is the air pollution linked to the extraction of the clinker, the main component of cement. The extractions of this material rises the global temperature and represents an important part of the climate change.

Theproblem

The extraction of the clinker from the mountains provokes erosion, ecosystem loss, and health issues on the people who live in the city.

The process

We make a call for the people of Monterrey to interrupt their everyday life to temporary live of these mountains. The main activity there will be to work on them creating small steps on the ladder allowing the natural biomass to re-form.

Thesolution

By doing this, the natural vegetation of the mountains will regenerate. And hopefully the ecosystem may regenerate eventually.

The mountain will never regenerate but at least by doing this intervention, the local vegetation will eventually grow. And by occupying the mountains these industries may stop. This is a call for our generation to speak up and demand the use of alternate construction methods that do not destroy the ecosystems we have left