taller mgl ° °

Entry for the MEXTRÓPOLI pavilion at Arquine No. 28 Competition, a collaborative project between Taller MGL and BLNG Studio.

Architecture: Ariadna Lopez Bieling, Leo Bieling, Maite Garcia-Lascurain

Alameda Central features fountains dedicated to Neptune, Venus, and the Nymphs: all European, all imported during the Porfirian era. In four centuries of history, the oldest public park on the continent has never had a fountain that truly belongs to Mexico City.

This is that fountain.

Since 1900, the subsidence of Mexico City is estimated to average around nine meters. That is the height of this object. Built upon the drained bed of Lake Texcoco, the city continues to sink by as much as fifty centimeters per year, driven by the extraction of the groundwater on which it depends for survival.

Yet water also survives as a space for gathering, play, and collective relief. In Alameda Central, the historic fountains embody this public and playful dimension: places where water ceases to be a threat or a scarcity, and instead becomes a shared experience.

The Sinking Fountain proposes a pavilion that oscillates between these two extremes, crisis and celebration, while inserting itself as a contemporary extension of the fountain system of Alameda Central.

The block reflects everything that surrounds it, and nothing that lies beneath.