Award
2019 Student Merit Award
Category
Design
Landscape Architects
Illinois Institute of Technology – MLA
Project Details
Transitional Ecologies establishes a successional botanical landscape for the site of the canceled project of Mexico City’s new airport. The place was the last remnant of Lake Texcoco, one of Mexico City’s historic lakes and a rare global high-altitude saline-lacustrine habitat. The proposed airport, designed by the architect, Norman Foster, was partially constructed, this operation required the drainage of the last water bodies existed on site. It required the import of 30 million cubic feet of volcanic rock. It was an ecological disaster that was halted by the national referendum following the election of the new government of Mexico in 2018. The studio proposition was to design a botanic garden. As a consequence of the scale of the site, it will be the most extensive botanical garden in the world. Due to its environmental degradation, the design requires a re-thinking of the 21st century botanic garden.