More than 5,000 people pass through the Douglas border crossing in Arizona daily. Circulating is a saying. Basically they wait, queue, approach, search, stay and postpone their needs: to rest, to go to the bathroom, to protect themselves from the rain, to stop thinking about the future. The Mexican architect Fernanda Canales has worked in that place.
Canales had the idea of taking care of the difficult space that surrounds the border between his country and the United States. He proposed building public space, reinforcing the condition of citizen in the place where those who go have nothing.
Thus, in Agua Prieta, in the Sonoran Desert, he built a border library that is, in reality, a public space, without books but with reading that, in his words, “gets closer to the border wall in an unprecedented way.” He does this by generating an elevated and open walkway that thus forms an entrance door to that city. It is these arches, open towards the park, that elevate the new construction, transforming a non-place into a place marked by something more than a border crossing.
Nor is the Social and Sports Center a typical sports facility. It is, rather, a roof, just a large toothed cover that protects the court, which is at the same time the gym, the skating rink and a place for children’s games. There are also open classrooms, height from which to look, steps that are bleachers and an architecture of limited means and high social ambition. Protected from the sun and rain and ventilated by brick lattices, and by the space between wall and roof that the architects devised, the court frames the landscape and precisely for that reason hides the wall.
In Naco, also in the Mexican province of Sonora, Canales and his team came up with five projects along the border. They have built a market that functions as a triumphal arch, like an entrance from the road to the city. It is also a public square, another refuge from sun and rain. Being the only three-story building in the city, it also serves as a viewpoint. Spread your view over the surrounding landscape. Its barrel vaults lead to the viewpoint that sews the territory, again, above the border wall.
But in Naco there is also an asylum. They call it Senior Citizens House. It is a free social center built to protect the elderly and the central garden where the doctors’ offices and waiting rooms are located. The scale here is domestic for ease of accessibility. That is why the property has only one floor. It also has cross ventilation and natural lighting.
The Secretariat of Urban Development and Territoriality of the Federal Government (SEDATU) approved an open court in Naco that serves as a service for the community and provides shelter to those who are passing through. Plaza Benito Juárez, Naco’s central square, has also been rehabilitated by Canales. Now there is shade, public bathrooms and the deck, converted into a roof terrace, serves as a viewing point.
The latest project in Nacos is the Community Development Center. Again, the work with brick, building platforms, steps and patios, extends an open property that is almost as much building as landscape. And, by serving as an auditorium, nursery, open classroom for workshops, bathrooms and play areas, it is also a monument to civility. Small activities, with children or teaching, and large social congregations fit here, since the open volumes add up and are collected by the arches.
With few resources, and putting himself in the shoes of many, Canales and his studio merge the borders between building and landscape. They build simple and flexible spaces and rethink architecture from its most civic side.
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