Amate Folds
* Arquine Competition no.26 MEXTRÓPOLI 2024 Pavilion
Amate is a paper made from clean, dried tree bark that is crushed to form a rich, textured surface. Amate was used by Mesoamerican peoples to draw and write their codices, which recorded culture, beliefs, and mythologies. Traditionally, these folded-screen type books were structured around the 260-day Tzolkin calendar: a pictorial system that situated narratives of time and culture in relation to 13 cycles of 20 days, as well as the four cardinal points and the different species of beings that inhabit the world.
The Amate Folds pavilion extends the structure of the Mesoamerican codices to the city. Stripped of their pictorial content, amate pages become pivoting surfaces that attract citizens with their dynamic rotations and fleeting folds. The mythologies previously portrayed in amate are now performed in the public space of the city—through gazes, traverses, and interactions of visitors. These rotating pages are structured in a sequence of 20 modules referring to the 20 days of the Tzolkin calendar. Located on a diagonal between the colonial plan of Alameda Central and the surrealist Dream of a Sunday Afternoon, the pavilion supports new cultural narratives carried out in and for the city. Its surfaces capture the marks of wind, rain, and sun as they fold with the movement of visitors. In this way, amate surfaces capture new uses and playful combinations between people, stories, paper, and city.
Year: 2024
Competition
Architecture:
Luca Caiaffa
Luiza Braga
