Centre for Migratory Awareness

Perspective
Proposal,axonometric

2017
Architectural research project
UASLP


San Luis Potosí is a central state in the Mexican Republic. Its was founded for its proximity to silver and gold mines, and several commerce routes were established for the transportation of minerals to larger cities and seaports. Such paths evolved into modern train tracks that communicate the state with the most important routes in the central and east-northern region of Mexico, the US and Canada.   The railroad transportation is a practical yet mortal transportation for migrants travelling towards the US. In that sense, San Luis Potosí has become an ideal stop for these travelers, both for it being a central geographic spot and also for the convergence of routes that end in the northern Mexican cities of Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, and Matamoros, their last stop before crossing the border.

 Map of the Kansas City Southern network, from northern Iowa to the port of Acapulco.
Satellite image of the extension of the abandoned installations.
Photograph of the abandoned wagons. On the back one can see fi ve belltowers from different temples, as well as the top of the Institute of Fine Arts of SLP.
Photograph of the semi-abandoned warehouse, on the right a fright train.

With the urban development of the city, the remnants of the railroad configuration have become, at times, almost obsolete yet massive within the city center. One of those elements is an old maintenance station, currently owned by Kansas City Southern de México, located in the limits of the old city center of San Luis Potosí, just around the most important cultural areas of the region and almost within a UNESCO world heritage polygon.

Scholars have noted that the migrants’ journeys involve geopolitical, corporeal, and emotional dimensions. Yet, emotions, which are fundamental to understand the migrant experience, are usually overlooked. Through the study of the emotional geographies of migrants through cognitive mapping approaches, academics have obtained graphic evidence of the mental perception of the paths migrants take. They often portray urban landscapes and means of transportation, like highways and cars, along with detention centers and red-colored spots that represent places of violent events.

In that sense, this academic project for my sixth-semester design studio aimed to transform a centric landmark, the semi-abandoned warehouse owned by Kansas City Southern, to be a safe place of convergence. The Migratory Awareness Center should take the urban advantages towards mobility to symbolically facilitate the act of arriving from any point in the city, in the country, or even the continent. The existing industrial framework would allow hosting all sorts of activities that promoted the awareness of the complex process of migration as well as a temporal shelter for travelers and organizations.

This project explored the possibilities of architecture to provide areas for learning, teaching, expressing, feeling, and just being existing freely on the inside of a structure that was meant to be something else. By taking advantage of the extense of the plot for the urban wellbeing of the zone, as well as the proximity to socio-cultural venues, the Center for Migratory Awareness could become a prominent site in the emotional cartography of the old city: the building would be the physical shelter, and the consequences of the activities performed in it, a spiritual refuge.

Architectural plan. The new configuration of the warehouse allows to host six pavillions and an integral program. On the outside the abandoned railroads delineate a linear park and regional garden that connects with the urban landscape and makes the program more amicable to users. 
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