Juarez, Mexico, resiliency is what best describes this city, a border city, bridging North and Latin America, a city of migrants and hardworking people, where resources are scarce, and the environment is harsh. Where cultures merge, and technologies, construction methods and materials are fused in an architecture that expresses that melting pot. FEMAP school is a project inserted in an area desolated and impoverished by crime and lack of public investment, as a mean to transform its surrounding environment, this non-for-profit entity, is aiming to transform thousands of students lives, their families, and the community.
Global Architecture & Design Awards 2018
First Award | Category: Institutional (Concept)
Architect: Grupo ARKHOS
Team Members: RUBEN ESCOBAR, RICARDO PACHECO, ROBERTO NAJERA
Country: Mexico
The building is bold, expressive, with urban scaled textures and geometry. Nested in a desert environment, the design is sustainable and resource conscious. Uses passive technologies that help reduce heat gain, ventilated facades, louvers, insulation, and efficient low-e glassing. Conserves and reuses water thru a water treatment plant that services toilets and irrigation. Designed with a variable refrigerant flow HVAC system, LED lighting throughout the building, radiant floor heating operated with heat collection solar panels, will be equipped with a photovoltaic array on the structure over the roof garden. The building is seeking LEED for Schools certification, aiming at a LEED Platinum award. It was a challenge to provide an extraordinary energy consumption performance, while giving the project a contemporary innovative look, with the limitations common to Latin American economies regarding budget, material availability, technologies at our disposal and labor quality, always taking advantage of our workers resourcefulness and creativity.
The faceted facade creates a kaleidoscopic effect, light and shadow constantly changing during the day and night as light strikes its sharp urban sized texture and volumes. Green wall and rooftop garden, transform into a living mural that is blended onto the project. Every time you walk by you perceive it differently, the project is ever changing.
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