Sleeping Pavilion

The Sleeping Pavillion was built within the framework of the annual Santa Lucia Festival on a vacant, private lot in downtown Monterrey that is adjacent to its most representative public space, the Macroplaza. Empty, the lot over time acquired the arid tones of the pastures and trees native to the region, contrasting with the programmed spaces and monuments of the Macroplaza. The ordinariness of its landscape has been the most powerful weapon for a bicentennial mesquite, allowing it to be invisible and grow wild in the most political and intervened space of the city.

The pavilion follows a simple configuration of a rectangular platform of 8.10 x 8.00 with a base of 544 blocks of ashlar on top of a hidden steel grid around the mesquite.

Protection from the sun and the eyes of others offered by the shadow of the mesquite along with the rectangular platform invites leisure and drowsiness creating a perfect setting for resting.

In a system that rewards productivity, we consider that leisure in a space that generates no consumption, is subversive.

It is impossible to create alternate narratives for the future of cities, if the way of observing, thinking, and imagining them continues to separate nature between the productive and the wild and metaphorical one. With a simple architectural gesture, the pavilion aims to create a bridge by highlighting the last being that grew wild in a highly urban context.

In its original context, the pavilion was activated with the performance "birds dream of their song" by José de San Cristobal which assumes that the birds dream of their songs and invites musicians to lie down in the shadow of the mesquite to dream of their melodies.