A structure repurposed for meditation and performance on a new site

Following the closure of our exhibition at Casa Luis Barragán in 2019, our temporary installation ‘Chapel for Luis Barragán’ (a half-scale model of a memorial chapel that was never built) was dismantled. Around the same time, our close friend and frequent collaborator, Mexico City based architect Javier Sanchez, acquired a remote site in the mountains west of Mexico City, to serve as a base for ultra-marathon training. We gifted the wood frame of the chapel to Javier for his 50th birthday. The wood frame will be transported to the site, to be reassembled and supported on foundation walls constructed of local stone, and will be clad with horizontal beveled wood siding stained black.  The resulting semi-subterranean space created between the foundation walls and the hovering pyramidal structure will serve as a meditation and music performance space. The half-scale installation will be translated to a full-scale building, one that embodies the memory of an unbuilt memorial chapel originally designed for a site 3,000 miles away.

Project Team: Robert Hutchison, Lenore Wan
Temascaltepec, Mexico, Construction 2020