ON THE PURPOSE OF REMODELING THE BASE
Eduardo Cadaval
On Tuesday, February 18 of this year, the architect Fernando González Gortázar published in the newspaper La Jornada an open letter to the head of government of the Federal District, regarding the announcement made by the latter about the imminent remodeling of the Constitution Square. , the Zocalo. In his eloquent letter, González Gortázar exposed not only the importance of intervening in one of the most symbolic places in the country, but also the importance of taking care of the way and the times in which this intervention is carried out.
Said letter mentioned the existence of a winning project to remodel the Zócalo, the result of a public, national and open competition held at the dawn of 2000. I had the privilege of being part of the winning team of said competition and I consider it inappropriate not to count my experience. Therefore, here is the chronicle of that day in case it can be of any use.
The new millennium was about to begin. The openness of the country’s democratic life allowed the inhabitants of Mexico City to elect our leaders for the first time. In 1997, Engineer Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano had become the first democratically elected head of government and the new times also announced another way of doing things. Thus, when the national competition to remodel the Zócalo was called, the beginning of a new stage was breathed, which supposedly would leave behind a long moratorium of several decades without open competitions or democratic access to public projects.
Due to the scope and significance of the place to intervene, the call for the contest to remodel the constitution square required coordination between the federal government and that of Mexico City; An understanding of historical value between the left-wing opposition that ruled the city for the first time and the last PRI government, prior to the alternation, allowed the joint contest to be convened. The news couldn’t be more encouraging. Despite the different political positions, if the issue required it, an agreement could be reached.
The contest was impeccably organized by a team headed by José Luis Cortés and featured a first-rate international jury that included, among others, the Pritzker Fumihiko Maki Prize, the renowned Colombian architect Rogelio Salmona, Félix Sánchez and the chronicler José Luis Martínez. . It was carried out in two stages; a first completely open and a second with 15 selected finalists. In both cases, a rigorous anonymity was observed that had us the finalists exchanging speculations or guessing who this or that proposal was from until the last minute.
I was 23 years old when a Goya (the team was almost entirely from UNAM) rumbled in the Palace of Fine Arts at the end of a ceremony like a fairy tale for any young architect. It was the first time – and last to date – that he stepped on the most important stage in the country. Before we took the stage, two of our personal heroes had done it: Alberto Kalach and Teodoro González de León, second and third place respectively. I remember a full Palace of Fine Arts, with our families and friends applauding from the stalls and where we were awarded in a solemn ceremony by the head of government Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas and the secretary of education Miguel Limón, representing the President of the Republic.
At the end of the night of the ceremony, we went to a seedy bar in Eje Central, where Ernesto Betancourt’s credit card said “enough” as a result of the intense celebrations that began a week before when we had been announced that we were the winners. . The same day that we had eaten with the jury and other notables in an elegant restaurant in the center of the city and that we had stepped on the stage of the Palace of Fine Arts, we made sure that you are somewhat older, overweight and poorly made up, not to sit down at our table because we couldn’t buy them a beer. It was the conclusion of some incredible months, full of architecture, of friendship, of nights that began with work and ended with parties, to begin again the next day with the same force. Intensity and youth in its purest form.
The celebrations came to an end and months of hard work followed. From meetings after meetings. From criticism and support from the youth of the team, from disputes with the church over some bars or with some rich lady who felt that the project affected the environment of one of its multiple properties. The final result was an exhaustive executive project agreed with all the parties involved and that was reviewed and approved by the federal government and that of Mexico City, but was never built. Hours and hours of work, intelligence and energy of many people, completely wasted. Hundreds of plans drawn and redrawn to satisfy the requirements of an executive project paid for with public money, but that the politicians who had requested it did not consider their responsibility to build.
The experience of being part of the winning team of the Zócalo contest, I believe without exaggeration, which marked the personal lives of all its members and despite the fact that the members of the team have continued along different paths, we share a great friendship and the complicity of having lived together many memorable episodes. At the level of professional experience, the lessons were also great but not necessarily encouraging. After having carried out the Zócalo contest, I have not participated in a single public contest in Mexico. Because they are poorly organized or because they do not have the minimum guarantees for their correct execution, I consider them a waste of time and, unfortunately, the statistics seem to prove me right.
Like González Gortázar, I welcome the initiative to intervene in the Zócalo. If we could verify something with the surveys and field visits that we carried out in those years, it is that the Plaza de la Constitución is in a much more dilapidated state than it appears, and there are even unimaginable conditions for a site of this category than its enormous scale allows to disguise: perforated garbage cans that serve as drainage or subway vents, not a single quadrant of pavement in good condition or a six-lane wide asphalt highway that separates the plaza from the buildings that contain it despite the fact that on three of its sides, traffic is unnecessary and on many occasions it is even totally restricted.
If we take into account that the city has been governed by the same party for almost 20 years and that it was this party that, in an example of responsibility and transparency, knew how to agree with the federal government to call a public contest that had a clear winner unanimously appointed Wouldn’t it be worth taking advantage of all the knowledge generated and an executive project already paid for with a small update to carry it out? Isn’t it the best and most responsible of the alternatives? If we were in a country with modern regulations, this would be a legal obligation that would protect us all. As we do not have it, what would be a right – to win a contest and for this project to be built and not another – becomes a chimera, almost a Guajiro dream.
What should not be is that in the end we depend on the criteria or goodwill of politicians who, due to their own specialization, know little about urbanism. That is why it is essential that this type of project be carried out through competitions where a group of experts established as a jury is capable of evaluating the implications and consequences of carrying out one or another project, especially in a place with the significance that the Zócalo have.
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