THE SHOW AGAINST QUALITY: TADAO WALK AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MONTERREY.
Eduardo Cadaval
A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to visit Monterrey invited by the Chair of Citizen Urbanism of the Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey. During my stay in the city, I was able to testify to the enormous effort of urban reconversion that Fundidora Park represents and its potential as a structuring element for the central sector of the city. A second project, that of the Paseo Santa Lucía, certifies the city’s commitment to the construction of new spaces for coexistence that, given their scale and dimension, can become triggers for a more complex urbanity.
The Paseo Santa Lucía corridor, criticized in some sectors for representing the importation of a commercial model from the city of San Antonio, Texas, has the enormous potential to make this public space the backbone of the area. The corridor has many things well done; The first is to meet the essential condition for any urban corridor to function: to have an origin and destination to unite. The corridor “begins” at the Museum of Mexican History —which in turn acts as a link with the axis of the macroplaza—, and ends at Fundidora Park; They are thus joined through a pedestrian corridor isolated from vehicular flows, two points in the city that over time will prove to be key to adequate urban development.
What draws the attention of these two spaces is the titanic task of betting on public space in a city that in its daily life has stopped being used to it; a city where American business models have become spaces for coexistence and where walled subdivisions for a minimal part of the population seem to be the model of urban growth to follow. In this sense, the creation of these two spaces and the recent verticalization of new real estate developments -even with many shortcomings- seem to augur a better future. Let us remember that urban projects should never be judged only by what they are, but by the possibilities they open up, by what they can become.
In the antipodes of the previous interventions is the Roberto Garza Sada Center designed by Tadao Ando for the University of Monterrey. An iconic project that does very little for its environment. A building subject to a gesture; a “door” that does not open or unite anything, beyond a sea of parked cars.
The insecurity that Mexico is experiencing has made the simple act of accessing a university campus – the University campus in Monterrey – seem almost as complicated as entering the Pentagon. Identifications, private security guards who suspect the driver, the rest of the occupants and even the vehicle itself; walkie-talkie calls full of keys – “I have an X10 at the entrance” -, so that we are finally allowed to enter the parking area. Accessing the building is something else; You must be accompanied at all times by the teacher who authorized your entry.
Waiting for the person who kindly guides us through the building, it is easy to check what is almost a no-brainer. In a building for everyday use and several stories high, users tend to climb in the way that requires the least possible effort; thus, the pre-Hispanic stairs, generated by the gesture of folding the building at its base, seem to lose all the battles in front of the modest elevator hidden in the adjoining service area. The one that seems to be the main bet of the building – a system of patios with sculptural vertical circulations – is surpassed by the efficiency that daily life demands.
The project seems to have many questionable things: an apparent concrete building that hides a system of steel IPR columns and beams that, for the sake of some structural honesty, would seem to suggest another tectonic language. A fan – the most prominent formal gesture in the building – made in part of drywall and metal and made up to appear to be concrete. Classrooms that do not have a single window that allows natural ventilation and that deny the impressive views of the Sierra Madre Oriental or the Huasteca Canyon. The largest bastion of the city, its impressive landscape, is canceled to concentrate all the visual load in courtyards of great spatial richness but mostly empty of users and contaminated -partly due to its location in height- by the background noise of the cars that circulate on the roads surrounding the campus.
The most questionable thing about the entire operation, however, is how little the building does for the rest of the university complex. The “campus” of the University of Monterrey is actually a group of buildings surrounded by a sea of parking lots; despite everything, it hides the potential to function as a pedestrian corridor that allows another type of university life. The quality of Ando’s work and his prestige augured another result. They made it possible to think that his intervention would be capable of invigorating the campus, mitigating some of its deficiencies and promoting other forms of use. Instead, an isolated building was built, with little or no relationship with the rest of the buildings on campus and that does not seem to enrich the student life of the complex much.
Regarding the inauguration of the building, the newspaper Reforma published a conversation with the benefactress who made the building possible. In this conversation, Doña Márgara Garza Sada de Fernández explained with a certain pride how Tadao Ando, after visiting the land, -something that he does not do for all the projects he carries out-, boarded a plane bound for New York and upon landing I sent him the sketch of what later would eventually become the building. It seems that architecture is the only profession where its most prestigious representatives can continue to play the role of creative genius. Would anyone accept a rushed diagnosis from a doctor without having done the proper tests or requesting a second opinion? Who would trust a business strategy from any consultancy based on an economic analysis done in 5 minutes?
My first thought at the end of the campus visit was that it was a missed opportunity. What would have been expected of Ando would be a building of the highest quality and that it will help to build a better campus. In my opinion, neither of the two things was achieved.
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