México en piezas

Memorial a las Víctimas de la Violencia en México Location: Bosque de Chapultepec, Mexico City Architects: Gaeta-Springall Arquitectos

Commission by President Felipe Calderon in 2011 and completed by Gaeta-Springall Firm, it was built as a place to pay respect and remember the many victims that have been lost in the decades of violence that have plagued Mexico due to history of war, human injustice and corruption in country. 

The site was completed at the end of 2012 and has been fully open to the public since and has served as both an open space that has been reclaimed for public use and a memorial for past victims. Carefully constructed with the goal of combining all the natural elements and man made structures, the area focuses on not only the material items but also the empty space to offer meaning to this memorial. The space between steel and trees to serve as an example of the void that can be left when people fail to remember those that have been lost and thus creating an absence of remembrance. The metal structures each with their own textures ranging from rusty, steel mirroring also seek to provide a message. The rusty steel to show the marks and scars that time leaves in our life, stainless steel to multiply and reflect individuals, trees and the waters that abound within the memorial and lastly the natural steel as a reminder of the strength and stability that society requires for peace and prosperity. 

The site also offers numerous walls around the memorial that serve as a place of expression, through words and art each individual is welcomed to show their emotions of pain, loss, anger and hope for visitors to read and learn from as a way of multiplying ourselves through one another.

Fachada de patio central, Museo Nacional de Antropología, Av Paseo de la Reforma y Calzada Gandhi, Chapultepec, Polanco, México, DF 1964

Arqs. Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, Rafael Mijares, y Jorge Campuzano 

What The Water Gave Me (1922) by Frida Kahlo