The Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP) has selected Containing the Flood: Colosio Embankment Dam by Loreta Castro Reguera and José Pablo Ambrosi of Taller Capital as the winners of the 2022 MCHAP.emerge award. Acknowledging the best-built work in the Americas authored by a practice in its first ten years of operation, the 2022 MCHAP Prize for Emerging Practice (MCHAP.emerge) considered built works completed in the Americas between January 2018 to December 2021. Past MCHAP.emerge Laureates include Pezo von Ellrichshausen (2014), PRODUCTORA (2016), and Rozana Montiel Estudio de Arquitectura (2018).
Announced on the 21st of September 2022 at the MCHAP.emerge 2022 Awards Dinner hosted at the Mies van der Rohe’s S.R. Crown Hall on Illinois Institute of Technology's historic campus, the winners received the MCHAP.emerge Award, the MCHAP research professorship leading a studio in the College of Architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology, and funding of a related publication. For this fourth edition, the MCHAP main prize winner will be announced in April 2023.
The MCHAP 2022 jury is composed of Jury Chair Sandra Barclay (Lima, Peru), Founding Partner of Barclay & Crousse Architecture and Professor at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú; Mónica Bertolino (Córdoba, Argentina), Owner of Estudio Bertolino-Barrado and Professor at the School of Architecture, Urbanism, and Design at Córdoba National University; Alejandro Echeverri (Medellin, Colombia), Director of URBAM Centro de Estudios Urbanos y Ambientales, Owner of Alejandro Echeverri + Valencia Architects, and Distinguished Professor at TEC de Monterrey; Julie Eizenberg, FAIA (Santa Monica, USA), Founding Principal of Koenig Eizenberg Architects; Philip Kafka (Detroit, USA), President of Prince Concepts; and MCHAP Director Dirk Denison (Chicago, USA), Professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture, ex officio.
A project solving infrastructure problems with the delicacy and sensitiveness of a thoughtful architectural intervention where people are at the core of all considerations. It is an example on how a vulnerable neighborhood can be socially and physically transformed by going beyond a resolution of a technical problem to offer the habitants public space to use, a linear walking promenade and a shade as a place to meet. --MCHAP 2022 Jury Chair Sandra Barclay
Read on to discover more about the winning project and about the firm Taller Capital.
Containing the Flood: Colosio Embankment Dam by Taller Capital
Nogales, Mexico
This project emerged from our interest to work in the intersection between architecture and infrastructure, a field we have discovered to lack the attention of design professionals, such as architects and urban designers, but desperately in need of it. In Colosio dam, we were initially asked to design a park adjacent to the water body. After understanding the prevailing hydraulic and urban conditions, we decided to intervene in the dam itself, transforming the space both, into a working infrastructure and a public and recreational space. We achieved this through three main strategies
- Structure is the guiding system of the project. Gabion solves both architecture and infrastructure, permitting the filtration of water while containing the sliding ground. Through modular elements, pedestrian terraces allow circulation around the water body. The project is designed with a limited number of construction details to simplify construction.
- Geometry is used as a tool to dialogue with the context and the community: Linear geometries refer to the existing urban fabric and curves suggest the presence of water. The triangular roof serves as the element that gives relevance to the dam, making it perceptible from the main avenue. It gives scale and a facade to the entire intervention while serving as a landmark for the community by reinterpreting the local building typology.
- The program is infrastructure. The new design prevents the cyclical flooding of the area. A system of floodable platforms and the rise of the perimetral wall address this condition. These hold sports courts, gardens, and playgrounds.
Taller Capital was founded in 2010 by José Pablo Ambrosi and Loreta Castro Reguera. Their work focuses on designing the city through densification and infrastructural public spaces, with a special concern on reading the context as their main strategy source. Their work aims for material austerity and spatial richness. They have received several national and international recognitions and prizes such as the installation of the 2015 Eco Pavillion, a silver medal at the 2017 Mexico City Biennial, part of the team that received the Regional and Global Gold Prize of the 5th cycle of the LafargeHolcim Awards, an honorary mention at the 2020 Architectural Review Emerging Architecture Awards and the 2020 Architectural League of New York Emerging Architects Award. Taller Capital has designed and built several housing buildings, public spaces, and public buildings.
Explore the 2022 MCHAP.emerge finalists and discover ArchDaily's comprehensive coverage of MCHAP and MCHAP.emerge.
